Carol GoldenEagle - Bone Black

But new beginnings for what?

Wren brushes a salty tear from her cheek. Her grief is staggering as she throws a ball of clay on her potter’s wheel. She adds slip casting and as the wheel turns, Wren lovingly fashions the middle of the ball with both thumbs so the round blob can begin to move upward into shape. Her tears flow fast now and begin to fall on her creation, becoming part of it. A memory in stone. A large-tiered and layered remembrance in clay for a baby she’ll never meet.

Wren decides she will name this unborn baby Amber . To Wren, amber has the ability to capture moments in time, nature’s way of preserving and calling witness to a single moment, a reminder of things that have come before. Wren begins etching that sacred name at the bottom of her moulded clay, still damp, when she is suddenly interrupted.

The heavy oak door to her studio opens and Wren sees the face of her sister. She is carrying a mug of hot coffee in one hand while balancing a plate of breakfast casserole in the other. Both the mug and plate are of Wren’s creation. The casserole recipe has been in the family for a long time, something their mother made while the girls were young and something both remember as a Saturday morning treat while visiting their kohkum. The recipe is like French toast, but mixed with leftover bits from a smoked ham shank. “Never waste food,” their grandmother would say. “It’s a sin to waste food.” This morning’s variation is rounded off with asparagus, herbs and onions—all picked from Wren’s garden. She notices the dish is sprinkled with extra cheese.

“Hey, you,” Raven says. “Can’t stop working. What’s up, my lovely sister? What brings you to your studio so early in the morning?”

Raven’s pretty smile quickly disappears when she notices the sadness that shrouds her sister’s entire being. It’s as dense as a wet blanket and just as heavy. Raven sets the food and coffee on a counter, then goes to hold Wren’s face with both her hands. Wren closes her eyes, and another labyrinth of tears floods her cheeks. For the first time, Wren tells someone about being pregnant, but in the same breath that she isn’t anymore. “Baby went away last night,” she says, continuing to sob.

Raven honours the sadness of this moment, offering no empty sentiments, no It’s going to be okay . She just holds Wren, letting her release the thoughts that haunt her.

“What if I’m damaged?” Wren asks, finding it difficult to speak through laboured breaths. “What if what happened before is the reason I couldn’t carry this child?”

Raven hugs her sister even more tightly, offering comfort and knowing that Wren is revisiting guilt that she’s carried from days long past—guilt about when she was raped as a teenager by someone she’d trusted, a secret Wren has never told anyone except her twin sister.

*

When Wren and Raven were in grade nine, they often babysat for a family renting the acreage down the road. The dad was her school volleyball coach and the girls had no second thoughts about accepting rides home. But on one godforsaken night, the coach didn’t drive Wren home. Instead, he drove toward the dump, stopping at the closed gates that had already been locked for the night. “I have some things I need to get rid of,” Wren remembers him saying. He placed a worn set of goalie pads near the locked gate, as well as several black garbage bags that seemed heavy.

By the time he came back to the car, Wren saw the erection under his pants. She remembers the struggle, then the helplessness, and the pain. There were no witnesses except for a lone coyote on its nightly hunt. The coach drove Wren back to her kohkum’s home like nothing happened.

As weeks passed, the coach no longer paid attention to Wren when she came to volleyball practice and she was never invited to babysit again. Just as well. In the months following, a growing shame and terror overtook her—she missed her period once, then twice. But who could she tell? Who would believe that a well-respected member of the community had assaulted her so severely?

Wren didn’t sleep well those months. She stopped eating, only poking her food with a fork at mealtime and throwing the bagged lunches her kohkum made into the trash can. She isolated herself in her bedroom where she’d hug an oversized body pillow Kohkum had given to her as a birthday gift. She stopped combing her beautiful long hair, only bothering to pull it back into a ponytail for school. It was like living out a prison sentence, until she finally revealed the dark secret to her sister Raven.

In the days that followed, Wren took to self-mutilation, beating on her abdomen with hard fists and urging the fetus to leave, at the same time knowing that what she was doing was a violation of that gentle thing growing inside. Wren has no recollection of when the fetus left her body, no memory at all of the miscarriage. She’d blocked out that sad moment until today.

Not surprisingly, the coach was never called to task. Nothing was ever said, and the girls often wondered if he had made the rounds, hurting more girls than just Wren. He found a new job as that school year came to an end, and he and his family relocated to Ontario. Wren never saw him again.

*

“But I thought that all that ever happened to you was bruising when you hit yourself,” says Raven, trying her best to console. “I’ve never thought you carried a child. You never talked about a miscarriage. There would have been some kind of trauma that you’d remember coming from your body.” After a moment, she continues, “God does not punish the innocent, not in that case and not in this one. The innocent one is you, my dear sister.” Raven wraps her arms around Wren even tighter.

“I need to tell Lord,” Wren suddenly says.

“Maybe,” counsels Raven, “but not right now. Give it some time. I want you to make peace with yourself before going to pieces again. And always remember, God does not punish the innocent.” Then after a moment she asks, “Are you sure it’s a good idea to transform those remains into something you are likely to look at every day?”

“I’m sure,” Wren promises. “This sweet little angel will be remembered with dignity. Plus,” she says, “I don’t see it as any different from all the people who keep ashes of their loved ones in an urn on the mantel. She brought moments of joy to me and she will continue to bring joy, even if she’s now in the spirit world.”

Instead of drinking the coffee she’d brought, Raven suggests her sister have some chamomile tea, out of the studio and away from the sadness that she’d been sculpting in clay. “Let’s go in the house,” she suggests. In the warmth of the farmhouse kitchen, Raven puts on the kettle. “Here,” Raven offers once tea is steeped. “To settle your stomach and help you get some rest.” She hands Wren a steaming mug.

“What’s this?” Raven picks up a note left on the large kitchen island. It says, Didn’t want to disturb you and Raven reminiscing in your studio, so I took some breakfast to go. Miss you already and see you in a few days, my love .

This may be the first time Wren really wishes her husband was staying with her at home instead of travelling. He was off on an early flight to Calgary again, since he’d just secured a contract with his old firm to design stone guest houses at one of the mountain lodges in Alberta. He’d be gone until Wednesday.

“Well, I’m here with you,” Raven says, “and I will extend my visit until Thursday, or even Friday, just to make sure I’m not leaving you alone. We’ll have fun. Maybe jump in the lake later this afternoon. Check out some garage sales.”

Wren agrees that it sounds like a good plan. She figures that healing waters may help heal her broken heart.