- To the Magical Memory of RainA Work-in-Progress
There was a young woman by the name of Desiree Dobbs, who was quite strange, very beautiful, and easily enchanted by some things and not so enchanted by others; she had been sheltered by a mother who had read nothing but fairy tales to the girl up to the time Desiree was fourteen.
The young woman’s father, whom she remembered with keening fondness, had died when Desiree was but five years old; and because he was killed in a terrible accident, the mother received a monthly allotment, which was sufficient for she and the child to live on, if they lived quite frugally. “Frugal” was one of the words Desiree had learned to spell and think about a lot as a small child growing up. The widow often took in sewing in order to augment the pension she received from the Telephone Company, which started three months after the father of Desiree was killed in a sudden rainstorm, as he descended a telephone pole.
In the heart of Desiree, the arrival each month of the pension check marked another memory of her father’s tragic death, echoing through the aching, living presence, even as it recollected his violent death in a sudden thunderstorm. On many occasions, the father had appeared before Desiree out of a night of tumultuous rain. But when Desiree had attempted to look closer, he had vanished back into the stormy night. These appearances occurred, often as not, when Desiree had done something to upset her mother. Desiree awoke finding herself screaming: “Take me with you.” But except for his picture on the mantle-piece, the father of Desiree was nowhere to be found. The mother, who was a deep sleeper, heard none of this. They often argued fiercely over precise memories of the dead man’s body and soul, in the light of day. She was quite fond of the mother, but there was something missing in their relationship: “I cannot put my finger on it,” she often said to herself. The gulf between the two women appeared to be growing. She often wondered if in fact, she really loved her own mother.
. . . With her nose pressed against the window pane, when there was a fine and gentle rain to hear inside the gathering beads of precipitation, which made everything clear that was unclear and unclear that was clear, Desiree discovered herself trying to trace seven droplets to their doom with her finger. Thinking one particular one was especially blessed because it got stalled mid-way down and would not go down dead. Fine flicks of rain upon her window pane always commanded Desiree to back up in time . . . Take three steps back, then dribble forward. It unveils the beauty of the leaves [End Page 567] in the trees, where I take my pictures with the camera Daddy left behind for my hands alone. Summons his voice back to me though he died out a terrible thunder. But because of rain, when it’s gentle as leaves of Spring time, lace and prayer, he is unveiled to me undead Daddy . . . to a blessed hour when he unfolded to me the meaning often of the dearest things of nature, in the park, at the zoo . . . the magic and the miracle of how even a camera worked. What didn’t he know? That all should be in harmony in nature . . . The fall of the rain sound on this window is his voice, his step . . . Fine upon the window it is the perspiration beads upon his face, after doing a heavy work of exercise . . . of building my dollhouse, so that I can come along with a towel so very big to handle and wipe away the gathered perspiration from his temple (where God dwells) and the contours of his princely face which is also my face to trace, with my fingers, there and now upon this window pane, so full of grieving rain. When I see the fine and gentle rain, I hear echoes of Daddy dear nothing that Dreaded Death can never, ever . . . Dreaded Death has no music to make this echo of his...