A Weightless Truth

Hazel’s mother’s rooms are not off limits but Hazel does not feel any desire to go in, any curiousity about what lays inside. Perhaps it is because of the lack of forbiddances that she does not care to explore them. Hazel is drawn to delitescent places, or places her father adopts rules for or boundaries. Her mother’s room holds no mystery, nothing enigmatic or inspiring excavation. Hazel knows her father had most of his belongings moved into separate rooms he them claimed for himself, and he bought a new bed. Now all she can think of that may be in her mother’s rooms are relics from the days she spent with her husband, her perfume, the clothing of hers that has not been passed to her daughter, and mementos of places she has traveled. Hazel always wanders past the door to her mother’s rooms without glancing at it.

Now she stands before her mother’s door and wonders what lies beyond.

The door is unlocked but the wood protests when Hazel pushes it open.

While most of the house is saturated in colour, this room is pale and soft. The walls are white, tinged yellow in some places by water stains. The curtains are ill fitted and the draft coming through the window makes them billow half the length of the room like a veil of white mist. There are silk screens covering an entire wall, raw and papery.

There is a bed of white pillows, covered with a fine layer of dust. A few chairs sit by the window, around a teakwood table where an ash filled incense burner lies, ash trickling over the edges and settles like mould in the inlaid mosaic of the table top.

Pictures of couples and families lined the wall. Mr.Everill and his wife, each with hats casting shadows across their faces, before a cow led by a turban wearing merchant. A gang of children, shirtless and brown in the sun, running down a road lined with stalls, beneath black and white flags that, were the picture coloured, would have waved like a rainbow ocean blocking out the blue sky. Hazel’s mother wearing a half smile, clutching her hat as a wind blows past, a plume of smoke rushing up to meet her face as she bends over a concoction in a pot in the shadow of a derb. A map is tacked to the wall, showing the labyrinth of alleyways in a medhina.

Hazel explores briefly, pulling open drawers and the wardrobe doors. There are only a few articles of clothing in the wardrobe.

The vanity is bare but the trick bottom of one of the drawers springs open under Hazel’s touch, scattering spider husks and beads separated from their chain. There is a collection of papers, yellowed with age.

In the cave of white silk, sorting through business papers and personal letters, Hazel does not notice the other presence in the room until she speaks.

“It is like living inside a pearl, isn’t it?” the voice asks.

Hazel turns in surprise, holding the papers to her chest. She stands on the other side of the great chest at the foot of the bed.

“You’ve been in here before?” Hazel retaliates.

“Yes,” she says. She pauses before gesturing at the chest. “I have never seen inside that. If you would open it, I think it would satisfy both of our curiousities.”

While Hazel is not particularly curious about the contents of her mothers’ trunk, she obliges her. Hazel ascertains there is no lock, and lifts the lid with some difficulty, for it is very heavy.

The trunk is full of clothing. Too precious and formal for casual wear. Cedar, moth-ridden linen wrapped around delicate tulle and lace gowns ad sashes. Silk flowers and crinolines rustle against embroidered bodices and pearl necklaces.

Hazel sees little of interest, but she watches carefully as Hazel pulls out gown after gown.

“You look just like your mother,” she says, tilting her head to a picture on the wall. In the faded daguerreotype Hazel’s mother wears the same gown Hazel now holds up against her own chest.

“You look like her,” Hazel realizes. She does not reply, but watches thoughtfully as Hazel arranged the dresses once more in the trunk, wrapping them in linen as neatly as she can. The papers in her hand are crumpled, all but abused as she folds the last of the gowns.

Hazel guiltily spreads them carefully on the floor. The letters are in worse condition, the business papers, and the three typeset official documents are creased and folded. Hazel draws the latter from the pile, inspecting them carefully.

The first is her birth certificate. Hazel wonders if her father has another copy he keeps in a more accessible place, or if he has no need for it.

The second document is a copy of her birth certificate. Hazel glances between the two papers, confused. The names catch her eye. Same dates. Different names. Twins.

The third document is a death certificate. It bears the same name as the second birth certificate, and is three days post the birth date.

Hazel wonders if it is a draft or something else that has made the room grow suddenly colder.

“I have a sister?” Hazel asks, looking up. But she sits alone, and her words barely stir the dust.

Text by Lucie MacAulay