Melody (Logan 1)

"Let go."

"I'll let go, but don't think I don't know what

you're doing up there every night," I said. His face

turned so red I could see the crimson in his cheeks

even in the dim hallway light. "You're running away

from tragedy, only you can't run away from

something that's part of you."

He tugged with all his strength, nearly lifting

me from the floor with the ladder. I had to let go and

the ladder went up. He slammed the trapdoor shut. "Good riddance!" I screamed.

May, locked in her world of silence, emerged

from her room with a smile on her face. In my mind,

she was the luckiest one in this damnable home. She signed to me, asking if I would let her

come into my room. I told her yes. She followed me

in and watched me angrily poke the needle and thread

into the picture her sister Laura had drawn just before

she died. As I worked I glared up at the ceiling and

then down at the floor, below which my coldhearted

uncle sat reading his paper. After a while the

mechanical work was calming and meditating. I began

to understand why Laura might have been entranced

with doing so much of it. Everyone in this house was

searching for a doorway.

May remained with me until her bedtime,

practicing communicative skills, asking me questions

about myself, my family, and our lives back in West

Virginia. She was full of curiosity and sweetness,

somehow unscathed by the turmoil that raged in every

family member's heart.

Perhaps her world wasn't so silent after all. Perhaps she heard different music, different sounds, all of it from her free and innocent imagination. When her eyelids began drifting downward, I told her she should go to bed. I was tired myself. I felt as if I had been spun around in an emotional washing machine,