Regularity of the Rain
The rain falls from the sky like jewels. It hits the ground with splatters and scatters light from the sleepy sun that barely blinks over the horizon. The horizon is hidden by a skyline of busy people stuffed into little apartments and suits, stuffed into jobs with little desks and little pay, stuffed into debt, stuffed into their own heads.
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Miles away from the city, a girl sits on a blue cushion and listens to the sound of breaking beads across the paved driveway. The driveway sits straight in the receding storm, driving an arrow through the green front lawn to the main street. She watches the rain shatter over the tips of the white picket fence, fat droplets impaled on wooden stakes.
It’s a Saturday – a day for sweeping responsibilities under the sofa until they must be chased out along with the dust bunnies on Sunday. She’s supposed to be somewhere with people who mean well but aren’t quite welcoming. She wishes that she had told her father she wanted to go anyway. She wishes that she had gone chasing after him in the rain, flagged their car down, and forced herself upon them, soaking wet and stuffed with stubborn pride.
In the end, she did not. She is sick, after all, and feels very tired.
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The house is an empty echo behind her. That morning, she wandered around the second floor for hours like a ghost. She felt like she had when, as a child, her parents went to bed and she crept around aimlessly in the dark.
In the kitchen is a disposable thermometer in the trash can, frozen at a perfect temperature. Up the stairs, in the third bedroom from the television, is a desk. The desk is crowded with white pills in a full bottle with a scribbled smiley face, and stiff scrunchies, and black eyeliner, and in the middle of it all, a screen lit with messages. It is lit with words that were never spoken out loud and do not exist if she does not check. If she stays out here with her head tilted to her shoulder, sitting like a queen without a kingdom on that worn-out, bug-filled cushion.
She should tell them. She will, soon.
Her hands explore each other in her lap. They feel over the dry patches that came from too much washing and pick at the top of every nail, flipping the dead skin to-and-fro mechanically. The girl tugs at her pants, messes with the string and runs her fingers over her soft stomach. Her fingertips are cold from the air as it breaks more glass beads and releases a quiet chill.
A yellow bucket sits on the driveway, forgotten from an afternoon of play. She watches as it fills with water. She does not see the bugs that linger near the surface, curious at the bright color.
The phone buzzes like a bee-hive on the cusp of summer, only it lights the room up with sickly silver lighting instead of a golden glow. Don’t look, the broken raindrops sing as they sink into the green grass. Just don’t look. They don’t want her there. She’ll just say all the wrong things. Somehow, they all know the beat to march to and the key to sing in. She is only in tune when she is alone. The seat creaks as she rocks herself back and forth to the rain’s rhythm.
Her phone convulses and shakes the bottle of little white pills. They click-clack with the rain, which slows to the beat of her heart. Part of her is in those apps, hundreds of thousands of millions of moments and memory stored in the cool rectangle that grows hotter with unread messages. Polaroids and aluminum hearts are crushed into a clear phone case. The smell of a hospital is rubbed onto the screen. A charm tied around the case, dangling like a hanging man over the edge of the nightstand.
Out on the porch, her arm feels empty without its cool weight in her hand. Her hand itches for its comfort. It picks at the blanket until she grows sick of the feeling of unwinding thread. She rises on shivering legs and lets the fabric fall.
If she closes her eyes, she cannot see their hands reaching out to her through the screen. She will not hear their words of comfort, of it’s going to be ok, and I understand. She will not have to send laughing-out-loud’s and empty okays that she does not mean. They’re so nice. They’re so nice, and she hates it. They cannot waste their worries on her. Worries are like bread. Everyone needs them, or else they starve, but too many make you feel fat and full on worry.
They’ve got their own feast of bread without her adding a basket.
She walks on flip-flopped feet across the porch. The wooden planks creak under the weights of unshed tears. Stumbling into the rain is easy.
It is better if she stays out here, where they cannot see or hear her tears begin to fall. They would comfort her. They would run into the rain to catch her as she falls into pieces. It is a scary, beautiful thought, to know that she is loved. To know that there are people who would care if she let the rain fill her up like a glass soda bottle. To know that there are flowers that would lay upon her still hands or steady them when they begin to shake.
The rain is still falling. Breaking. Soft, round droplets on the driveway and fence and into the yellow bucket. Ghost droplets on her flushed cheeks. Wet droplets from her eyes.
Here’s a secret: the bugs can get away. Those bugs on the surface of the bucket? They choose to stay. They choose to be around other bugs that want to stay. They can’t survive if they stay there, because the rain is coming down, and they’re going to drown. Maybe they think it’s better there.
Maybe it’s easier to stay. Maybe they really think that the rain will let up soon and the clouds will be white and have a scribbled smiley face drawn all over them, and they will be okay. Maybe they are waiting for a dawn that isn’t coming because it’s hidden behind a stuffed city skyline. And maybe heaven isn’t done dropping jewelry down on the pavement and picket-fence. And maybe she can’t get better if she stays like this.
Maybe she knows. And maybe that’s what scares her.
She turns back to the porch and watches the rain drip a halo around the house. In her room, her phone is still buzzing with people who want to point at the end of the clouds and tell her, look! The rain will stop soon. The trash can in the kitchen has proof that she is not sick.
But after she stumbles back up the steps and across the porch, her feet stop in front of the door. Isn’t it better if she chooses to stay? No one can kick her out if she chooses to stay. She cannot be a fading ghost in her own home if she chooses to stay here, where the porch is warm and the cushion is comfortable.
She’s got things to change. But not today. They can’t change today, because she wants to stay, because it’s raining, because she’s sick, because it’s cold.
Excuses. Explanations. They can be both. In the end, it doesn’t matter. She’s staying. She’s drowning.
The girl keeps her eyes closed and listens to the rain fall in rhythm with the buzzing of the phone. On the driveway, the yellow bucket fills with broken raindrops and drowning bugs.