Like a bleeding rose, memories were an endless trickle in her mind and words she wrote, the ink from her pen, always seemed red. Maria closed her journal and glanced out the plane’s window but there was nothing to see, just the passing clouds. She sighed and closed her eyes, the troubled feeling that had entered her mind since she boarded the plane still lingering and she understood why.
She was returning for the first time after eighteen years, something she had been reluctant to do, but her sister and brother had spent hours and days trying to convince her, it was something she should do.
“He doesn’t have much time,” her sister Diane had told her.
“I don’t really care” Maria had responded, her voice expressing no sympathy.
“I know how hard this is for you Maria”, her brother James had said, “because you witnessed what happened that night; but you had always wanted to know why he took what was most precious in your life. Now is your chance to find the truth and as a writer, it maybe the story of a lifetime.”
It had taken her days as she pondered her sister and brother’s words and she came to the realization they were right. It was a story she wanted more than anything else in the world that would reveal the truth of that fateful night.
Maybe then the blood would vanish and the rose would bloom.
She had been six years old when her mother’s sister had taken her far away so the nightmares that woke her up every night would go away. An unexpected tragedy had silenced the songs from a young child’s heart and stole her smiles and laughter. Stories from her fairy-tale books she could enjoy no more, not her dance lessons nor tea-parties for her dolls. Often as she grew, she would look at the heavens, sadness in her eyes and whisper, “Why did you have to leave me, Mom? I miss you so much.”
The plane started its descent and a sudden feeling of dread gripped her, “Oh God, will I be able to do this? How do I look at him, talk to him?”
She took a few deep breaths to regain control of her mind, telling herself, “I have to do this before he dies, it’s been long enough.”
The plane landed and she exited, her feet touching her home soil after eighteen long years. A soft breeze touched her face and she closed her eyes briefly, a fleeting feeling of someone unseen close to her.
“I’m home, Mom.” She whispered, “Help me to see this through.”
Maria checked in at the hotel where Diane had made reservations for her, had a light lunch and relaxed little before travelling to the home for the elderly. A nurse attendant guided her to the garden’s lawn and pointed to an old man sitting alone in the shadows of an old oak tree, a chess set on the table in front of him – her father.
Maria walked towards him, slowly, and stopped a little distance away, not saying anything, just looking at him, a man separated from the world waiting here to die alone. She watched his trembling hand moving the chess pieces, big hands that had been fists of steel, like a thorn bush, prickling those close to him, draining blood. He seemed to feel her presence and looked up slowly at the young woman standing there; and as his eyes met hers, Maria gasped as the horror of that night came back like screaming winds.
She was alone with her mother that night because the other children had gone to see a school play. Her mother’s soft voice was singing her to sleep so she did not hear her father come home. It was the terrified screams and crashing sounds that woke her and she sat up in bed, crying quietly, not knowing what was happening. She could hear her mother’s cries of pain and pleas and her father’s angry voice, then it became quiet. Maria crept out of bed, trembling with fear and opening the door a crack, she saw a scene that froze the blood in her little body. Her mother lay helpless on the floor, gasping for breath and her father standing over her with a knife, blood dripping from its blade. Her mother lifted her hand to her a little and smiled then her hand fell and her eyes closed. Maria couldn’t scream, she couldn’t move until she heard her father call her name and she ran and hid under her bed.
“Maria, my child.” The old man rose, stretching his hand out to her, bringing her back to the present; but she saw him as that strong aggressive man, a knife in his hand and she turned and ran, the fear suffocating her. She had thought she had the strength to face him but she couldn’t. He had taken away from her the most beautiful thing in her life, her mother, and she had had to grow up without that comforting love, the sound of her voice, her smile, the wonderful life they shared as mother and child, all gone like a candle in the wind.
It was late in the night when Maria crawled out from under the sheets. She looked at her disturbed face in the mirror and smoothing back her hair she thought,
“I’m now a young woman, a journalist, not a scared six-year-old, why is this still affecting me so much?”
She took a warm bath and sat for a long while thinking. “I have to go back to see him and face my fears. I have to be brave, it’s what my mother would have wanted.”
The next morning, after a late breakfast, she went back to the home. He was sitting in the same place, fiddling with the chess pieces. He looked up at her, standing in front of him a few feet away, and said in a hoarse voice, “You look so much like your mother, I thought she had come back to haunt me.”
“She wouldn’t do that” Maria said in a serious tone, “She’s too much of a nice person.”
He nodded his head, deep pain in his dull eyes.
“It took me a while to realize that, but too late.”
A heavy coughing racked his body for a short moment and after it subsided he said, “Part of my suffering is this sickness and my children whom I’ve lost.”
“Your sins are your own,” Maria said, a cold look in her eyes, “Your dark anger and cruel hands took away the most special person in our lives.”
He bent his head and said nothing for a while.
Maria pulled a chair and sat down not too close to him.
“Why?” she asked, a tremor creeping into her voice. “What was her wrong? She gave to you her heart and soul, her everything. How could you hurt her, how could you not feel her pain?”
He looked at her and said without any conviction,
“She betrayed me.”
“Really?” Maria looked at him incredibly, “A simple woman with simple ways, who was so taken up with home and family, she hardly had any time for herself. How did that happen and with whom?”
“I don’t know, I was told.”
“You were told?” Maria could not stop the disbelief and anger rising in her voice, “By whom, your drinking buddies who did not value the worth of their own wives?! How could you take a life created by God because of a lie, who gave you that right?”
He shook his head regretfully and hit the table with his fist, scattering the chess pieces. She got up to leave and he called after her, “No, don’t go, please. I haven’t seen any of my children in such a long time.”
Maria turned back, unable to feel pity for this man, whom she was supposed to call father.
“When you stabbed our mother and ended her life, despite her pleas, you did not stop to think of your children, why should we think of you now?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I committed a grave sin.”
He lifted his trembling, wrinkled hands, “These hands were supposed to protect, not harm, the blood I cannot wash away.”
Maria said nothing, knowing to the end of his days, her father would live with the burden of his sin. She rose to leave when a young woman walked over and spoke to her.
“Hi, I’m Suzanne. My father would like to speak to you.”
She pointed to an old man, sitting a little further away.
“Why?”
“He says he’s your father’s friend and he has something important to tell you.”
Maria nodded her consent to speak to him and the old man came over, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He seemed not to notice Maria’s father and said to her in a shaky voice, “You look so much like your mother, I’m sorry for the way she died. I’ve been living with that guilt for a long time.”
Maria looked at him puzzled, “Why is that?”
“It was my lies that put doubt in your father’s mind and when I saw you this morning, I knew the time had come to tell the truth. I never thought he would have killed her, she was innocent.”
Maria and Suzanne looked at the old man, shocked.
“You told such a lie on your best friend’s wife, how could you?” Suzanne asked.
“I don’t know, we were drinking buddies and we said some bad things about women without thinking, not knowing the pain and destruction it would cause.”
“Your lie destroyed a family and now my mother’s blood is on your hands too.” Maria said, visibly disturbed.
“You don’t know how sorry I am,” he said with regrets.
“Sorry,” Suzanne said, truly dismayed, “You mistreated my mother to the day she died and I still held you close as my father, now this.”
Maria looked at her father and said, her voice breaking a little, “I’m sorry that I can’t call you ‘father’. Good bye.”
The two daughters turned and walked away and their fathers watched them go, regrets too late for the wrongs they had done to the mothers.
They sat alone, two old men unwanted by their own children because of their sins, the thorn bush now withered, slowly dying, waiting for the devil’s angels.

Maureen Rampertab