REVELATION
by Chaden Allen
“That is the last of it. I’m surprised you took it so well," Gabe says as he puts the last box away. It has been two weeks since my grandmother, Malaika, passed. I spent so much time with her that, even though I knew it was time, it was hard for me to let her go.
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“The love and memories that filled this house are now in my mind, heart, and this mountain of boxes.” Gabriel chuckles as he closes the door to the U-Haul. “Have you talked to Micheal today?”
“Yeah, he said he just picked up an older lady and is taking her home.”
“Whatcha gonna do with all this?” he asks, and I hesitate for a moment. I can’t think of a word to say or a sound to make. I am completely blank. As blank as the once picture frame-filled walls. As blank as the hardwood floors, which just a day ago, were covered with ancient rugs where each thread told a story. I think back to all the times I’d been with her. When she told me to stop running, and before she could finish, I had fallen and scraped myself up. The times she’d give me advice on girls—or hussies and floozies, as she would say. When I would leave for a party, she would never forget to say, “1+1=2, not 3, Eli,” while standing at the door. Granny always had a knack for jokes and metaphors, but she always said there was a message in everything she said and did.
When Granny first moved here, the land was flat. She often remarked how the highest point for miles was an ant hill in the backyard. As time went on, that changed. By the time my father, aunts, and uncles came along, Granny's house was on one of three hills.
Granny was a peculiar woman—or so I’d say. She had a garden out back that nothing or no one could touch, and a closet no one could go into. The house she lived in—and that I have so many fond memories of—is painted bright yellow, with a wrap-around porch and the ceiling painted haint blue. I remember wondering why she chose those colors, but I never bothered to ask. When I would go there, I’d get an almost overwhelming sense of peace that made me feel uneasy. It was like she was protecting me while leaving me exposed to some sort of test. I often asked her about why we couldn’t go in that closet or touch anything in the garden, and her response was always, “If it’s for you to know, it’ll be revealed to you.”
Those words would ring in my head when people came to her sick. She’d give them a medicine that only she knew how to make, and in a matter of a day, they’d be healed. “It’ll be revealed to you” would echo when a person beyond healing would come, and she’d send us to town to fetch something. When we came back, there would be a new bottle on the tree that sat in the front yard next to the willow tree. Every time I saw this, a part of me would feel something I couldn’t explain but her words would always linger: “It’ll be revealed to you.”
“Wanna take one last walk-through?” Gabriel asks.
“I’ll oblige,” I say, holding back tears. “It doesn’t feel the same since she’s left, Gabe.”
“Az made sure she went peacefully.” That sent a shiver down my spine. Azreal was my Aunt Mary’s only child. He didn’t play with us as when we were young, and he always was quiet and preferred to be alone. However, Granny always said that no matter what, Az would be the only person to see her go.
It was then I started to realize what that uneasy feeling was. Now, I understood why she had that garden, and the closet, and why the house was painted the colors it was. I walked through the house for what I thought would be one last time, and all of my grandma's knowledge and practices were revealed to me.
As I walked out of the door, I felt a cool breeze follow behind me. The chill of that breeze settled into my bones. It felt strange because there was always a warmth that filled this house despite the season. That breeze led me to an empty, solitary glass bottle left on the banister that I hadn’t noticed before. I knew what to do. I took the bottle and put it on a branch on that little tree in the front yard. I felt a true peace wash over me. Things I had never known registered within every fiber of me.
Micheal texted me and let me know he had dropped the lady off at home. Though a simple remark, I understood what that meant, just as Granny would. I left that house knowing I was coming back to continue the legacy Malaika started. That yellow and haint blue house that now stood on the highest of seven hills served as the beacon of my existence—a place of everything good that exists. A place that only those connected by a special sense can truly understand the meaning of.
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Chaden R. Allen is an upcoming sophomore majoring in AgriBusiness. His favorite things to do are cook and anything aviation related. He feels that his best writing happens the day before a deadline.