Velli
“Finish the verse,” someone in the room demands.
Surprise shakes me awake.
“Finish the verse,” they say again. It’s my mom, surprisingly wide awake.
I’m in a daze, still groggy from my nap and lack of sleep since the Conference of Desires. Wait, but what is she…? What is she talking about? “What?” I ask. “What verse?”
“You were saying a Bible verse. You mumbled it. I told you, you need to enunciate when you speak, but anyway, you mumbled the verse about four times in a row and never finished it. It was from Lamentations.”
I think I know what verse she’s referring to, the one Fate was saying to me beneath the ice. One I do not have memorized. I attempt to not look alarmed. Fate can now make me mumble in my sleep. Great, so he can possess me, maybe? This is getting bad.
“I…” I almost open up about Fate. About having a Curse. Then I imagine the disappointment in her eyes if I did. How she would blame herself because I’m messed up. How she would still love me but her love would be different, more distant. “I don’t know the rest of the verse.” It’s a poor excuse, but it’s true.
“Your generation never finishes anything.”
“It was a pretty depressing verse. It’s about a guy getting tortured by everything and his life is miserable. I can guess how it ends.”
“You’d be wrong.” She gives a proud look and recites, “Yet this I call to mind, and therefore, I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassion never fails.”
“Uh-huh.”
She quotes the rest of the it-will-all-workout verse while her disease eats at her insides day by day from the bed that keeps her alive and in a room I’m paying for that I do not have the money to afford. It’s eighty thousand drops next month, and all I have is the forty in my backpack. So, frankly, I don’t have the patience to tune in for the rest of it. I rise from my seat to leave so I can attend another funeral.
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“The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him,” she finishes.
“Thanks, Mom. Okay, I’m going to head out. Love you. I’ll be back to say hello tomorrow.”
“Wait, this is for you.” She pushes the thing she’s been knitting toward me. “It’s a scarf!”
“Oh, wow.”
“I remember you used to love scarves like these. Do you guys still wear them?”
“Absolutely.”
“The guys” don’t still wear them. It’s embarrassing. In middle school, it was sort of a joke, sort of the actual style of the time to tie a bandanna around one’s neck, like pet owners put on golden retrievers. It’s not fashionable to do it anymore. It’s cringe inducing now. However, I’ll never let her know that.
“It’s great. Oh, it’s embroidered with letters. What’s it say?” I read it myself as she speaks.
“It says, ‘It’s okay to have your head in the clouds. Not everything can be seen from Earth.’”
“Nice, Mom. Thanks.” I step forward to give her a kiss.
Her hand slams onto my wrist with an impressive grip. Her all-enduring smile reverses into a grimace. “Velli.” Her tone matches her grim expression. “I’m serious about all of that. So serious.”
“All right, okay. I believe you.” It’s unnerving. I’m just a kid again under my mom’s angry gaze, unsure of myself and afraid of my caregiver. The world around me is insurmountable.
“No, I need you to believe in something, Velli. I need you to at least believe in your dreams, because life won’t always be easy.”
That statement replaces my fear with anger, shrinks the world, and I remember how small and brittle everything is. “I wasn’t aware life is easy now,” I bite back.
Her grimace doesn’t break. “Plans are happening above and below that neither you nor I can see. The world is so much bigger than you think.”
“It’s not. I’m clever, and I’ve got a good gauge of life’s awfulness.”
She lets go of my arm and sinks into the bed. “Yes,” she admits then looks for more words. She starts and restarts her sentences, the right words refusing to be caught on the net of her tongue. “But… there’s more than misery. You’re a good kid, Velli. You do good things. You want to do good things. You won’t say it, but I know what you want to do. I know you want to change this world for the better. Just… I’m worried you might let everything that’s happened to you make you lose your way. Do what you want to do in your heart, okay? Be good. Don’t compromise that, please.” Her tough exterior melts.
I place a kiss on her forehead and squeeze her hand. “Of course,” I tell her and let her place the scarf around my neck.