Bad Sun Rising

     A corpse never looked so restless as Odette. It was that frustrating, tilted smirk Odette used to wear, even when it would seem the invisible hand of some imaginary fate had won. Although she had died with the smile plastered on her face as if it was armor, Odette went into the darkness with no regrets. There was not one moment in her short, two and a half decades of life that she would take back, not even the last.

Sand was stuck in Odette’s thick black curls the day she was found, a pale shroud over most of her body. On a still day with clear blue skies and a quiet sun, she had been found. Despite the warm sand, her body was cold, but only just so. It was intended for her body to be found, as megalithic a statement as any word Odette had ever written of Ordau and as symbolic as any picture she had ever taken and pargeted over journals, magazines and blogs. Surprisingly, her death had been quick. Several bullets were found, but one had killed her instantly. There was never the chance that she would live.  

 

     It was something that was constantly repeated that made Naomi’s fists curl in anger. Some whispers about the poor thing shot in the heart and other murmurs about the unfortunate journalist fired upon from nearly point blank pushed Naomi towards an abyss of anger. There had been a chance and Odette had made the choice to ignore Naomi’s constant begging to come home.  It was ridiculous to have to warn Odette about going to a country always on the verge of civil war, where it was considered a long stay of peace if a coup hadn’t overturned a new government in one or two years. There is no such thing as safety and justice in a place where there is such constant change in who has the power to define those virtues for their country. Whenever Odette found that her conscience could tear her apart from unstable state long enough to visit her mother, Naomi nearly wept and importuned her daughter to stay, always to a forlorn end.

 

      

     And the choice was never regretted, not on Odette's end. How many times had Naomi told Odette that her supposed bravery was just naivety in the way the world worked? Every time, Odette gave that same smirk. Though it was a small smile, it both warmed Naomi’s heart and aggravated her at the same time, as if Odette possessed some knowledge that she couldn’t share outright with the world, she had to show it. Naomi’s insides twisted when she saw it on her daughter’s corpse and not just because it was one of the few recognizable traits left to distinguish Odette from any other corpse.  Before meeting her end, Odette looked into the face of guns and revolutionaries and smirked. The thought of it all drove Naomi into a new level of grief.

 

     Had she been thinking about the inevitability of it all or that her life had been worth the sacrifice? What end had Odette seen that made her smile so?

 

     In the end, Odette’s problem was that she had been born fearless, which was puzzling since Naomi tried to curb that aspect at every moment; for fear that she would outlive Odette.  

     

     She was used to Odette being far away and inaccessible, but she wasn’t used to Odette being the eternal kind of gone.

     

     Odette had even written her own ridiculous will and testament. It was clear that she had done it while sitting with school children, using their crayons to write out something about how Naomi shouldn’t be sad, justifications for why she had to go and cursory burial instructions. It was all rather insufferable as it bordered both precocity and puerile, to the point that Naomi couldn’t even finish it. When Odette had an idea, she had to get it down immediately, which explained the crayon, and when Odette perceived something to be done well enough, she never redid it, which explained the childish will. This was Odette’s streaming conscious and she felt that her wishes had been satisfactorily conveyed, so she had never rewritten it.

       

     There must have been a day or so in which Naomi received the initial news until she coherently joined the world again to find that Ordau refused to let Odette’s corpse leave it’s soil.

     

       At first, Mary had tried to get Naomi to talk and act, go through Odette’s personal effects or drink coffee. Anything that someone does to soothe another person’s pain, Mary tried. Naomi didn’t snap back to realty when Naomi heard Mary on the phone.

       

     “Well, isn’t there an embassy or something?” Mary tried to keep quiet in the kitchen. “Can’t an ambassador do something? Who takes care of this sort of thing?”

     

       There was some journalist friend of Odette’s on the other side of the conversation, Naomi gathered, who was trying to take care of Odette’s affairs in Ordau.  

       

     “She has to come home,” Naomi insisted, standing on the threshold. “This is her home.”

    

     “We’ll take care of it,” Mary tried to soothe.

     

      “This is where she lived for twenty years.  She has to come back home,” Naomi continued. “How else can I see her?”

       

     It seemed ridiculous to want to see a dead person. What comfort did Naomi expect from a gravestone and the knowledge that Odette was tucked beneath the earth? If Odette had seen fit to sacrifice her life for a peninsula of sand and shrub on the other side of the world, why shouldn’t Naomi let her stay there?”

     

       “We’re trying,” Mary repeated softly, but that wasn’t good enough for Naomi. Standing, she said, “I’ll go bring her back myself.”

           

     If she had done it sooner, Odette would be alive.

 

 

      Before Ordau, Odette had loved anything hazelnut. Going to the hazelnut capital of the world had made Odette a little weary of anything to do with the nut. Every time she came home, Odette found ordinary teas such as Earl Grey or a simple green tea absolutely exotic and enticing.

           

     Now Naomi sat in a place Odette had sat. Her daughter had come here for a boy and this boy had the impudence to look Naomi in the eye with a certain hopeful light in his own, as if Naomi was going to raise him out of misery and set him back onto his course in life.

           

     From the moment they met, Odette had been enamored with Jason and she despaired when Naomi was more reserved in her affection for the man Odette swore up and down that she would marry if she ever came to that milestone. Naomi was wary of anyone who spoke of their past adventures in impecunious states. There was a fine line between awareness and self-veneration and Naomi remained suspicious of his motives until she learned that activism was just a family affair since prohibition.  She could forgive someone who did not live enough in her world to understand it’s social stratifications and civilities and Jason was clearly used to an unpredictable life moving from small project to small project, trying to take down a Cyclops with half the success of Odysseus.

     

     Odette had never had that life. Maybe when Odette was extremely small, Naomi had moved them around until she found a job and a home that could offer enough security and comfort. Their lives were settled and nested by the time Odette had been eight.

     

     Jason was convinced that he was sitting across from the craziest woman that he had ever met and he had met Odette Meyer. There, Naomi sat, the spitting image of her daughter, except for their hair. Both of them had wildly curly hair that stubbornly twisted wherever it fancied, but Naomi’s was the color of hazelnuts whereas Odette’s hair was the color of night.

       

     Why does it have to be the color of night? She had once teased him. Why can’t it be the color of, say a raisin, or a melanotic lion?

       

     Odette had certainly been wild and perhaps a little unhinged, but this is where she got it. Halfway, Naomi had flown around the world for a body that could no longer have enough warmth to appreciate the sacrifice.

       

     Naomi stared back without touching the tea. Just some silly boy. Odette was gone because she followed some foolish boy. It wasn’t exactly a capital crime, but Odette was gone and this boy stayed, this boy who charged ahead into the role as champion because it was a familial duty.  

       

     What about Odette’s duty to live?

       

     “Where is my daughter?” Naomi asked as if Odette was still alive.

      

     “She is being,” he paused so as not to choked, “prepared.”

       

     Predictably, Naomi insisted, “I want to see her.”

       

     “That is not best,” Jason said before he thought better of it.

       

     “I want to see her,” Naomi answered in a quiet way, one that left no room for argument.

       

     How was Jason going to convey that Odette had not retained her lively beauty in death? “She  . . . might not look the same.”

        

     “I’m not ignorant that my daughter is dead,” Naomi told him harshly. “I brought her into this world and I alone will bury her in it. That is a mother’s right.”

      

     “Ordau doesn’t usually bury their dead,” Jason murmured. It differed from island to island. Usually, the dead were sent out to sea so that they would protect the fishermen at sea and the islands during storms that brought large waves. Special cremetorial services were sometimes awarded. “And she wanted to be put to rest here.”

      

      “Until she came here, she wanted her body shuttled off into space so she could orbit the universe as if she was a shooting star,” Naomi returned and Jason gave a short hallow laugh.

        

     “Is that funny to you?” Naomi asked.

      

      “It just sounds like her,” Jason returned and Naomi saw the despair and relief in him. Was it calming to hear things about Odette that he didn’t know? Were there still things about Odette that Naomi knew better than Jason? He knew her now, but Naomi had known Odette for the span of her entire life.

        

     “She was a precocious child, but I think she overthought that one a bit,” Naomi murmured, the closest apology Jason was going to get for Naomi snapping at him. There was nothing either could think to say then, until Naomi finally said, “Funerals aren’t for the dead. It’s for those left behind to grieve.”

     

     At the risk of inciting Naomi’s eternal loathing, Jason replied, “There are more people grieving for her here than anywhere else in the world.”

      

      Her eyes flashed, but Jason continued the odious claim, though how dare he? She was Odette’s mother. Whose grief was more important?

       

     “I know you hate me and I know you miss her twice as much as I do,” Jason said and Naomi hated him even more. Growing up observing hopeless situations and trying to chisel away at them had made him patient. “But there are people here who loved her almost as much as you. They didn’t know her as a daughter, but they knew her as many things.”

       

     “If she meant so much, they wouldn’t have let her die,” Naomi replied. “They would have sent her home.”

     

     “I tried once,” Jason replied. 

      

      Her head snapped back as she was tossed back on her heels. The confession surprised Naomi. At first, she didn’t even realize that she had heard it. Always, she had blamed Jason for Odette’s flagrant denial of reason and sanity, hoping that if she became less enamored with Jason, then she would come home.

      

     “I tried several times,” Jason corrected himself, softly musing, “She was so . . . stubborn. I even told her that I would break up with her.”

      

     “Why didn’t you?” Naomi found herself asking.

     

     “I did,” Jason replied. “After she published the time she spent with Commander Ollitaya.”

      

      In an act of stubborn audacity, Odette had made friends with the new rising revolutionary star. For several weeks, she followed them around, charming them with promises of making them famous and plastering their faces over every magazine. Ollitaya was a smooth-talking devil in his own right, but Odette had told him everything that he wanted to hear. Odette had kept her promise, but she hadn’t done it in the light that they were expecting. Odette had to be shuttled out of the country before he found her.            

      

      “She laughed at me,” Jason recounted. “She said she understood if I felt it was necessary to break up with her, but there was no way I could force her out of Ordau, unless I expected to kidnap her.”

       

     Jason took a sip of tea, just to give himself a reason to pause as he considered moving on with his story or leaving it there. Naomi looked at him expectantly and he said, “I tried to hire Batiste to do it. At first, I think it offended him, but then he realized it was an act of caring.”

     

     “Did he do it?” Naomi asked. It was a silly question; it was an answer she already knew.

       

     “No. We would say Odette had a silver tongue, but here they say she had a mouth like water. It could get her anywhere.”

       

     Naomi considered that. It wasn’t false.

    

     “Eventually, she did see reason. That’s when she went to New Zealand, I think, then to the Congo.  I don’t think Odette ever stopped moving,” Jason replied.

     

      “She used to sleep walk,” Naomi murmured and Jason snorted another one of those hopeless, mournful laughs.

      

       Death seemed impossible for Odette, because she was always moving in life. Even when she was sitting, her leg was jigging or fingers were doing something. The stillest that he had seen her was behind the camera lens, trying to get that perfect picture.

        

     “You know, they agree with you,” Jason said quietly.

 

      Listening to Jason through the fog of grief was difficult. Ever since she heard the news, people were trying to talk to her. She supposed Jason was the only one with a reason to talk to her about Odette. “Who?”

        

     “The Ordau. They loved her, but they thought that she was crazy for staying here,” Jason replied. A slight, secretive smile flexed his lips. “They called her ban’ai.”

       

     “What does that mean?” Naomi asked, because she was suposed to ask. 

             

     His smile couldn't be contained now. “Crazy woman.”

      

     For a long moment, Naomi stared at him, but then she made a sound that was half a sob and half a laugh. She put her elbow on the table and hid a sad smile into the palm of her hand.

     

     Surprised, Jason continued. “They also called her Esmli’ai. It means she who moves like sand.”

     

     Naomi wasn’t even going to try to pronounce it, but she considered the word in her mind along with what else Jason had said. “They called her water and sand for the same reason.”

     

     “Odette meant a lot to the people here,” Jason replied. “They feel her death.”

     

     Then they should have saved her. She knew it wasn’t their fault. Naomi could have done something more, pushed harder or perhaps less, to make Odette come home and choose something safer. In the end, the only one to blame wasn’t even Odette’s murderer, but Odette herself. The risks were known and they were weighed.

      

     “They were enamored with her,” Jason said. “You know of the revolutionaries who are cruel and the government who is corrupt, but in the middle are people, helpless people. They thought that she was sent to them by some eastern wind. You are mourning a daughter, but they are mourning hope.”

      

     She did not come from the west, Naomi kept the thought to herself. “Ordau is not her home.”

      

     “Isn’t it?” Jason asked. “It’s where she chose to be.”

     

     What did choice have to do with it? “We don’t chose home,” Naomi replied.

       

     “Ordau isn’t exactly a choice,” Jason said, and it made Naomi angry again. It reminded her why Jason was to blame.

      

     “You chose it,” Naomi accused, grief and blame turning her voice to poison.

      

     “I didn’t mean to,” Jason replied. “She is the one who brought me here. I would have gone anywhere for her.” Naomi lifted her eyes from her tea. The liquid had stopped steaming, but Naomi felt the pressure about to emplode her heart. Her eyes were enough of a question and Jason continued, “Odette took stunning pictures and wrote moving words, but she was a terrible journalist. She was too human. She couldn’t watch from the sidelines; she had to be a part of the story.”

       

     “Isn’t the narrator usually?” Naomi asked and Jason made a surprised face.

     

     Odette had asked the same thing once. Naomi had raised her, it shouldn’t be a surprise how much Odette had gotten from Naomi, but it was a surprise that Naomi didn’t realize how much Odette had emulated her mother.

     

       Jason was only baffled because the question had been reverberated exactly from how Odette had said it. “They call you mai’ban’ai.” 

       

     Naomi did not have to ask what that meant as she had been called it enough during Odette's short career. “Mother of crazy woman.”

     

     For a brief second, Jason could have sworn Naomi smiled. It had been there for just a flash, before she lifted her tea.