The Rainchild

TW: LOSS OF CHILD

Sitting on my living room floor, at the coffee table, I looked at my typewriter. I was waiting for the moment that I could put another chapter into my story. I looked out the window. The deep grey clouds loomed in the distance, dark and menacing for most, but extremely welcome to me. Because I knew what those clouds meant. The clouds meant something that would release the grieving pressure off my chest, something that would allow me to live correctly once more, even if only for a short time.

I knew that the clouds were my escape. As was the thing that came with them, but we will get to that later.

I stared at my typewriter once more. I figured it would still be a while before the clouds arrived, so I got my stiff body to stand up and shuffle to the kitchen. I grabbed the coffee pot in my hand. Cold coffee was better than no coffee. I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot, and then sat at the dining room table, contemplating. Everyone in this world had one special event. Whether it only happens once, or whether it can happen an infinite amount of times like mine. My friend Sarah has one where she can get 50 dollars, every day, for the rest of her life. And it’s not really given to her by anyone. It just, shows up in her wallet.

Thank the Lord for mine.

About 8 years ago, I lost my only child. Her name was Andee. She was 5 years old when I lost her. Thinking about her crushes my very existence, but I do it often. Andee went outside to play one day. She went out to play with some friends of hers, who belonged to the neighbors. I went to the restroom, and next thing I know, I was walking out of the bathroom and I heard her scream. The sound of your child’s scream is not a sound that you will ever forget, especially not when what caused them to scream also ultimately caused her death.

After I heard her scream I heard a dull thud, and I knew something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. I ran out to my front lawn and out to the road where her little crumpled body lay motionless in the street. A van had hit her. One of my neighbors - a very irresponsible neighbor who always went a little too fast for anyone’s liking - had not been watching where he was going, and he had hit my girl. “ANDEE! OH GOD, ANDEE NO!” My screams of her name echoed throughout the neighborhood that day. I sued the man, but money was not something that made me happy. I sued him purely because he deserved the consequences that ensued for his actions. 

I screamed and screamed at him that day, and I think for once my anger actually got through to his head, but the cost of his understanding was no less than my own daughter’s life.

No one in this neighborhood visits me much anymore. Not since a few weeks after the accident. After I had told anyone off who came to my door, people stopped visiting, and they stopped apologizing. I drew into my dark house, shutting out all of the light, no TV, nothing that would remind me of my daughter. I became a recluse. But with the rain comes my salvation.

See, when the rain arrives, I go to my backyard, and I wait. Because when it rains, a person shows up in my yard. My daughter, in all of her 5 year old glory, appears when it rains. She is made up by the rain, so she can’t go inside buildings. But I don’t mind so long as I can be with her. When it rains, she is as alive as if she had never died in the first place.

The way I figured out what my gift was, was one day, I was in my room rocking myself back and forth on my bed, I heard knocking on my back door. We don’t have a porch cover in the backyard, which explains how she got to the door. Anyhow, I heard knocking on the door, and her voice yelling, “Mommy! Mommy, come outside! Momma!” I had got up out of my bed so fast I nearly fainted, but I didn’t care. I had run to the door and whipped it open. And there she was. My beautiful little angel girl. And, I’ve learned, she knows she is dead. It seems my gift is to be able to communicate with my dead daughter’s spirit, and hold her in my arms, and hold hands with her. I can hold her - and get wet in the process, but that doesn’t matter - and take her places as long as they are not inside buildings.

As I’ve said before, she is made up continuously by the rain, and if she goes inside she melts away. And it’s not like she is clear, like water, because she isn’t. She looks like a physical, real human being, but if you touch her skin or clothes you get wet. So yes, she has color. I knew at this point that those rain clouds must be close by now, so I went to my back door and waited for the knock that came with each rain. I stood there for five minutes, anticipating the little sound of her dainty finger knocking on the wooden door, and my heart started beating faster when the sound finally came.

I whipped open the door and she immediately jumped into my arms. “Mommy! Hi Mommy!” I was careful to step outside so she wouldn’t melt away in my arms. Every time I see her I cry for a couple of minutes. This is nothing new to her, so she sat patiently playing with my hair while my tears streamed down my face, merging in with the rain dripping down my head. “Oh Andee, I love you so much, honey.”

When at last, hours later, the rain stopped, I watched her melt away, and I went back inside. I sat down at my coffee table, not bothering to dry off my hair or clothes. I began typing, a habit by now, at the end of each of her visits. And so the wait began again, for the rain to come. The wait began once more to see my lovely rainchild.