Snow Angel

“I’ve always hated the snow.”

I glanced up from the floor where I sat cross-legged, leaning against the couch and mindlessly drowning marshmallows in my hot cocoa with a teaspoon. “What did you say, Grammie?” 

She didn’t reply, and I followed her gaze to the window on her left where pillowy snowflakes gently pelleted the cold glass. I sighed softly, my eyes trailing back over to my grandmother, who seemed lost in a faraway place. Delicate tendrils of gray framed a petite, sweet face etched with wise wrinkles and laugh lines that told of a long life full of joy and precious moments. Her gnarled hands clutched loosely at a patch of crocheted baby blue yarn, thick needles hanging by their threads and cast carelessly to the side. “Grammie, are you okay?” I ventured, stirring in my comfortable spot across from the flickering fireplace. 

“Oh, don’t get up on my account, child,” she assured me, a kind smile lighting up her face before her gaze drifted back to the window. I frowned and hesitantly settled back against the couch, cozying up to the warm mug in my hands and peeking above its rim at the woman I loved more than anyone else in the world ever since I could remember. She was the one who’d raised me, not my parents, God knew where they were. She was the one who’d loved me.

“So, why’d you say you hate snow?” I pried, attempting to make conversation. 

Grammie chuckled. “Ah, so you did hear what I said.” 

I bit my lip and smiled to myself. “I just thought it was a little strange. I mean, you always seemed to enjoy winter. More than some others might,” I added with a short laugh, referring to myself.

“Well,” Grammie began, and I drew my legs up to my chest in anticipation, “I suppose when I was a child, I hated it because it was so…cold. In every sense of the word. Unforgiving, in a way. But now…”

“But now what, Grammie?” I prodded anxiously, my curiosity piqued. There was so much my grandmother had never told me about her past…her life and experience. She’d been so invested in carefully crafting mine that perhaps she simply had no time to dwell on her own.

“But now I hate it because it holds too many a painful reminder…of how time evades our grasp.”

 Her voice, almost a whisper, barely reached my ears. I carefully studied her face, but it told no tales. I glanced away in disappointment. She wasn’t going to say anything. She usually never did. She would begin to allude to some mysterious element of her past, then break off and relive it all in her head. That was it. She was withering away in her nostalgia. She was –

“She had the palest of skin, like the snow of a glittering January morning. I called her my snow angel. It was so strange…for her hair was blacker than a raven’s feathers. And those eyes, so emerald green, so piercing yet so very…gentle.”

I sat up a little straighter, my spine stiffening as I realized my grandmother had begun to weave one of her suppressed stories, the stories I had so often longed to hear leave her lips. I pressed my own together and hardly dared to breathe, lest I shatter my grandmother’s reverie and end the anecdote altogether.

“She made quite an impression, Aurelia did. Everyone loved her from the moment they met her. And yet she was so thin and delicate, the poor thing. I never knew until later that her father beat her.

“One day after school, after months of watching her from afar, I finally worked up the courage to ask her if I could walk her home. You can imagine my surprise and disappointment when she immediately responded, ‘No, thank you.’ I was trudging away, silly little thing that I was, when she spoke again. ‘But I’m…not going home after school. I-I’m going to visit my secret hideout. Would you care to join?’ Oh, did I ever! And join I did. I never understood why, but she took me to her little hideout, where she’d never taken anyone before. It was a lovely little spot, a grove of willows surrounding a pond up on a hill outside of town. The water was clear and sparkled more beautifully than any diamond or jewel. We escaped to our little spot many a midsummer’s afternoon, perched upon the lookout rock with our small feet dangling in the crystal water, where we would talk about those things young girls liked to chatter about and count the sunset-colored fish that dashed about in the water below. It was our safe place, our home when we couldn’t bear to be home.

“It was a frosty morning late autumn before school in our hideout when I spotted the purple bruise staining her forearm. It was after she’d taken off her shawl and draped it over my shoulders because I was cold. That was Aurelia. Always thinking of others. When I asked her about it, she shrugged off the topic. That was when I knew there was something wrong. I asked her again, and she said, “Stop it, Goldie. It’s nothing - I’m just clumsy is all.” But I knew she was lying, and I couldn’t help the tears slipping down my icy cheeks. How could someone hurt a creature so beautiful and gentle as Aurelia? When she saw me crying, she yelled at me and told me I was being a baby. Then she marched down the hill and walked to school, without a shawl…and without me.

“I couldn’t bear the way she wouldn’t even meet my gaze for the entire day at school, but she left before I could speak to her that day. So the next morning, when she didn’t show up to school, I knew I had to find out if she was alright. I found her address and walked right up to her front door, which immediately flew open to reveal a big man with a beard and a bottle of beer in his hand. Mind you, I was terribly frightened. He opened his mouth and in a booming, displeased voice asked, ‘What the hell do you want, kid?’ 

“I regret what I did next to this very day. I backed right off those steps and away from the house. ‘N-nothing, sir.’ That was all I could manage to say. But before I turned and ran, I caught a glimpse of a pair of tear-filled eyes peering out at me through the window from behind thick curtains. Just for a moment…and then they were gone….

“I cried for the rest of the week. I couldn’t bring myself to eat or to go to school. I just couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt someone so delicate and lovely like Aurelia. I was too afraid to tell my mother or father. When I saw her for the first time after the incident, I held her close and refused to let her go. She buried her face in my hair and entwined her fingers in mine. We never spoke of it again, but the burden always lingered heavily between us.

It was one especially bitter winter evening as we watched the sun set over the silhouette of our miserable little town when my snow angel turned to me, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘I never want to forget you, Goldie,’ she sighed with a shiver of her thin shoulders. She’d lost weight over the past few weeks, I noticed, and dark circles rimmed her lively green eyes. The sparkle in her eyes, however, shone bright as ever that night through the glassy tears gathering on her lids. I laughed at her, of course. ‘Don’t be silly, Snow. We’ll always be together. Forever, even.’ And I reached over to pull her into a hug, but she resisted.

“I remember beginning to ask her if everything was alright, but she leaned over and cradled my face in her gentle hands, causing me to stop in my tracks. I felt…how do you young people say it these days? Butterflies…in the pit of my stomach…as I gazed into her soulful emerald eyes. It was that moment I knew that I would do anything in the world for her. That I…loved her. But it wasn’t just the love of two young girls who shared a deep friendship. I knew I felt something more, but my heart was confused.”

I gazed in shock at my grandmother, who had never so much as mentioned any love interests of hers to me. For God’s sake, I’d never even met my grandfather. Yet here she was, young and eager Goldie again, with a flush in her cheeks and a glimmer of sadness in her eyes as she reminisced out loud.

“And she gazed into my eyes and whispered, ever so softly, just for my ears and the willows and the snow and the squirrels and the delicate winter breeze to hear: ‘I love you, Goldie.’ And she placed her pretty pink lips on mine and captured my mouth in a kiss. 

“We shared many sweet kisses that night, warming the icy evening with our newly discovered love. We watched the sunset, my head resting on her shoulder and her hand between my thighs. And we walked down the hill hand in hand as the sun peeked above the horizon to greet the morning, going in our separate ways once we reached the bottom after one last goodbye kiss. But it was the last time I was to see Aurelia.

I found out two days later that tuberculosis had claimed the life of my precious snow angel. I hadn’t the faintest idea that she’d been ill. To me she had been so strong…so vibrant. But her illness and the abuse of her horrible, horrible father…had proven too much. I cried for weeks following her death and knew that I could never love a man. Not the way that I had loved her. Not the way I still do…”

Grammie’s breath caught in her throat, and a single tear slipped down her cheek, clinging to her wrinkled chin for a moment before cascading onto her lap. I became aware of the tears streaming down my own cheeks and set my mug down beside me, overcome with empathetic grief. My Grammie truly had a heart of gold.

I slowly rose to my feet and crossed the room, kneeling beside my grandmother’s chair, my arms wrapped about her and my tearstained face resting on her arm. “Grammie, surely you don’t think it’s your fault,” I whispered. One small gnarled hand grasped at mine while the other stroked gently at my hair. “There was not much I could have done as a child,” she murmured regretfully. “But oh, how I wish I could relive those precious moments.”

I let out a shaky sigh and closed my eyes, soaking up the warmth of the fire and of my grandmother’s presence near me. These were precious moments that I would soon yearn to relive myself. No care in the world could draw me away from my grandmother’s side that soft winter’s evening. Time seemed to simply stand still as the world slipped silently away, until it was just us.