The Orchestra of Darkness
I didn’t know I should be afraid....
She stirs beneath the familiar weight of the duvet.
Warm. Silent. Cocooned.
She hears the wind outside pressing against the windows.
She lies, coaxing her body back toward sleep but something has tugged her awake, something indefinable.
Her body is still and alert… her senses sharpen, trained, vigilant…waiting.
Perhaps it was her son.
The room next door has taught her to listen differently. To hear movement where there may be none, detecting the smallest shift, the softest disturbance. His sleep has been fractured lately, so by default, so has hers. Night no longer belongs to rest, it belongs to readiness.
She tightens her jaw. As a mother of a nineteen year old, she knows she should not be concerned that he would be awake in the early hours at all, but as a carer to her disabled son, she has to resist the small flare of resentment that rises uninvited at possibly another night of interrupted sleep.
And yet, after this week she isn’t certain she can survive another broken night. Anxiety, stress, exhaustion have promoted themselves from daylight to now become her bedfellows.
She sighs. It’s useless, she can’t stop it. The freight train of her mind begins to move out of the station. One thought becomes five as they gather speed racing down the track, jumping from compartment to compartment.
She opens her eyes.
The room is pitch-black, then slowly resolves itself to the softened outlines of furniture. The small hours are the only time that is hers alone. Even if that means between two and four in the morning.
Annoyed with herself, she attempts to step off the self-pity train. Closes her eyes. Tries to sleep. An act of quiet defiance.
Behind her eyelids, an inky dense darkness pools. It reminds her of another time when darkness was her companion. A time when it held her, shaped her. A pivotal moment in a life too young to name it as such.
The wind in the trees steadies her breathing. The body knows before the mind as her muscles relax. Finally her mind loosens its grip and drifts toward a memory. A revelation that over many years unfolded like a story written on a crumbled piece of paper. It slowly unravelled until divine timing ironed out the creases and quietly announced the truth.
I was three and a half. My mother, a single parent burdened with the responsibilities of both caregiver and breadwinner found she had no choice but to access outside help with the care of her child while at work.
Early one morning, she dropped me off at the babysitter’s with a bag containing spare clothes, another with my favourite snacks and “Pookie”, my cherished teddy bear clutched securely in my plump, baby-fat fingers.
A brisk hug, a swift kiss on the cheek permeated with the lingering fragrance of her perfume. “Be good,” she said, and then vanished into the day.
What I remember of that house is not toys or games, in fact I don’t remember playing. What I do clearly recall is temperature, a steep staircase, a long, narrow hall. Silence. Darkness. And an airing cupboard.
Inside the cupboard, it was warm.
The kind of warmth that seeps into your skin and makes your limbs heavy. The darkness was a velvety, impenetrable dense void that wrapped around my tiny form like an old coat two sizes too big.
I didn’t know I should be afraid.
Maybe I was… the first time.
In the small space, my legs were confined, unable to stretch beyond a scrunched-up posture. The floor beneath me was hard but dry. I’d wrap my arms protectively around my knees hugging them close to my chest, creating a cocoon of comfort, the air thick with fabric softener and rusted metal.
Sometimes, I’d squeeze my eyes shut and the inky abyss would reveal a canvas of swirling phosphorescent colours, a mesmerising spectacle that played before me. With a child’s curiosity, I would open and close my eyes, testing to see if my own private kaleidoscope lingered on, delighted when it did. Occasionally I would wave my hand in front of my face, a playful exploration of the unseen within the profound blackness.
Amidst the sensory deprivation of sight, my ears became attuned to the subtle symphony of sounds. The gurgling whispers of water emanating from the rhythmic cadence of the immersion heater reverberated through my little kingdom, a soothing lullaby that sometimes gently cradled me to sleep.
I remember muffled sounds of voices and occasional distant footsteps, providing a small sense of relief in the midst of this orchestra of darkness. A testament to the power of a child’s innate ability to find comfort in the most unconventional of circumstances.
I don’t remember how I got there, of hands guiding me. Of a touch that might have been gentle or harsh. No face looking down, but a shadowy voice persists in the hazy corridors of my memory eliciting a singular word said with a sinister edge, “Naughty!”
Did I cry?
I think I did.. the first time.
But not loud. Not for long.
The first revelation wasn’t mine. It was another child, telling their mother who told mine “When Haley is naughty, she goes into the cupboard.”
My mother knew instantly. It explained the spare clothes never used, the perfect hair. The way I was wide awake at bedtime, untouched by play or sun or noise.
The second revelation came years later in my mid-twenties. I overheard my mother telling the story to a friend, a moment she thought I’d forgotten, or never known. But I had known. It had happened. It was real.
With divine intervention, the truth was delivered and the story was complete.
She jolts awake.
Warm. Dark. Cocooned.
The wind moves through the leaves of the magnolia tree outside her window. She exhales slowly. That cupboard has followed her through the years, returning in dreams as a place where she’d had to be brave.
She thinks of the babysitter, the person responsible for her care, all those years ago.
For her, that care in the wrong hands, became containment. Punishment. Silence.
She thinks of her mother, young and exhausted, carrying the weight of impossible choices. How responsibility does not guarantee protection. How diligence does not always prevent harm. How sometimes, despite every effort, you get it wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now she lies here, on the other side of that equation. A carer herself, loving beyond measure but bone-tired. She understands, with a clarity that aches, how relentless and consuming the duty is. How easy it would be on the worst days to want to close a door, to step away, out of sight, out of mind.
And yet she never would.
Never could.
True care is vigilance. Being present, every day and choosing, again and again, to show up no matter the cost. Even when resentment flickers or when exhaustion presses down like weight. Her son is her life. The axis on which everything turns.
She opens her eyes and turns her head toward the bedside table. The digital clock glows 2:41am.
And then she hears it.
Not imagined this time.
Her son. Moving. Real.
She sighs. Resigned, she throws back the duvet, swings her legs out of bed, and rises into the dark, already moving toward him.
Haley, another mistressfully written piece, a mistresspiece indeed. I don’t know how you keep doing it, to capture those subtle details, colours, air movements of invisible thinking processes that so intimately describe the emotions of a scenario. you so courageously put out there a world that is in need to be seen and understood, the inherent humanity of us imperfect human beings struggling to be human (thinking that that words is a synonymous of perfection, or at least that is what we were told, how we are trained to think, how we have been socialised in this imperfect world, a maddening looping circuit!). The sleepless night, the subtle movements, so resonate with me, ancient memories coming back up, and the resentment are so real! Thank you Haley!
That's extraordinary and powerful writing Haley.