Keeper of Keys Read Free Page B

scarf.

    "It's just a figure of speech dear." She was flipping through the closet now, pulling out summer dresses and then putting them back in. Pushing the clothes hangers up and down the metal rod, but never finding what she was searching for until my grandfather finally cleared his throat.

    Grandma turned to look at him and I saw the tears. She turned her eyes on me and screamed.

    "Kai oh my God child what are you trying to do to yourself!"

    She rushed over and began unraveling the nylons from my neck. The tears flowed freely now. "Are you trying to kill yourself, are you!"

    The nylons tossed aside, my grandmother turned on me, gripped my shoulders and shook me with all of her strength. In my eyes, the whole room shook.

    "Viola!" My grandfather pulled her off of me. "Viola," he called her name again, softer the second time.

    She blinked at him and the rage went out of her eyes.

    "Oh, oh." She threw her hands up to her face and began to sob. "My girl, my baby girl." She wailed and I went to her and hugged her from behind. "It's okay grandma. I'm sorry. I was just playing. I'm not dead." I said because naturally, I thought she was talking about me.

    Two weeks later my grandfather and I were in the car on our way to the airport. I sat between Precious and Poor Boy, watching the green and brown of the country fly by outside the window.

    Their mother, Beck, drove the whole way without saying a word. That was unusual for her, she was what grandma called, a chattering chatterbox. My grandfather never stopped scratching his beard and never looked up from his hands that lay folded in his lap.

    I didn't realize how much I'd missed home until the taxi pulled up in front of my building. It was the beginning of August, the fire hydrants were on and my friends and a few new faces were dancing and screaming beneath the rushing water.

    My grandmother swung open the heavy metal door and greeted me with a look so broken I hesitated before I stepped into the apartment.

    There were boxes everywhere. Boxes piled up so high that they hid the broad leaves of the Banyan trees.

    Chapter Five

    "Where's mom?" I asked my grandmother as I dashed towards my mother's bedroom where I found more of the same. "Where is she!" I demanded in a voice I would never have used on any adult.

    "In the hospital." My grandmother must have practiced her response because it came out even and solid.

    Eve was at her bedside. Her eyes were red and swollen from tears and lack of sleep. There were books of poetry around her feet an eight track on the windowsill and a bunch of dandelions in a plastic cup on the table next to my mother's bed.

    "Kai-girl." Eve greeted me as she always did. But my nickname came out of her mouth in syllables that made me think that she had been missing the Banyan trees for a long time.

    Alice couldn't speak. Even without the tubes in her throat, she would not have said a word. She could hardly breath and should have been gone days ago, but my grandmother had begged and pleaded that they wait until I was able to come.

    "Is she sleeping?" That was the question that came out of my mouth, not any of the ones that were scrambling around my head. My best friend Deborah broke her arm two summers ago. It didn't put her in the hospital, so why was my mother here?

    "No…no. Well…yes….yes, in a way she is." My grandmother said and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "She is in a very deep sleep." She was speaking into my neck; I could feel her tears dripping down my collarbone. "She's tired…tired and the doctor's think that it would be best if she sleeps….forever."

    Eve was crying and I had never seen Eve do anything else but smile and laugh.

    "Forever?"

    Eternity is not something you lay on a child suddenly. It's a concept that finds its way into their minds with maturity. I was ten years old and eternity was lying in the bed before me.

    She would be asleep forever.

    She would be gone forever.

    I would be with out