The Porch Between Us

The moment the Sun disappeared beyond the horizon I took my usual place on the porch swing.

It was that day of the year again.

It became a little ritual to me to light a candle on this night. I placed it in an old mason jar that we used to store pickled cucumbers in, and left it on the smoking table in front of me.

As if it was some guiding light for my sister to find her way home. But she didn't. Now, sitting on that porch where we used to play, I regretted my decision of trying to run away that summer, and blamed myself for my sister's disappearance.

For a very long time, I didn't talk about her and how she vanished. I couldn't. I was locked up in a sanatorium when I tried. I became forgetful by this age, but the memory of that day haunts me vividly like it happened yesterday.

I packed my bag for a long walk home and slipped out, unaware my sister followed me into the forest. Our cousin, Marcel followed us, too threatening to get us into trouble.

We stepped into a mushroom circle that lit up as I wished him away— instead, I lost myself and my sister. I woke up in her body, and she wasn't there. Marcel didn't talk to us ever again.

Ruminating about all that, I can see why no one believed me. But not talking about it didn't make it untrue, nor did it bring my sister back.

My eyes filled with tears, and my eyelids grew heavy as I slowly swayed myself into hypnagogia*. A sweet escape from the pain of the heart — and mine was overcrowded with sorrow.

It probably helped that the air was balmy from the scent of rosemary that overgrew in the backyard. I just couldn't bother to trim them this year. All I cared for was to make sure I bake the brownies right on time.

At my age I have to be careful with my energy. I can't be running around this house as I used to when aunt Gabrielle ordered me with her commanding voice while we vacationed here as children.

Now, I own her house and I allowed it to be everything my aunt hated — messy, unorganized and worn off. My sister would love it. I did everything for her.

I even placed out the brownies for her, along with tin box I always carry with myself. They always had to be next to the guiding light of the candle.

Was it the sweet scent of the freshly baked brownies that mixed with the rosemary, weighing heavy like patchouli that called out the fireflies tonight?

It appeared as there were millions of them in my garden, dancing like fairy lights. Or was it an illusion I saw through the curtain of my lashes?

I swear something shifted in the corner of my vision, where the brugmansia flowered. I couldn't tell for sure. I heard a cracking noise, but couldn't even lift my head. I felt a strange, old sensation of being watched but it wasn't frightening.

Rather, it was a familiar sensation. I let my eyelids shut down for five seconds, but I didn't open them up after.

I woke up to my own snoring hours later — judging by the dark around me and how much the candle burned down. The fireflies disappeared already but I still felt like I wasn't alone.

I heard another crack from my left side this time. As I turned my head that way a tiny, cold hand landed on top of mine.

"Marie."

A familiar voice called my name.

A large luminescent circle appeared around me, like the one in the forest on that day.

When I last saw her.

And now, she was here, right in front of me.

She didn't age a single day. She looked exactly the same as I did when she vanished.

She smiled at me like we've only been apart for an afternoon. How does she recognize me in this body of an old hag, after so many decades?

Her presence felt so warm, so real. But I must have been still dreaming. She pressed my hand, like she was reading my mind and wanted to assure me that she is real.

"Marie," — she said again, tilting her head just the way she always used to — "you’ve been waiting a long time."

"I thought I’d never see you again!" — my eyes filled up with hot tears again. The words felt clumsy as I spoke them. I didn't know how to talk to my own little sister after so many years.

Looking at her though, I felt like I was talking to my own younger self. She looked just like me — a twelve years old little girl with her braids, in my beloved white shirt and my brown skirt with embroidered poodles jumping around on the edges. But it was her. It was my little sister, Elisabetta.

"I wasn't far." — she glanced at the gently glowing mushroom circle around us. — "I never stopped coming back, you just didn't see me."

I just became aware how deeply the grief of losing her has sedimented into my bones as it started to ease now.

"Why didn't you come back sooner? I was looking for you the whole time."

Her smile faltered.

"Because I couldn't come until you were ready to jump."

I tried to laugh, but it came out rusty and made me cough. “Ready? I’m seventy-seven, Elisabetta. I can’t even jump off from the last step of the porch stairs. Hear that?"

I stretched out my legs so she could hear my knees cracking, like the shells of walnuts under that small hammer we used to open them with.

She shook her head with wisdom that suggested that time passed over her as well. “It’s not about your knees. Marie. You know that.”

We sat in silence for a moment, staring into the candlelight trembling between us. I could smell the rosemary again, but beneath it something damp and loamy, as though the forest floor had spread beneath the porch.

“Do you remember the rhyme?” — she asked.

The words rose in my throat and got stuck with a burning, bitter sensation— the same old rhyme we chanted so many times that summer. I didn’t say it out loud.

Her eyes shone with mischief, or maybe longing. “If you say it, Marie, I can take you with me. But only once.”

I gripped her thin little fingers. There was a little scar on her hand, one I knew well. I got it when I climbed an apple tree. — "What if I go?"

“Then the summer never ends” — she said it with the childlike excitement of a seven-year-old.What she really was, at least for me.

"And if I don't?"

She allowed a soft smirk to climb on her face.

The circle brightened. The candle guttered in the jar and the brugmansia blossoms swayed, but I didn't feel the wind.

I looked down at my hands — wrinkly and knotty, covered with brown spots just like our grandmother's. But it wasn't my hand really; it was supposed to be Elisabetta's.

I didn't know what to say to her. I felt too old and weary for endless summers, yet all I wanted was to be with her again. She didn't have to tell me, I knew already what would happen if I would decide to stay.

She tilted her head again. “Then come just for the night. We’ll sit under the old weeping willow by the stream. We’ll eat the brownies and tell Aunt Gabrielle’s ghost to finally stop bossing around.”

That made me laugh — a real laugh, the kind I hadn’t had in decades. The kind that rolls the weight off of your chest. Or at least, part of it.

The unspoken rhyme was still burning against the back of my throat. I felt ancient and tired of life. I swore I'll never repeat it ever again. But if I just say it out loud one more time...

Elisabetta leaned closer, her eyes impossibly bright. She didn't say a word, but gave an encouraging nod.

The night seemed to hold its breath. The fireflies returned, swirling lazily above the mushroom circle.

I opened my mouth—

The words rose up, thick and clumsy at first, but then they tumbled out with the same rhythm they had all those years ago. My voice was rough, like autumn wind rustling through dry leaves.

As I spoke the last line, the fireflies swirled in a golden tide around us.

The porch door creaked behind me. I could hear bare feet padding across the old boards, then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Aunt Marie?” — my niece’s sleepy voice called.

I opened my eyes slightly. The candle had melted into a puddle of wax and dried into the mason jar hours ago. The brownies weere gone from the plate. The dawn was breaking on the horizon.

I turned my head towards Elisabetta.

A damp patch darkened the fabric on the swing's faded cushion, smelling faintly of moss and rain.

"You gonna catch a cold." — and wrapped a knit blanket around me.

I took a glance at the face of my niece, before my eyes drifted closed again. The scent of rosemary and damp moss folded over me, like a protective layer.

In that sudden warmness I thought I heard my sister laugh, calling me to follow.

I felt a pull tugging me gently forward, out the porch, past the garden, through the forest, into that place where summer never ends.

~~~

🕯️ NOTE:

*hypnagogia: the transition between wakefulness and sleep.

~~~

This story is related to two other stories I wrote (for two other challenges).

You can read the story of how Elisabetta disappeared here:

The Summer That Never Ended

and the children's rhyme:

Instruction For Disappearing