Queenie's Song

By John Scott Winters

Shy and withdrawn, ten-year-old Aimee seems an ordinary, under-achieving girl until a series of events force her discovery of the extraordinary powers that abide within us all. When Aimee is suddenly orphaned on her tenth birthday, she is sent to live with her only living relative, Aunt Delilah, whom she

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Mar 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890915153

John Scott Winters

"...gorgeously written. The lush descriptions of Aimee's inner world are particularly enticing."- Blueink Review"A fable-like novel with otherworldly visions, vividly drawn characters, and dynamic prose."- Kirkus Reviews

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Queenie’s Song

Copyright © 2023 by John Scott Winters

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024902365

ISBN Paperback: 979-8-89091-514-6

ISBN eBook: 979-8-89091-515-3

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Dedicated to my Mother,

for sharing her imaginary childhood friend with me,

and for everything else.

Introduction

First there was no mankind, and then there was mankind. And wherever mankind joined together there became tribes, villages, societies, and civilizations. Then arose the stains of boundaries and ownership and cities. And along the way, almost without exception, every single gathering of human beings developed belief systems, which might be called cosmologies or philosophies, in their struggle with the ideas of how and what the world is made for. Or more rightly named, religion.

It is widely believed that man evolved in the heart of the African continent and spread outward from there. Whether staring into a starry sky or discovering a fresh spring sprout, the ideas of creation and purpose grew alongside our embryonic humans being ancestors, which is to say, the game-breaking ability to conceptualize moving backwards and forwards in time.

About three thousand years ago, just a few winks before the age of Buddha and the erection of Stonehenge, some Sumerians began recording the goings on about them. And three thousand years before that came Vodun, which at six thousand years old is one of the very first still-standing religions.

Vodun, or Vodoun or Vodu, is, at its core, ancestor worship. It has absolutely nothing to do with the vulgar figments of Hollywood’s imaginative portrayals of voodoo. Vodun is the belief that spirits govern Earth, and that dead spirits exist side by side with living spirits. Today there are more than sixty million (one in every one-thousand or so) souls who are adherents of the varied branches of this code of belief, not counting the millions of devotees who have been syncretized into the catholic church by the similarities of the two (i.e. – the intercessions of Saints and Angels/Griot and Lwa).

But this story is, after all, a work of fiction. This author in no way pretends to possess the true knowing; I only wish to present an enjoyable, plausible, pastime of a made-up fairies’ tale.

When I was young, I liked to profess myself a pantheist – believing that God resides everywhere, in everything. As I have grown older, I realize that I am actually, also, an omnist - a believer of all religions. Everyone alive is trying to describe the same thing in a thousand different languages, from a bajillion different perspectives. Just ask the proverbial five blind men put in a room with an elephant, and they’ll tell you more than I could ever hope.

Vo: to rest. Dun: to draw water.

May we all remain calm in the face of adversity.

Prologue

Quietly they walked, raising dust on the road as they went. They were more than a group but less than a throng when they passed Theriot. They walked without words but they walked with purpose, before the urging of some drumming and some humming and some indiscernible chantings. Two hours later they met the ones walking from the direction of Dulac, who were driven of common ancestry. The two bodies merged as if without notice, melding southwards. There were men among them with garish and extravagant costumes who set the rhythm with their arms and their dance. But not once, from any of the assembly, was a single word spoken.

When the road ended, the procession continued. They walked mostly into the sun, which lay low on the horizon this time of day. Dust became fen, fen became marsh, and marsh became bayou, but their trail kept them to the highest ground as it slithered toward open water, steering them above the bog. The drumming was not urgent, but it was insistent. When they reached a point within sight of Point au Fer Island, where a footfall in any direction would land in mire, the drums stopped, and they stopped, and began preparing the site.

It began with a candle, lit in the twilight. That candle touched another, and that another and that another, and so the light faeries grew in number, gradually encircling the host. There were bullfrogs lowing from the water’s edge, and tree frogs counting double time from behind, accentuated now and then by the grunt of a gator, from further off. There was the lap of rising tide against the dirty sand. There was a rustling breath of air in the rushes. But despite the numbers of them, there was no sound to be heard that was made by man. Shadows passed between candles as tokens began to accumulate around each glow: a scrap of cloth here, a lock of hair there. A single torch was lit and staked in the center of the circle, and at once it began to accumulate dried grasses and driftwood that were brought to it, so that by the time the last flicker of sun sank into the gulf, light shined upon the faces of the gathered, bathing them in yellow warmth.

The world took pause for a beat, and a beat, and a beat. It waited not long until a drum, and a drum, and a drum picked up the pulse, and the sway began. No longer disconnected, the body joined together, growing more and more animated as the music of the night grew. Each and every beat came quicker than the last, and before long voice joined the song. Beginning as mere exhalations, they grew in unison. Breaths became grunts and grunts became chants, and chants eventually became words.

Osagboro!

God is one!

We worship Him in a hundred ways.

We praise Him in a thousand tongues.

In one dithyrambic voice they summoned the Lwa, and when every soul perceived the presence of them, every voice implored their Blessings. Beating furiously now, the drums rose sweat from every brow, from every breast, and from every heart. Frenzy took them all, holding them in scorn of exhaustion as the fever grew along with the night, until, in single mind, all noise, all dance, all conscious thought ceased.

Select hands carried string-wrapped bundles of incense to the central flame and lit them upon it. Cradling the smoke before them, the carriers saw that no wisp went wasted on the way to the altars around the candle shrines. In their wake, the land, the air, and all surrounds, were purified and sanctified. Tobacco was lit. Flowers were laid. Rum was drawn. These were things the Great Snake could not resist, and he did not.

The spirits of the Lwa were so abundant in number that no cause could be for it but the arrival of Voudun, and every living creature within sight and sound and scent was without doubt, for one graced moment. And then there came the horn.

Blown from the gulf, it pulled every ear to it and made every heart skip as it blew. Blown again, it dropped every mind into trance, and every body into stone. The night fell silent, save the last push of oar through brack, and the soft cush of bow to landing. All the host could do was stand rigid in horrified awareness of what had come to be. This was not the loa of Vodun. This was O bo.

She alone stepped among them. No Bondye accompanied; her gris-gris was enough. Going to stand by the center fire, she turned her uncountenanced face three hundred and sixty degrees, paused, and started back in the opposite direction. One-third back across the clock face she stopped again. There was a man of Dahomey before her, with the arms of his daughter clutched around his knees as if she could be hidden there. Bowing her head forward, the intruder bore into the two.

If she heard their unspoken pleas, she gave no sign. Knitting her brows and tilting her neck forward, she rose them into the air. Neither the father nor the daughter altered pose; they simply rose. The one who had come floated them toward her, and when they reached her side, she simply turned her face toward the fire, and the two followed her glance.

Not until their skin began to melt from their bones did she allow them volition, and at their screams the gathered host fell to the ground as one, and the night was done.

Chapter I

Monday

For almost all of the time that Aimee knew Queenie she thought the dark little girl was a gift from her Mommy. She thought that because the day she met Queenie was the day after her 10th birthday, which is a very special birthday because it takes two separate strokes to write your age after that. And because, for the first year ever, Mommy hadn’t given her any birthday presents.

So until the day that Queenie proved that concept (idea) very, totally, absolutely, wrong, Aimee just imagined that Mommy had simply forgotten to wrap and deliver this strange looking, corn-rowed, little girl who’d suddenly appeared in her life. Queenie was just late, that was all.

Aimee spent all the day of her birthday looking at the clock on the wall and scribbling on page after page of the tablet on her desk while Mrs. Puryear mooed by the blackboard, squeaking white marks onto it with her stick of chalk. But because Aimee had to finish her invitations before the bell rang she wasn’t sure exactly what Mrs. Puryear was saying, except that it was something arithmetical.

There were twenty-four pupils in the fourth grade at James K. Polk Elementary School, 451 Hillsboro Pike, Franklin, Tennessee, and though Aimee didn’t even like half of them (the boy half, for the most part), Mommy had insisted, It’ll be the whole class or none at all. You must invite everyone, baby, and you’ll see, the ones who actually show up will mostly be the ones you like anyway.

Mommy had been going to throw Aimee the party; that’d been the plan. But Mommy hadn’t been feeling so awfully well these past few days. So that morning of her birthday when she told Aimee that she would have to throw her own self a party, Aimee did what she did every time her Mommy told her stuff like that; she buried her nose in the place where Mommy’s neck and shoulders came together, and threw her too short, too immature (not fully grown) arms around Mommy, and breathed as deeply as she would ever breathe in her whole, entire life.

I’ll call the bakery and have them send over cupcakes, and we’ve plenty of Kool-Aid in the pantry. And I think I even know where a bag of balloons might be. I’ll blow some of them up for you, once I feel better this afternoon, Mommy whispered.

This had happened to Mommy before. All of a sudden one day she’d just get really tired. She’d been tired for three days now, this time…

"The doctor told me I just have to lie down and keep still a while."

Aimee loved the way it felt when Mommy swept and swept and swept her bangs away from her forehead when they lay talking like this.

And then I’ll be as good as new, except a little bit older!

Then she’d tickled Aimee and they’d giggled away together.

But Mommy felt funny in Aimee’s arms these last few times. Puffy-like; like she was getting to be a fat lady or something, only not in her face.

Mommy had the most beautiful face Aimee could ever even imagine. Every year when it came Christmas time and they put the little porcelain nativity scene up on the mantle, the golden-haired angel with her arms open and her wings spread balancing on top of the manger roof always reminded Aimee of her Mommy.

So Aimee scribbled furiously in her tablet on her birthday day, trying to get every invitation written out in time. She wrote so intently that by the time she finished them all the minute hand of the big white-faced clock that hung above the very blackboard that Mrs. Puryear still stood screeching her white marks across was only pointing at the 9, and they didn’t get out until it was to the 12. She tried turning her ear and attention to what Mrs. Puryear was jabbering about, but her eyes inevitably drifted back to the neat stack of handwritten invitations, hiding like dress-uniformed French troops waiting for her orders, beneath her faux-opened ("That’s French for false, baby") arithmetic book.

And then she heard a mutter from deep inside her. She squirmed and tried to refocus on her task, but the wordless talk would not cease. It called her name in an unspeakable language that lips and tongue could never pronounce. The Frenchies started looking all too much like the plain crooked black marks on plain white pages that they really were. Mrs. Puryear would surely see Aimee and call her down if she tried to sneak her crayons out from under the desktop in a vain-glorious (For nothing) attempt to liven those tired-looking troops back into the princes and dauphins that she knew them to really be.

She decided there might be enough time to fold the invitations fancy-like, into airplanes or something. Yep, she could see paper airplanes flying unerringly (Without mistake, sweetheart) through the autumnal limbs of the multitudinous Hayberry Street red oaks, all the way up to her door stoop, which flowed over with pink cupcakes and with red and yellow balloons, while inside were piled multitudinous lavishly decorated gift boxes; Mommy balanced above it all, scooping the eager children of Aimee’s school into their house.

Maybe the boys should get the first kind of paper airplane she’d learned to make – the kind that don’t fly worth a crap (Shit. Any way you look at it.). And maybe the girls should get the new kind with the long sleek (skinny) wings that fly waaaay farther than the boy kind does. Her attention drifted to the portrait of President Kennedy that hung between the clock and the chalkboard. It was so sad when that man killed him. She and Mommy had cried for days and days. Aimee thought his funeral looked like princes and princesses all dressed in black and white on the TV shows. And then the bell rang.

All the cool kids kept their jackets and lunchboxes dangling on the backs of their desk chairs, so they were up and gone before the bell even stopped ringing. And even the doofus kids, the ones who kept their stuff behind the coat wall like Aimee did, already had their books put away and were joining the hall noise by the time Aimee got her desk cleared, loaded and shut, so that all Aimee, on her milestone (Significant mark of passage, sweetheart) birthday, was left with were echoes in the suddenly empty classroom, and the sight of Mrs. Puryear’s fat ass (Big butt – duh!), piggling back and forth under the same dress she wore every Tuesday, grinding her eraser across the board as she wiped out today’s lesson in preparation for tomorrow’s. Aimee had that left. That, and the nagging in her mind, and the stack of dead soldiers in her hand, which she buried in the trash can on her way out the door. She left alone, as usual, a step or few behind the other kids

Aimee walked home from school as always, by herself. She was a big girl now, her Mommy said; she could handle it.

I can handle it fine, Aimee said as she walked alone, Just fine, thank you very much. She had no way of knowing if the voices could hear her when she spoke aloud to them, but that did not stop her from doing it, sometimes.

It was coming on to Halloween, and though the season had been abnormally warm, the leaves were near fully turned from the shortening daylight. She liked these times, brief as they were, when she was neither at home nor at school. The morning and the afternoon walks were about the only times Aimee felt as if she had control of her own self; when she could actually listen to the voices in her mind. They were always there, but were almost always drowned out by all the out-loud voices of the world. The voices didn’t use words, exactly, but she could still tell what they were saying, sometimes, like in moods, or hints, or suspicions. They sounded more like a hum in the back of her mind, rising and falling, than anyone really talking to her. It was as if she were standing in the midst of hundreds of people, all conversing quietly amongst themselves. Once in a while she could catch a recognizable word or phrase in the din, and when she did, she usually repeated it out loud without meaning to, or even realizing she was doing it.

It’s here. She mouthed absently.

Her attention was caught by a flutter. Looking up, she spotted a crow alighting atop a power pole across the street, silhouetted against the lowering sun.

Caw! It cried, eyeing her steadily. She felt as if its ebon eyes were boring into her. Its stare – no, she thought, it felt more like a glare - made her skin crawl. It stretched its coal dusted wings out as if to take flight, only to pause, posing, before nestling them back to its sides. Turning to look into the light behind it, it cried again.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

Aimee quaked briefly in a shiver, and as she walked quickly away from the bird she heard it answered, cawed back at it from many directions, near and far.

When she reached Highway 31 she stopped and looked both ways, just like she was supposed to. There was an old brown and white pick-up truck pulling a horse trailer, coming from the direction of Brentwood; too close and going too fast for her to try to beat across, so she paused and began humming the tune of ‘Love Me Do’, the Beatles song that Mommy and she loved so dearly. She sang the song soundlessly in her mind, tapping out the rhythm with her fingers on the cover of her denim 3-Ring binder as she waited. A large white dog hung its head out of the passenger window of the beat-up truck, licking at the wind that flapped his big, rounded ears against his neck. As she watched it pass, then recede, the breeze of the passing truck tugged her long blonde hair behind it, leaving the sickly-sweet scent of horse dung (A nicer name for shit) washing the road ahead of her. She thought about how calm the air had been a few seconds ago, where now a smelly breeze followed them who had passed, and about how the dog had been gleefully attempting to eat forty mile an hour wind while three feet away on the sidewalk, where Aimee stood, the air was stiller than one mile an hour. Only three feet.

Up ahead was the stop sign, four ways, where she’d turn left and cross the highway onto to her street. This was her favorite part of her walk home. She picked up her pace, walking as if she were going straight ahead with a purpose, then grabbing the sign pole at the last second she swung herself onto the correct path. She liked to do this because sometimes when she did it she got a little dizzy as the wind hit her face more, for an instant.

Looking both ways, as always, she saw only one car, way down the road, going way slow. As she began across she hummed back at the humming that was rising in her mind. She was midway through her third skip when it hit her, from within.

I know you

The words slapped her into stasis, heated her face like an open oven, and she froze where she stood. The voices never seemed to be addressing her directly, yet this one was undoubtedly doing just that. She thought she knew this voice, was certain that the words came from the one who comes most often, even though his language had never before contained words. She wanted to call back to it, to answer, but she did not have any idea of how to speak without using her mouth. Around her, the world slowed a tick or two, and time turned to a crawl, until all at once someone was grasping her shoulders, shaking her, saying loud things to her. She was standing frozen in the middle of the intersection.

A man’s voice came into focus, …the darn-fool dickens is wrong with you, child?

I think she lives a few doors down from me, said a second man, who Aimee had not noticed before. I don’t know her name.

The first one was old and pickledy and scowlish. The other was younger than Aimee’s Mommy and looked anxious (Afraid from worrying). And there was a lady holding onto the handle a baby stroller on the sidewalk, watching them all. Aimee wondered how long she had been here, standing in the middle of the road. Now she would be late getting home, and she did not want to worry Mommy.

I’m okay, she told the people. Really, I am.

The men muttered as they got back into their cars and the woman frowned as she turned the carriage and pushed it back the way she seemed to have come from.

As Aimee hurried the rest of the way across the street the humming in her mind began to swell, turning her steps back into skips. But before she reached the other side, she caught herself and slowed her pace. It wouldn’t do to get home too early. If she dawdled just long enough the Mickey Mouse Club would be coming on the television when she got in, and she could go straight to that.

And dawdling a bit would also give her time to listen for more words.

Every afternoon was the same, once she got home. Mommy would let her watch the Mouseketeers before she had to do her homework. Then Mommy would check her homework and Aimee would do the corrections while Mommy cooked. Then they would eat, then Aimee would have her bath, and then she could choose between a game with Mommy, free time, or a story read by Mommy, before she got tucked in. After that, for as long as she could stay awake, she was alone again, and could try to decipher the voices again, for a little while, until they carried her away into their dreams.

And the next thing she’d know, Mommy would be sitting on the edge of her bed, stroking her forehead, whispering, "C’mon, Baby, it’s a brand-new day."

But somehow it never was. Brand new that is. Sometimes, she wished she could have some really brand-new days, like the ones they dreamed about.

As she walked, she whispered wordlessly to the voices, but they didn’t respond to her like they did when she was all alone in the quiet. She knew things were going to be different today, because it was her birthday. Not brand new, though, just different. She might even have to miss her show while she and Mommy had a celebration of her birthday. Sure, she would get presents, but she never got what she wished for, and she still got her homework and her supper and her bath, no matter what, before she could retreat into the dithyramb of the voices.

Dithyramb, Aimee repeated, even though it sounded like nonsense syllables to her. Dizzy ram, she tried, thinking maybe she’d heard it wrong, but that sounded nonsense too.

Mrs. Pargh sat on her front porch, as always, peering Aimee down the length of the sidewalk with her gray be-speckled glare, until she was sure her prized flower beds were safe from the neighbor girl (That’s you, Aimee).

Fine, don’t talk then, Aimee told the voices, out loud this time. But you’d better later. The tenor of the whisperings didn’t alter, so she added, It’s my birthday, you know. The only reply Aimee heard was Mrs. Pargh harrumphing behind her.

Reaching her house she mounted the steps, pushed the door open, and stepped inside, leaving the door ajar behind her, where she was greeted by the same, dim, African violet and window shaded scent that waited in there for her every day. The television set was on in the back of the house, wafting out the closing notes of the theme song: "M-O-U-S-E".

On days like this Aimee wished her life was different. Not so monotonously disappointing, but wonderful, like the ones the children on TV shows had, with daddies and brothers and sisters and dogs and friendly neighbors. She wished her boring, friendless life could poof away like a flame on a blown-out candle, ushering in the darkness that always preceded the brilliance of their dreams.

From deep in the house she heard what sounded like a giggle, faint and cloistered. But if it was a giggle, it wasn’t her Mommy’s giggle. It was a high, lilting giggle; a giggle like… well, like Aimee’s.

Who’s there, she thought.

Mommy? she called.

There was no answer; no sound to be heard.

Mommy, I’m home.

Still no answer.

Aimee could imagine Mommy crouched behind the hall door, balancing a plate of superfluous (Too many) cupcakes in her hand, waiting to spring out in hopes of surprising Aimee.

I’m going to watch TV, she said flatly.

Maybe that would fly, and she could go lie on her stomach in front of the TV and daydream about Cubby - junior mouseketeer - moving in right next door to her, and just skip the whole surprise thing. But the buzzing in her mind rose in tempo and pitch, telling her that no way was that going to happen. Not today.

It was dark in the den, except for the black and white flickerings that shadow-danced on the bare hardwood floor in time with Mr. Jimmy’s guitar voice. She went immediately to the set to turn up the volume so she could melt into that, only to trip halfway there, over her Mommy’s leg.

Very funny, Mommy, she said, rubbing her elbow where it had hit soundly on the polished oak flooring.

But Mommy didn’t move, even when Aimee looked right at her and saw her splayed ashen-faced and open-eyed across the floor, her housecoat open to just above her waist, exposing frayed panties and the bottom sides of her breasts.

Pink and yellow balloons danced away from her, propelled by the force of Aimee’s fall, and something whispered past her as she saw the frozen skinned grimace that stretched across her Mommy’s face.

What? she said into the dim air.

What did you say?

She didn’t even bother to turn off the TV set. She pulled herself up onto her arms and crawled to Mommy, and leaned close in, to look.

Liar, she said into the darkness.

Lying down on top of Mommy she wrapped her arms into a hug around her.

But Mommy was cold and stiffening, so she got back off and curled herself into a ball, as close to Mommy as she could get without touching her. And she went to the away place.

*

When Aimee came back she was all alone, again. The television set was still on, but it only buzzed static-y black and white bees across her mind and into her re-focusing vision. Mommy was still next to her. Still, next to her. But she was gone, gone, gone for good and for all, Aimee thought to herself.

She didn’t dare move, for the longest of times. All she could do was huddle, and whimper. The whimpering helped her deny the whisperings that crowded into her ears, and the huddling helped her imagine that her Mommy was still at her side.

But she couldn’t stay here forever; she knew that, just as she knew that she could never leave this place; this here and this now. This would stay by her side for now and for eternity, and it would no more leave her than she could it. That fact was the only thing in the whole entire universe that she could be certain of, until the giggle came for her again.

It tee-heed at her from the darkness; it funned at her from the void. It jerked her wide awake as suddenly and as violently as a snarl. But it giggled. And thus revealed, the presence terrified Aimee so much that she joined it, and even when her own laughter wrenched deep in her gut she could not make it stop. The other giggle urged her on too hardily for that. All this, with Mommy lying there, like that, caused her to feel as lost from her own self as cut strings must make a puppet feel. And even as she tried to make herself cry, scream, and whither before the horror, she knew that resistance was futile. The voices inside her owned her now, and told her so in no uncertain terms.

Mommy wouldn’t move, anymore, so neither would Aimee. She locked herself, mind and body, in a place where no one could touch her, and she threw away the key, echoing.

Goodbye!

So Long!

I Love You!

*

Tuesday

It was the light that first grabbed her back. It shone so brightly that her pale lids could not shut it out. It snatched her from her pit of despair at the exact moment the voices came flooding behind.

Oh my God! screamed an out loud one.

There were scuffling sounds and a closing door, followed by a long period of silence, as again she slipped easily back into the void until the clattering and an out-loud voice came again, bringing others with it. They shouted words at her that made no sense, so she was able to ignore them until hands were laid upon her, denying her pretense any longer. They tugged her away from her Mommy. They forced her away, so she had to come back. She didn’t ever want to come back. Not to this. But they made her. They made her. She tried to show them that she could not be made to see what they did, but she only succeeded sporadically as she found herself bouncing back and forth between what was, and what she refused to let be.

But the grown-ups who had found her ultimately won out, and she could hide from it no longer, so she let them take her. She offered no resistance, but neither did she help. She made herself as dull and limp as she could. Even though she had no choice but to accept it, she would not admit it. Not to them, not to anyone, ever.

She was lifted; she was carried; she was removed. But she stayed right where she was. They might could separate her and her Mommy, but they could never keep them apart. Never.

They tried to disguise their initial roughness with soothing vowels and faux caresses, but did that matter, compared to a sheet over Mommy’s face? Did that fool her for one teeny instant?

She thought not. And there was nothing – no thing – in the world that could prove otherwise to her. So she did all she could do. She let them take her, while she stayed right where she was.

*

Climbing out of her well, Aimee gradually came to know the drugs. If not exactly what they were, what they did. The world was deadened to her; her senses vague and indistinct. It reminded her of sitting on the bottom of a swimming pool, holding her breath. There, in that submerged world, even if there was no sound from without, there was always the dull, constant noise of water-weight turning her ears inward on themselves.

Her vision was watery and blurred too, showing only lighter or darker patches around her; patches without form or function. Her thoughts were leaden and heavy under the weight. And then she was hit by a sudden spasm as she realized that there were no voices nagging at her edges, not a trace. She listened for them, but they did not come, and that frightened her.

The voices were as much a part of her as her bones and flesh. They always verged on her periphery, tugging softly at every thought, and now their absence was as shocking and foreign as was the absence of her Mommy. Maybe even more so, because they were with her more constantly than was Mommy, and because time spent with Mommy, as dearly as she craved it, was often only an interlude to the murmurings.

Aimee began to scent something around her, something flat and heavy and metallic. Something that seemed to soak up every presence it encountered.

where are you came to her.

I dunno, she mouthed. She didn’t care. She was too deep to care.

Something bright and loud startled at her from nearby, and, forcing herself up off the bottom, she kicked and swan toward the surface.

She was in a room, a small room. She was on a bed that was next to a window in the room. The window had curtains. They were mostly white, with splashes of color scattered about. Balloons. There were balloons printed on the curtains. And the walls. The walls had printing, no, painting, on them too, like scattered building blocks bearing the letters of the alphabet on their sides. And then there was a motion that snapped her up.

Bustling. Busyness about. Someone breezed past her bedside and adjusted the window blinds. Aimee decided to try her voice.

Muh… she tried. Muh, muh, muh, filled her throat, while her mind screamed Mommy, Mommy Mommy.

Muh, was all she could make her mouth say. The nearby busyness stopped immediately. May… she managed, with a sharp gasp.

May I… Aimee tried again, but gravity seized at her and pulled her back down below the surface, where she cried and cried again for her mommy. As she fought, thrashing, a fresh stillness came and hovered over her, and through slitted eyes Aimee recognized it for what it was. It was Miss Petty, the nurse from the hospital who came to her school every Tuesday, or whenever a kid got sick or hurt or something. She caught another sense of the leaden pall that seemed to surround her, and she stopped her climb to focus on that.

Aimee? whispered Nurse Petty. Aimee, are you awake, honey?

Aimee blinked hard, or tried to. She tried to swallow too, but couldn’t do that either. Her mouth was dry as desert sand, and as scratchy. Her vision cleared somewhat, and she saw the heavy, knitted eyebrows that Nurse Petty always seemed to wear. Aimee reached out her arms and finally breached the surface.

May… May I have a drink of water?

And just like that the depth cleared from her eyes and her ears as she bobbed back into the world.

Of course you may, Aimee, Nurse Petty said, already lifting a Styrofoam cup off the bedside table, and there seemed to be a hint of eagerness in her voice. Almost like a giggle.

Aimee