A Rainbow for Jenny
By Janet M. Seever
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A Rainbow for Jenny
By Janet M. Seever |
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Kate gazed wearily at the stacks of packing boxes cluttering the room. She had lived in Australia all of her life, but moving to Darwin was like moving to a different world. The Top End of Down Under, they called it. More like the End of Civilization... "Crocodile Dundee" country, to be sure. Only she hadn't seen a water buffalo or a crocodile yet. Would she ever feel at home up here? she wondered. For that matter, would anywhere feel like home again? She pulled a calendar out of the box she was unpacking, and flipped the pages to May 1986. Her world had died three pages before that. She still felt numb. "Mum, can I wear this?" asked eight-year-old Meagan. She triumphantly waved a shirt that she had retrieved from one of the boxes. "It's been lost, and I only just found it." In the process, she had knocked another box to the floor, spilling the contents. Kate winced as she felt a fresh stab of pain. The mess on the floor didn't bother her as much as the shirt Meagan was holding. "I wish you wouldn't wear that one yet." "Why not? This rainbow shirt from my Nanna is my favourite. Besides, it was Jenny's favourite too." "It reminds me too much of Jenny right now, dear." In fact, Kate thought, Jenny was wearing her matching rainbow shirt the night of the accident. "Don't you want to remember Jenny?" Meagan's dark eyes flashed with anger and pain. Then, when she saw the hurt expression on her mother's face, her voice softened. "Mum, if God loved Jenny, why did He let her die?" Why indeed? thought Kate angrily. "I don't know, Meagan," she responded, with a sharpness to her voice she hadn't meant. "Now please go outside and play and let me unpack in peace." After she heard the back door close, Kate was sorry she had been so abrupt with her daughter. She should have been reaching out to comfort her instead of sending her away. What bothered her most was Meagan's questions echoed the ones which had been running through her own mind - questions which had no answers. She could hear her husband Roger rummaging around in the room he claimed as his office. His grief had been private, and he covered his hurt by throwing himself into his work. The transfer from Sydney to Darwin had looked good to him. It would give them a chance to start over again, he had said. Kate had agreed with him, but now that she was actually in Darwin, she wasn't so sure. Darwin was in the middle of nowhere and had only 70,000 people - not at all like the city where Kate grew up. Kate wiped the cupboard shelves and tackled her next task - the boxes marked "kitchen cupboard." While she was removing some of the items from one of the boxes, she picked up a rainbow refrigerator magnet - a Christmas present from Jenny. Her mind drifted back to a time a little more than three months ago when her world was still whole. She could picture bubbly six-year-old Jenny - their "Rainbow Girl," they called her - with her rainbow shirt and rainbow ribbons tying her dark hair into two pony tails. Rainbows were the fad of the time, and Jenny had rainbow stickers on her books, a rainbow poster on the wall, a rainbow bedspread, and she had even insisted on having a rainbow cake for her last birthday. People said rainbows were New Age, but Kate always maintained that rainbows were God's invention in the first place. "Jenny, dear Jenny. Why did you leave us so soon?" Kate whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. Then Kate's mind shifted to the tragic night branded forever on her memory. It was like one of those continuous tape loops which play over and over again: The squeal of tires; Meagan running in the front door, screaming; the wail of the ambulance. Uniformed men gently lifting Jenny's bleeding body from where she lay beside her mangled bicycle. Kate grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. "God, why did You seem so far away when I needed You?" she questioned, remembering the anxious waiting for Jenny to come out of the operating theatre; the grim-faced doctors; three long days and nights of not knowing if Jenny would live or die. She and Roger prayed, their church prayed, all of their friends prayed. And then the doctor turned off the life support. "Love, please come here for a minute." Roger's voice broke into Kate's thoughts and abruptly jarred her back to the present. "Do you remember how you marked the box with all of my computer books? I can't seem to locate it." Weeks turned into months and Kate felt no more at home in Darwin than when she first arrived. There were just two seasons- wet and dry- and they were both equally oppressive. By July, the dry season had turned the landscape into a dusty brown, and every blade of grass and every plant that wasn't carefully watered, withered and died. The weather wasn't as hot as wet season, but not a drop of rain would fall until November. The house where Kate and Roger were living was in the country, but construction seemed to be going on all around them as the city edged outward. Across the road workmen were beginning excavation for a new building and the earth moving equipment cut a gaping wound in the red earth. Huge trucks sent piles of red dust billowing into the air, drifting into their house, settling on the louvered windows and the furniture, grinding underfoot on the tile floor. Kate could even taste it. She vacuumed, scrubbed, mopped and dusted to no avail. Country living at it's very best, she thought ruefully. As if the dust weren't bad enough, often grass fires filled the air with acrid smoke which stung Kate's eyes and nose. Several application forms for relief teaching positions were still stacked in a pile on her desk where she had put them a number of weeks earlier. She had greatly enjoyed teaching in Sydney, but that was "before" and this was "after." Her whole life seemed to be divided into "before" and "after." How could she deal with her classroom full of children when she was still having trouble coping? They could survive without her paycheque, so Roger encouraged her to wait until she was ready ...maybe when the new term started in January. Gardening was one of her favourite hobbies in Sydney and her flowers had even won prizes in local competitions, so Kate planted a garden, thinking it would make her feel more at home. However, the scorching tropical sun beat down relentlessly, drying up the tender seedlings almost before they came out of the ground. Even watering them morning and night didn't help. Doesn't anything grow up here? Kate thought angrily, ignoring the fact that her neighbors had luxurious growths of tropical shrubs in their yards. Kate did find an occasional bright spot in her days when she visited her neighbor Ruth. One day as they sat drinking lemonade on Ruth's verandah, Kate turned to the kindly silver-haired woman beside her and asked, " Ruth, how did you get over your son's death after the motorcycle accident? But don't tell me that time heals because I've heard that all before." There
was a momentary sadness reflected in Ruth's blue eyes as she paused and
thoughtfully wiped her glasses with her handkerchief. "You've got
to remember that John's death was a long time ago. Your grief is fresh.
As time passes, the pain will get bearable, but it never fully goes away.
Birthdays and Christmas are especially difficult." The pages of the calendar slipped past one by one; the sky had been a cloudless blue for months, but now clouds formed and went scudding past. Occasional light showers provided no relief and only increased the humidity. Kate had heard people talk about the "the build up to the wet" and thought they were exaggerating. Now she knew it was no joke. Day after day her damp clothes stuck to her body and her dark hair hung limply around her face. No matter how many showers she took each day, she always felt hot and uncomfortable. Roger came home irritable at night. Meagan, who was usually good natured, whined for no reason at all. Kate found it a real effort to be civil. Then one day she heard a rumble off in the distance. As the thunder and lightning gradually came closer, the sky turned inky black and wept great tears which bathed the parched earth and washed over the fire-charred grasslands. Water ran in rivulets across the footpaths and filled the gully across the road with a gushing torrent. Even the smell of dust was gone from the air. Healing had come to the land. Kate marveled at the new green shoots which began poking through the dead grass and was surprised to find pink, white and green Caladium leaves unfurling like little flags all over the garden in front of the house. The bulbs had been dormant during the dry season, and Kate hadn't even realized they were there. Several sulfur-crested cockatoos flew into the yard to drink from a water puddle; in a nearby gum tree a pair of kookaburras filled the air with their raucous laughter. Each day was filled with new surprises. On her way home from school one afternoon, Meagan brought home a large green frog which had taken up residence in the gully. It had suction pads on its feet, and when Meagan put it on the outside of the house, it began climbing straight up and made Kate laugh. Then she realized it was the first time she had laughed in a long time. It was good to find simple joy again - to feel like living again instead of merely existing. Then one evening as Kate was reading the newspaper, Meagan burst into the room, bubbling with excitement. "Mum, come with me!" Kate looked up. "You're all wet! Were you out in the rain?" "The rain's stopped now, and there's something you just have to see." Meagan danced a jig around her mother until Kate eased herself from the chair. The two of them went out the back door. There, arched over the field behind their house, was one of the brightest rainbows Kate had ever seen. In fact, when she looked carefully, she could see it was a double rainbow with a second faint bow around the first. "A
rainbow for Jenny," Meagan said impulsively and then stopped abruptly,
looking at her mother to see her reaction. "Yes, I'm sure Jenny would have loved it," she said, turning to Meagan and smiling. They stood watching until the rainbow at last began to fade. "A
rainbow for Jenny," Kate whispered softly as she put her arm around
her daughter and the two of them walked into the house.
Copyright 1998 by Janet Seever
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