She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
Funerals weren't supposed to take place on days like this. It was a bright, sunny day and Lexy could almost smell vanilla in the air, wafering its way up to her from the ice cream truck at the corner of Lakefield Street. Vanilla. The smell itself brought back memories, happy ones. It was her mother's favourite ice cream and her mother rarely liked sweet food. Thats why Lexy was able to get both her and her mother's share of sweets - because her mother didn't like sweet food.
Lexy felt devoid of emotion. She knew she was supposed to feel sad or at least some form of sadness at the death of the woman who had so lovingly brought her into this world and who had shielded her from most of its dangers to the best of her ability. But she couldn't. She felt numb, strangely detached from her surroundings. It was her first out-of-body experience - she felt like she was standing apart from the rest of the mourners, overlooking the proceedings with practised calm.
Lexy knew also, that her mind had shut out the horrors of what she had witnessed the previous day, the events leading up to her mother's death. The psychiatrist at the clinic had been nice enough, trying to coax Lexy into talking, into displaying even the slightest bit of emotion because it wasn't healthy to keep it all inside. But Lexy couldn't. She couldn't and she wouldn't bring herself back to recall the events.
She could her the neighbours whispering, pointing fingers at her, sniffing daintily into their perfectly creased handkerchiefs which had their initials embroided on. She knew too that they felt nothing, merely curiosity at the happenings. She could sense that. Wasn't it funny? When her mother was alive, these very neighbours had shunned her mother like the plague and now that she was dead, they hovered around, pretending to have cared, peeking into every crevice of the house commenting, touching the walls, the piano where she and her mother had played everynight, the cushions..
Stop it! Lexy chided herself sharply. She didn't want to lose it, not in front of these cold, heartless people. She knew they wanted nothing more than to see her cry and she could vaguely make out them calling her a heartless bitch, condemning her lack of tears.
The nothingness inside Lexy began to shift and take place in the form of a simmering anger. That was good. Anger was so much easier to handle than sadness or fear. She couldn't believe the nerve of these people, coming around, placing a supposedly soothing hand on her shoulder telling her how sorry they were and it was such a shame wasn't it? That her mother had to go that way.
But too soon, the anger gave way to the sadness. Heart-wrenching sadness that you can only feel when a part of you has been ripped out. Ripped out and fed to the masses. Lexy couldn't breathe again. It felt as though a hand was clencing her heart, holding it in a vice-like grip, squeezing tighter and tighter and it was so painful, the way her heart was hammering so quickly inside her chest, as though it was going to explode. She had to swallow down a chuckle. If she died too, would she be buried together with her mother? Lexy had visions of flinging herself into the grave with her mother, shocking everyone. But no, she couldn't. She had to leave this town with the few possesions her mother had passed to her yesterday, just before the events had taken place.
Lexy frowned. It was uncanny, the way her mother had passed the possissions, possessions she hadn't even known existed, to her just yesterday, as though she knew.
No, that wasn't possible. Lexy focused her thoughts instead on her mother's coffin as it was being lowered into the hole in the ground. Other thoughts crept unbidden into her mind, her mother rocking her, soothing her hurts and kissing away her pain. Her mother preparing dinner specially for the two of them.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the first tear broke free and rolled down Lexy's cheek.
Unknown to her, in Evram Street, preparations were already being made.
