afraid of the dark

I love the night, but I am afraid of the shadows.

This thought triggers memories of early childhood. Waking, wrapped in nightmare, hot sweaty, bare legs tangled in sheets. My cries echoing round the room, off whitewashed walls, and behind the wardrobe where we once found the bat.

There is no one. My brothers are fast asleep, heavy, warm and solid, but asleep. No one comes.

Unable to bear, I go in search. Bare feet, cautious inching steps, tread the worn wood of the scorpion stairs so black that I cannot see my hand on the powdery dusty whitewash walls. Crying louder, so that some one might hear, the echo hurts my head in the narrow dark.

At last my toes curl over the lip of the step above the window where I can look out into the night. The moon hangs over the blind shuttered houses opposite. I cry into the night. No one comes.

The front door groans, a metallic growling screech that grinds through the stone walls, deeper than my own cries. Sobbing, I pick my way along the dark path, the rocks are loose and sharp and bite my toes, but carefully, my hand on the wall where the snails live in cracks and crevices, I balance. Careful, slow, my feet find solace on the bigger, smoother stones. I cry, but the houses are dark. No one comes.

And then, in the darkest shadow of the wall, under the fig tree, there are green dancing lights. Suspended, tranquil in the air. Hiding in the crevices with the snails. I don't know the words for what they are, but I stop still, watching. My feet are on a round smooth stone, still warm from the heat of the day. The wall is rough and coarse under my fingers. I am wearing my green and white babydoll pyjamas, the ties trailing, bare legs, bare arms in the soft night air. Tears drying on my skin, the occasional gentle hiccup still escaping.

I stand forever on my stone, forgotten. The night sky an endless starry bowl above me, the wall leaning in, fireflies flickering their luminescent lanterns.

Until the door from my aunt's house below opens and spills yellow light, people backing out, good nights being said. They turn and find me there in the shadows, gather me in their arms with love and guilt and what-might-have-beens and carry me back to bed.