The Red Tale

When it started, I did not realize my life had been altered.

Not until it turned from brown to red. I looked up and it got loud; it begged for attention. My sister stood outside the house, beneath the sky. She could see it too. 

In the darkness of night with clouds against my skin, she’d passed her stories to me and I’d listened. 

I laughed, questioned and feared all she’d experienced. As though we sat before a campfire, these were her scary stories, the ones that formed nightmares.“We might see the rain together,” she said. Just because of all our hours together? I struggled to believe in such a fate. 

Yet, here we were.

 Thunder struck and its energy travelled through me; an imprecise pain that spread from my head to my back, to my tummy. I gripped the window railing and observed my sister.

As the red rain poured from the sky, she spun around the drops that wished to touch her. It was a strange rain: in addition to the noise it made, the pain it caused, and how it seeped through all materials, each drop took its time falling, providing just enough time—a hope, a confidence, that with enough practice, it would not stain your clothes for all to see. It was bold, with seemingly one goal: to make its presence known. It needed to touch me to do this. It fell with a belief that it could ruin me. I believed it. For that, it was the antagonist in my nightmare. 

Still, on this day, I was glad my first time was with someone of 3 years more experience. However, my sister did not hold my hand to teach me this dance of hers. So, I watched. I watched and told myself that she was teaching me. She cared about me. Why else would she glance at me from behind the white pillars of our home? Unfortunately, as she slipped past each drop, I struggled to mimic her. My head was heavy with concern. The weight of my fear made me stumble with each turn. 

Maybe, If I just stayed home, everything would be fine.

But I did not. At school, there was a boy. This boy, with his freshly shaved and rounded rectangular head, was my seatmate. He was my friend. He slid before my narrowed eyeline and asked if I was, ‘OK’. I hesitated. Would it be okay to tell him? He could not see the rain. I hoped he could not smell its ickiness either. Only I could smell it. Only I knew of it. Would he even believe me? Since these feelings I was feeling were oh so very…internal; they were mine alone. Still, I answered; I was not okay. He offered me a sweet and I thanked him. There was not much else he could have done.

On the second day, there was a girl. She resembled my sister but she was not. She was my age and the red rain had touched her. It marked her like a forgotten pen that burst into a skirt pocket. Had no one taught her the dance? Or had she forgotten it? Pitying her fate, I tapped her shoulder, held her hand, and guided her through the dance my sister had given me. 

Soon enough, I was used to the soft red showers that filled my day. I understood the heavy humidity that shifted across my skin. I understood the noise the rain created, all its swells, pulses and moments, of nothing. I understood when to turn left and right and to stand still and straight, or to arch myself ever so slightly, like a discreetly calligraphed, ‘c’.

But, it turns out, I did not understand. Maybe I never will.

On the sixth day, when I was halfway up the narrow secluded stairway that led to two things; kids running around and my sister, I hoped. I hoped one of them would be kind and brave and sweet enough to whisper to me that I had somehow become like the girl who looked like my sister but was not. I sensed very vaguely yet confidently, that somehow, through another alteration of my identity, I had become that girl. I had falsely experienced these sensations before. So, in a sense, I also hoped that no one would speak to me. 

A boy approached from below. 

I whipped around to his freshly shaved and rounded rectangular head. I did not know him. “There’s something on your dress,” he said. I thanked him and raced home. 

From within the house, my sister watched me dance my way through the rain towards her. My hands hit the window separating us and I screamed in a way I never had before: I did everything right! I knew the dance! I did not forget it! I acted oblivious to the red rain that thundered around me. I kept my back to the wall, just in case a drop came too close to me. So why had this happened? Why? When I did it all so correctly!

My little body swelled with my rage but there was a sadness too. A sadness that seemed larger than it needed to be. It confused my tears and ached from within my flat chest. In the middle of my enraged spiel, my eyes fluttered open and I shifted in bed, a weird fear pounding through my heart alongside the rain that hit my window. I jerked for my night light and whipped my blanket off. The blanket, a thick white, duvet now moist with sweat from our overly heated bedroom, whipped itself around my legs. I kicked it off with a fiery speed. I checked the bed. Nothing. Nothing yet. 

Maybe, nothing ever. 

My sister lay in the bed opposite mine. I glared. Were the stories and warnings she’d shared truly meant to prepare me? Or had she simply intended to frighten me? Her eyes tore themselves open in the now-lit room and, seeing me, she grinned, turned, breathed, and returned to her peaceful dreams.