The Cardigan

The demons of insecurity and illusion struck her dumb, an unspoken pain lingered in the air, and half-obscured thoughts ripped her apart as she clenched the corner of a pillow tightly and grieved her smothered happiness. Hastily, she pushed herself upright, swung her feet to the floor and without drawing the curtains, stared at herself in the mirror. The diminishing golden rays of twilight which faintly crept in through the windows created a sickly dimness in her reflection.

As she brought a glass of lukewarm water to her lips, her eyes caught sight of her Mamma’s cardigan lying on the dresser next to her perfume bottles. She slid her shaky hand into the left pocket of the cardigan and found a crumpled piece of paper that says, “You are loved” and a letter in Lara’s beautiful handwriting which Rheanne left unopened. She could picture her mother awaiting her at the doorstep of their house with a nonchalant smile on her face. But the happy picture gradually began to fade when her thoughts inclined towards the days when her mother’s hair began to fall incessantly, the days when she screamed and sobbed to ease the unbearable pain that struck her whole body, the days when morphine tablets were scattered on the table, and the day when her emaciated body wrapped in a shroud adorned with rose petals was buried on the ground.

At that moment she knew that she would spend a lifetime missing her mother, her voice, her smell, her dimpled cheeks, her wavy hair and a thousand other details about her. Her heart which was overjoyed whenever someone told her that she was her mother’s lovely replica, now ached terribly when she saw her reflection in the mirror, standing alone, staring at herself in pain. She saw her mother in herself and wondered whether it was a blessing or a curse to have such a striking resemblance to her dear Mamma.

When she had to leave the home she grew up in, the home that her Mamma once filled with freshly plucked flowers from the garden, her loveliest watercolour paintings and the smell of cupcakes, she only took the cardigan her mother wore in the final days of her life. Lara used to say, “Whenever you wear this cardigan and feel the warmth of the soft wool against your skin, remember that I’m hugging you from afar.” The cardigan still had the scent of her favourite musk perfume because Rheanne no longer love floral fragrances and always chose her mother’s musk perfume that lingered like a whispered promise on the skin. For Rheanne, the past two years were all about imitating the ways of her beloved mother and she did an extraordinarily amazing job in doing so by overlooking everything that made her different from her mother, only to hear from her therapist that her efforts were a form of “trauma response.” To which she instantly replied that her mother could live through her and started crying uncontrollably. The therapist failed to correct this belief of hers in the next session because she knew it was deep-rooted and unshakable.

Her classmates called her “freak” and “nut case” for wearing the same old and frayed cardigan to college every day. She silently suffered their taunts but never stopped wearing the cardigan. Her therapist thought she would let go of the cardigan after a few months but she clung to it every day. The therapist could only succeed in convincing Rheanne to go back to college, solely because she said “Your mother would have wanted you to finish that degree.” Slowly, she began to be aloof from her therapist too, as she did with everyone else, though she knew that her solitary life could only give her nightmares, sleeplessness, panic attacks and pain. When the exam results came, Rheanne did not have to check them to know that she failed miserably.

She looked in the mirror in Lara’s bedroom once again and at the framed photograph of her beautiful mother in her early twenties cheerfully posing with a cow on a farm wearing the cardigan that now became the most significant symbol of her love for her child. She admired her face which was unbelievably flawless, the epitome of perfection as if each feature was crafted by the greatest artist himself. She heard the approaching vehicle but ignored it and proceeded to read her mother’s letter which she could not open for a very long time. “It’s time to read it,” she said to the photograph.

Abruptly, four strong hands grabbed her from behind, and as she struggled to catch a glimpse of the intruders, she saw two men in white uniforms. One of them forcibly took the letter from her hand tore it in half and threw it to the ground while her father watched them drag his daughter through the floors and onto the ambulance. “I am not mad” she screamed at the top of her voice. Nobody listened. One of them told her father to gather her belongings after locking her in the van. They pretended not to hear her mumbled voice pleading to get her the last letter her mother wrote from the house. The driver inquired of the man, “What letter is she crying about?” and the man replied, “Who cares what a mad girl says?” The van gradually receded into the distance, its form blending seamlessly with the outline of the sun’s descending rays.

Melanie Ann🌼