Premonition Sarah

“I’m telling you; it’s gonna happen.”

“Oh hush up Sarah, taint nothing but a silly twinge.”

“Oh sure, Uncle Sedley could be drunk as a skunk, and you would still believe him if his hip started aching.”

Sarah’s father ignored her last comment and continued watching his football game, grunting when the resolution started to waver in hazy gray. Pouting, Sarah stuffed her hands into the pockets of her overalls and limped out of the house and into the yard. Her dog, Bone, came bounding over to her for some ear scratches before wandering off to sniff the fence line.

“Ah Bone, he never believes me. Just ‘cuz I’m twelve and I don’t know anything according to him.” Sarah sat down and started plucking at the dry grass. “I wish mom was here, she’d believe me.” She sat in the yard for a few minutes watching Bone snuffle around the old boxelder maple tree. It took her thirty seconds to decide what she was going to do next. “Well, since mom ain’t here, I’ll go to mom.”

Bone looked up to watch Sarah march into the house, and then continued his sniffing around the yard. In the house, Sarah stomped past her dad shouting at the referees on TV and to her room. Her room was a bright lilac, a color she had chosen with her mom, and they’d painted it together when she was nine. It always made her a little sad, but she knew she would never change the color, especially because she and her mom had signed the corner of her room as if they were great artists signing off on a masterpiece. She’d often stare at her mom’s signature in the dim glow of her night light before falling asleep.

Sarah shook herself out of her daze and grabbed her stack of buckets. She set them under the telling brown spots on her ceiling, glanced once more at her mom’s signature, grabbed her wind breaker and walked out of her room.

“I’m going for a bike ride; I’ll be back later.”

 Her father acknowledged this with a grunt and took a long swallow from his beer can. Sarah rolled her eyes, slipped into her windbreaker and left through the attached garage, which was always open because it wasn’t like they had anything to steal.

Her bike used to have shimmering streamers that came off the handlebars and a basket on the front decorated with plastic flowers. Now, her handlebars looked like they had sloppy mohawks and her basket was gone, all because she’d gotten angry at her dad. She was angry because her mom was supposed to teach her how to ride a bike. A few weeks later, Sarah had realized that her anger had been pointless and had ended up hurting her. So she refused to get angry anymore even if that meant bottling it up. In the end, Sarah’s dad taught her how to ride her bike and Sarah was prone to extreme emotional outbursts that disappeared as quickly as they appeared.

  Sarah grabbed her helmet off the hook by the door and picked her bike up off the floor. She straddled it, holding it upright while she clicked her helmet into place and then grabbed the handlebars and took off down the street. Her jacket flew back in the wind and her short brown hair whipped around her face. She felt a smile crack her lips as she raced down the familiar streets.

She passed the fire hydrant the city had once opened during a mid summer blackout to provide the residents with a little bit of fun and cooling relief. Her mom had raced her down the block to get there, where they spent the whole day splashing in the water and hanging out with their neighbors. A dull ache in Sarah’s knee brought her back to the sunny August day on the quiet street. She shook her head in frustration that her dad wouldn’t believe her and turned towards the tunnel that would lead her under the main road in town.

When Sarah was younger, maybe five or six, her mom would take her on walks, and they’d come to the tunnel and shout silly things. Sarah’s favorite thing to shout was “unicorns” because she always felt like she was wishing into a well when they shouted into the tunnel (and secretly she always wanted a pet unicorn.) Her mom would shout “pancakes” and when Sarah asked why she told her, “Because I love pancakes almost as much as I love you silly. There are never enough pancakes, and I will never have enough you.” Her mom would hug her, and they’d walk back home smiling and laughing.

Before she had reached the end of the tunnel, tears were slipping down her cheeks. She brushed them away and peddled harder. Dark gray clouds were starting to roll in from the west, and the wind picked up nearly knocking Sarah off her bike. She refused to be pushed over by nature. The random dull aches in her knee became more of a throbbing consistency, but she pushed through. She had to see her mom.

Pedaling through the park, Sarah caught a glimpse of the tree she had tried to climb when she was seven. Her mom had told her that she’d climbed high enough, and it was time to go home, but Sarah decided to not listen she just kept climbing. One weak branch was all it took; Sarah came crashing out of the tree. But she was lucky, no head injury, nothing broken, just a dislocated knee that liked to throb before it was about to rain. Her mom always believed her knee. They didn’t have enough money to fix the roof, their house was small enough that they’d tie some tarps down to prevent the worst of the leaks. Living in a dry climate meant that the roof repairs could wait, it rarely rained so tarps were the easiest solution.

Sarah remembered her mom sick in bed, she tried to tell her that her knee was aching. But her mom was too sick to do anything, Sarah wasn’t even sure that her mom could see or hear her. Her dad was working a double shift, he wouldn’t listen when Sarah called begging him to come home and tie down the tarps. Sarah was too young to tie down the tarps herself, there was no one else she could call. She did her best to keep her mom warm and to prevent the roof from leaking on her, but it didn’t matter in the end.

After that awful storm her mom wasn’t there to believe her anymore, and her dad still wouldn’t tie down the tarps, so their roof got worse. Sarah couldn’t hold back her tears anymore, she cried hard. She could barely see the path in front of her, but somehow, she made it past the town church and into the graveyard. She hit the brakes on her bike, stumbled off of it and dropped it near the entrance. The path to her mother’s grave felt miles long, her knee humming with the storm that anyone could see coming. Finally, she sank to her knees in front of the cold gray granite marker for Elizabeth Seerley McDowell.

“Hi mom” Sarah croaked out “my knee’s been telling me that it’s gonna rain.”

Lightning flashed and the clouds poured down their sorrows on Sarah.