Family Short Story – Lake of Worries
Photo credit: Nevit Dilmen
The lake, vast and superior to any beauty she had ever admired reflected the white celestial clouds with its gleaming green water. The water was placid, the wind a tranquil breeze. The orange sun was gradually sinking under the trees surrounding the lake. Like any other day, she peacefully sat at the end of the boat dock. Her petite seventeen-year old feet slightly touched the warm water. She enjoyed the blissful solitude. It was all the same but this day was obviously different. There was a closed notebook in her lap. She clenched a blue pen tightly in her left hand resting on top of the notebook. Her vision was beginning to blur with tears. A cry was jammed in her throat. She wanted to weep loud enough to dissipate her gloom. But she did not. She instead opened her notebook abruptly and began to write.
I feel so sad at this moment. It’s like everything I ever lived for just died. I can’t help but think of how painful this miserable sadness is. Even now my sister torments me.
My sister, how I sure hated my sister. I guess it was not all that bad since the beginning. I remember my sister and I always got along. We were as close as conjoined twins. She would always ventilate her worries, her stories of her days and I would attentively listen. She was, after all, two years older than me. I was a great part of her childhood and she was a great part of mine. I think my childhood would have been terrible without her.
Then she became more distant at the age of 16. She would have conversations with me of no significance. I would sometimes try to make her ventilate her worries and her stories as she used to but it was all in vain. I remember one soundless summer night that she had sneaked out of our house to go with some boy. She only told me she was leaving for a few hours. I remember I was so appalled by her actions. I was lying on my bed watching her climb down the window with great apprehension. I stayed awake for perhaps half an hour and then a mysterious exhaustion subdued me into slumber.
I woke up seven hours later to the noise of my sister silently crying on her bed. I could see from the window that the darkness of the night was slowly shrinking back to wherever darkness comes from. I stood up and jumped on to her bed asking her what was wrong. She didn’t speak a word. I went back to my bed scared of her mysterious crying. I felt like I wanted to go call mother but then I thought my sister would have never forgave me if I would let mother find out she was sneaking out of the house. So I remained silent. Silent and petrified. I had never heard her cry with such emotion. An emotion that would penetrate even the strongest mental barrier and depress you. She sobbed and sobbed. Then abruptly it was all silent again. I looked at her in the darkness. She was staring at the wall with angry eyes that slightly lighted the room. She then punched the wall strongly enough to hurt her hand and tried to fall asleep. I noticed that part of her shirt was ripped. That night gave birth to something that was not my sister at all.
The next day she threw the clothes she had worn the day before to the trash with a solemn look on her face. That face stuck to her all summer like a permanent mask. It wasn’t until school started that she absorbed a fantastic glow on her personality. She had worked hard at her job all summer and gathered enough money to change her entire wardrobe. She replaced her athletic shoes and distasteful clothing with beautiful heels and casual elegant dresses.
Her change in personality and appearance attracted many people in school, especially boys. Everyone tried to talk to her but here lack of interest is what repelled them away. There was one thing that remained from that night in summer to the opening of school and it was that I never saw her smile. She smiled rarely and even in those rare moments her true smile never appeared. I had grown up with her genuine smile. That smile was trapped beneath that permanent mask of hatred.
I felt too scared to ask her if I had done anything wrong because I did not know her anymore. With that mask she was unrecognizable. But one day I gathered enough temerity to ask her. She just stared at me with such coldness that made me sweat. “Just shut up.” That is what she said. It was at that moment that I no longer felt concerned for the reason of her madness but I instead grew angry of her behavior. I told her I didn’t give a damn any more if she was angry at me or not. She slapped me so hard that she slapped the fragment of sympathy I had for her. I avoided her every day after that.
She was just not my sister. It wasn’t just me who she didn’t want to talk to; it was everyone who surrounded her. She had no friends but everyone envied her beauty. I didn’t envy her but I hated her silence. My pride told me to never attempt to talk to her again and that’s exactly what I did. Those months stacked and formed a year and in one of those days I noticed something that terrified me. I saw my sister’s face and I failed to recognize if she still had that mask of hatred. I couldn’t tell anymore if anything lay under it because there was NOTHING under it. That had become her face. There was no longer any hope that she would someday morph back to normal and expose her true face again, the one I loved. Her true face now had eyes that lacked vision to recognize happiness. Her smile was just a pair of lips curving and nothing else.
And then the hatred I felt for her melted into sympathy weeks after. She was diagnosed with cancer. She had a tumor on her brain. That completely disarmed my mother and me but my sister, she was as composed as ever. The doctor suggested chemo therapy but my sister declined. She convinced my mother with that cold look of hers. The week after she was diagnosed I threw my pride away and told her I was sorry for not talking to her and she said, “Go murder yourself you pathetic little bi*ch.”
I flinched and the cuts of her words made me cry.
“You’re the one who is crying and I have this damn disease! Look at you. If you were in my shoes right now you would die this very instant! GO AWAY!”
Those words and the corroding tone they were soaked in where the push that finally made my love depart just like someone pushing a skiff off shore and into the sea, watching it depart gradually but surely into the ocean. After that I told her I meant her no harm and just the opposite but she grabbed a glass of water that was nearby and threw it towards me. If I hadn’t ducked in time my eyes would not have been the feature on my face that stands out; scars would have replaced them. I was really scared of her. I froze in bewilderment. My mother entered the room where the incident had transpired and she just stared at my sister, then at the broken glass and she began to weep.
I left the house that day to the place where I am writing this now and terrible thoughts took hold of my mind. I felt some sort of pleasure knowing that my sister was slowly being devoured by that awful disease. That thought was dispelled as sudden as it came.
My sister’s final days are recalled with terror. She began to hallucinate as the doctor said she would. She had also obtained a blurry vision. The disease imprisoned her to her bed. Her appearance terrified me. Her body was dead thin and dead pale. Her lustrous hair rested on her pillow lifeless. Her eyes were outlined with exhaustion. I remember my mother would always feed her and I sensed her fear and melancholy when she entered my sister’s room. In the middle of the night my sister would scream in terror. We would rush to her room and she would claim exhaustedly that there was a shadow of a man trying to get hold of her. We would calm her and she would go back to sleep not remembering at all what had happened.
My sister died in her sleep. My mother found her body doused in the morning rays of sunshine that entered through the window. “She looked so peaceful,” my mother had said in sobs. I felt like her death was her last punishment for the people that loved her. That punishment encouraged my mother’s suicide.
Almost a month has passed and here I am still feeling guilty for my sister’s deadly transformation. I feel like something had bothered her. But she was just so reserved that I will never know. Why did she have to behave in that manner? Why did she hate everyone? Why did she hate me?
Maybe someone from the orphanage I stay in will find this notebook. Whoever it is, I want you to know that my mind has been written into these pages. I will now live in these pages. Please take care of them. I guess now you know the story behind the girl who weeps every day in your job. Sorry I didn’t talk to you.
I can’t. I try but I can’t
I don’t know how to swim. I have decided to jump into the lake. I wonder if by some miracle I will instantly learn how to swim and be saved.
I can’t say I don’t miss my sister and I miss my mother so much. Perhaps the both of us could have withstood this.
I can’t. I try but I can’t.
She placed her notebook cautiously to the side. She threw her pen to the lake and all her aspirations along with it. She then stood and gazed at her green reflection on the water. The lake was silent anticipating her decision. The water appeared precipitous to her eyes. Her being contained no quantity of fear but only an immense weight of melancholy. She dived into the water and felt every individual pore of her body touched by the lake. The lake, placid and beautiful, consumed her yet liberated her soul.
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