When I was a child, you never looked to someone’s face when you wanted to know how they were feeling, you looked to their hands. A face can hide a million secrets, can tell a thousand lies. A face is nothing but a mask, interchangeable and only semi-permanent. But the hands, now that’s different. You never think to mind your hands when you’re having an important chat with your boss, when you’re coming up with an excuse, when you’re make-believing to a loved one. People always worry about their faces, their eyebrows, and “Do I look sad enough?” Or, “I hope they can’t tell how I really feel inside.” Meanwhile, wringing hands and chipped fingernails tell all.
I can see the impatience exploding out of his fingertips as he taps them furiously on the linoleum, just like I can sense his anger emanating from his pale-white knuckles. Looking to the side, I can see her laying there, cold and almost lost. Breathing shallow, I can only barely sense her; will she be gone soon? What, I wonder, will her fingers say then? Her fingers, always so delicate and loving, always the faintest, softest touch, now pale and clammy and holding on for dear life. Her heart, her mind, her body, everything is on the brink. When she tips, when her life has ebbed away and her spirit has dwindled, only Death will hold her.
I overheard them saying that the bullet had passed through, leaving nothing but two holes, two perfect circles. Two wounds yields a lot of blood. But it’s out, right? That means she’s okay, it’s gone, it’s over. That horrible moment has passed, and she is still alive. Doesn’t that mean something? You know, moments can stretch forever. The worse they are, the longer they last.
It doesn’t seem fair that when something bad happens, I am always to blame. Of course, it is no fault of mine that she was shot. It was not my gun, not my hand on the trigger. She was not my responsibility, and none of this is even my business. If she had been watching his hands, she would’ve seen that there was more than a metal flask in that pocket, more than a deviant grin on his face. If she had known the signs, if I had taught her what to look for, we could have been there sooner. As it is, we only heard her call in harmony with the shot, their voices ringing off the broken sidewalks and rusty dumpsters, ricocheting off of one another to float up into the ink black sky.
How did we end up here? No, really, where are we? This unfamiliar place frightens me, with its dark walls and dank smell. Something scurries out of a hole in the corner, stopping only to sniff the metallic air. Rats terrify me; it’s all I can do not to scream. I’ve always been told that I’m too timid, too afraid. Not mature enough to handle the real thing. If this is the real thing, I want to go back to pretending, making shadow puppets with my hands when the world got dark outside. Anything would be better than this, this waiting. I’m not even supposed to be here-I’m too young, too inexperienced, too scared. They called me in for “observation,” because apparently no one else on the team knows how to watch people-not like I do.
I can’t sit still any longer. I sit on my hands to keep them from fiddling. He hates it when I fiddle. He’s stressed enough; I shouldn’t worry him. I should show him that I’m not immature, I can handle anything that comes my way. I want to make him proud. Still, I can’t silence my quivering fingers or my racing thoughts. I better go “observe” somewhere else.
Outside, the sky is darker than I imagined. So deep blue it looks black, so deep black it looks purple. How many colors can the earth be at one time? Mother nature has no hands to tell us how she’s feeling; she uses the sky instead. We have come to learn what she means when she peppers us with rain, only slight tears, or when she bombards us with the fiercest of snowstorms. That calm red glow of the early morning, the frightening black of a stormy night. Now, it is wonderfully calm. The breeze whispers around some far-off trees, daring me to follow. Oh, how I wish I could, but I must stay here. Although I can’t say I am needed, I know I am noticed at least. And besides, my curiosity gets the best of me. What would I miss if I disappeared to go revel with the wind? How much further would she slide out of consciousness?
Now I am worried that I have jinxed some kind of cosmic oracle. If I ponder what might happen, will it be so? When will it happen? How long will we wait for something to happen? Do we even know what it is that we’re waiting for?
The door creaks as I open it, shedding a faint light on the pavement where I’m standing. I see him in there, leaning over her, his body undulating as though he were slowly sobbing. I can hear her, too; it’s as if they are synchronized in their discord. His hand rests on her upper thigh, pale pink and goose-pimpled. On the other, his fingers dance in and out of her, unveiling a menagerie of broken sighs. Her face is twisted with pain, but her short gasps are punctuated with high-frequency sexual craving. She wants this, too.
That’s when I realize, at a time like this, only one thing matters, and it has nothing to do with faces or hands. I can see both, and I know what they’re saying. It has nothing to do with living and dying or what will happen tomorrow. It has nothing to do with sex or gunshots and bullet wounds. It is something much bigger, much broader, and much more simple. Something that the wind can only hope to carry on through the trees, something that has eluded Death’s cold embrace for eternity, something that will never die.