I LOOK I WAIT

I don't know how long I have been looking and waiting, but the look is always a day longer than the wait. This is given. I know it through the cracked condition of my bloody hands. They have been looking almost as long as I have. I wonder how long it takes for hands to crack white and bleed red. My mind is not cracked and bloody. I yearn to touch what I am waiting for so immensely I can see it, but no matter how hard and long I search for what I am looking for it never comes to my eyes. No matter how long I sniff it out, it doesn't hit my nostrils like she does. I had a daughter once. She is what I wait for. She is what I see and touch and breathe. She is beneath my skin, but she is not what I look for. My little girl was pretty and they knew it. With one giant swipe of their clean, white papers they took her away. Where, I do not know. But I am not looking for her. I am waiting for her, overturning her in my head. My pretty white thing will come.
I overturn the singular piece of furniture in my small house and look under it fifty two times a day, then I open the drain pipe and poke my eye ball down it twice in case I see what I am looking for before I start to howl strong and loud and ferocious. On one of the less painful desperate days my neighbor came over and said in her calm tone, "Stop screaming, Cherlie. It won't make things better." And then she left like she hadn't come at all. The walls of my house were so white after her colored skin went, I didn't howl. I lay on the floor and looked up at the ceiling. My white ceiling with one florescent light bulb makes me sick. Maybe it was up there purposefully and they want me to be sick. This way I cannot look for it anymore. Forces beyond my control call me back to waiting.
I call the neighbor Mrs. Lank but she doesn't answer to it. My daughter- my pretty white daughter- had a name once but when they took her, her pretty name went with them. It was a pretty name, and I wait for it to come back. If her name came back she would come back with smiles. The last time I saw her, she had pretty white tears on her cheeks sparking like bits of river falling from the mountains. My girl called me “Mommy” in the fresh mornings when it was still cold. Climbing upon my small lap she looked wonderfully sleepy and ready for breakfast. Maybe if it were cold she would clamor upon me again and say “Mommy” but here, in my house, the feel is always the same: 72 degrees until the moon glows yellow. For now it stays white under the crying face of the moon man until… forever. I can wait forever. I think. Something stirs my weary senses with that word: “Mommy.” Maybe it is the wind I haven’t tasted in forever. Is this what forever feels like?!
I feel the walls under my cut nails. Perhaps I will touch what I lost before I see or hear it. The walls are solid under my short fingernails bending and contracting with no woman’s touch. If the walls could tell me what they remember, things would be beautifully different. I would remember with their memories what went missing from my white world and sing about it with such joy and spirit these walls would not recognize me. A man asked me once what I do all day to make my house a mess. I said, “I look.” When he asked me what I looked for, my head hurt and I choked on my air. A stupid question. I knocked the air out of the man for asking his questions and now, I knock the air out of the silent walls. They forget who they answer to in her time of repose and the knocks I blow to their surface are ineffective. Someone wails. Maybe it is me.
I hear a knock upon my door but do not answer. Mrs. Lank enters with her hands in her pockets followed by that man—the one with the stupid questions. I back up into the wall, hoping I will melt with it into the other side of space. Mrs. Lank says, “Cherlie, it is time for you to take your medicine. Let me see your arm dear.” Her hands come out of their pockets with a syringe of clear liquid taking aim at the proper spot on my arm. I hear the sounds stop letting themselves out of me when the liquid is through magicing itself into my arm. “Cherlie, will you talk to Mr. Harvey for me?” Lank asks and I nod peacefully. Mr. Harvey smiles just as an insane person would, gesturing towards my couch, my one piece of furniture. “Please sit next to me on your bed Cherlie and tell me how you are doing today,” he sneers. I spit at his indignation and tell him about my waiting and my search. No Progress. Then my world reels.
“Cherlie, will you try to listen to me today?” he asks.
I nod, dimming.
“Cherlie, I will tell you again like I did yesterday and everyday for five years, Jill will visit you when she is older and can handle seeing this place. If you work towards giving up your search she might see you sooner than that.”
I look at my red, cracking hands and tell him I need to find.
“Mr. Roberts and I have deduced you are looking for the one thing you will never find. Is it your husband?”
I lean over the couch and watch my lunch come out of my mouth onto the floor. Then I lay and scratch at my hands. They hurt. I hurt all over. Another pain day comes at me again.
“That’s what I thought,” he shrinks at my pain. “Cherlie, he is dead. Try to understand. Tomorrow we will see if you have started to accept that you will not find him.”
Mrs. Lank leans forward to clean the orange pile. I lean forward lifting up the couch pillow. Time to overturn my singular piece of furniture for the twenty-sixth time today. I know I will find it. Its here somewhere.
I don't know how long I have been looking and waiting, but the look is always a day longer than the wait.