She stared out of the window. She kept expecting to hear noises from upstairs, from outside; noises which had been everyday and commonplace for all those years. But there was nothing. There hadn’t been any for what seemed like years now. Yet, still she waited.

Her so-called friends avoided her now. You’re crazy, they would say. You should get on your life. Forget the past. It’s been so long now. Like a year of time should make one dance for joy after the world had been ripped from you. At first they hovered over her, in the way that fake manners dictated they should. Sympathy was there for her, in those initial days. But not anymore. They were tired of her pain. When she wanted to talk about how he died, they rolled their eyes and said ‘face reality’. The ‘reality’ they wanted to impress upon her was that he had left her, not died. Left voluntarily, no less. They wanted her to actually believe her beloved son would abandon her, without a word. They acted as though she had been dumped by some guy. How could they think that way, especially since they all knew how precious a child could be? This was not ‘some guy’ she mourned over. He was her son, her only son. They should know better than to judge her and shun her in her pain. But shun her, they did.

She would scream at night, wanting to kill them all. The pompous attitude of those who thought they knew it all-she hated them. And now, they hated her. Poor girl, they would say with their pinched noses at their snooty cocktail parties, she is losing it, thinking they knew what was real and she didn’t. They would say this, judging her, and then go home to their beloved husbands and children afterwards. She wished she could bestow upon them the plague that the Egyptians suffered at G-d’s hand, have them watch their firstborn die in front of them. Let them see how it felt. Then see if they would have the same attitude towards her. And if they came to her, screaming for help, she would slam the door in their faces. Let them see how it felt.

Well, hell, what had she expected. She’d never been one of them. Divorced twice, single parent, Jewish, not lucky enough to have been blessed by the right god (at least in their bitchy opinion), the right man or the right college education; she’d always been an outsider to them. They’d only felt sorry for her, that was all. That was why they ever had paid attention to her at all. Thinking of this now, she swore and lit a cigarette in the twilight of another dying day, watching all of cheery suburbia before her. They all used to smile plastic smiles like that for her too, but no more. Pompous bitches, all of them.

It was later that evening when she went upstairs. The house was completely dark now. She did not feel endangered. If someone broke into it, so be it. Maybe they would take her too. Her life had already been stolen, once the little love she had was taken from her forever. I am just a shell now, she declared as went to the familiar sanctuary she sought refuge in. She flicked on the light to her past, and it was all alive, the only life she had left to abide in.

His bedroom, the haven that she had so lovingly created for her beloved son was there, waiting for her. The room greeted her mournfully, dejected and rejected. It had loved its owner so much, protected him from danger, warmed him at night, hid him from the world. And he had abandoned all of that. She could understand the room’s pain. Its agony made her want to cry. She tried to comfort it, caressing the wood bedpost, the full mattress with its Buffalo Bills bed sheet, the once proud chestnut drawers wearily standing to attention. Everything was just as it had been when he left– no, died. That’s right. Died. It was comforting to know that he was with G-d somewhere. In Hebrew school, they had told her that those who sinned needed to be cleansed, purified in the fires of Gehennom. She knew what all those stuffy elders wold say about her son, and where he was after all the troubles. But she still hoped, prayed prayers of mercy every day. If G-d was torturing him in hellfire, knowing the deepest bowels of her suffering, then as far as she was concerned, G-d was a prick just like everyone else in the world. She was glad for the comfort this place gave her, in a way no one else could.

Her eyes strayed to the closet, which was opened just wide enough to reveal its treasures. Winter jackets, summer shirts, autumn pants, spring shoes. Of course he died. This should be enough to convince all those who dare say her beloved son abandoned her without a word. His closet was proof. If anyone told her differently, she would show them these. If he left, she would argue, what were these doing here? He would have taken his clothes with him. A sixteen year old boy could not afford a whole new wardrobe for himself. He would have at least taken some clothes with him, but all his clothes were here. She knew. She’d counted, and every article of clothing, except the blue cardigan, the white tee, the one Levi’s he owned, one pair of loafers, one underpants, one pair of socks were here. He had been wearing the others when he died. Nothing else was missing. He had nothing with him. Naturally, he must have died.

A bag inside the closet caught her peripheral vision. She smiled when she recognized it. His stuffed animals. He’d shoved them back here when he turned nine. One of his friends had come over and called him a girl for having them on his bed, and with that, the animals’ mighty reign of nine years in this room abruptly came to an end. They had been retired to a cellophane bag in his closet and remained there ever since.

Lovingly, she took the bag out and removed each of the animals, contemplating and reminiscing each one’s history as she did so. They reminded her of all the good times that they had together, she and her son, with them. They had always been the best of friends, all of them together. There was Jack and Jill, two small stuffed puppies of some unknown breed. She’d purchased them when his father left and he would scream in the night. His little three year old world had been shattered. Da-da had been his first word. Da-da had been his first loss. Jack and Jill had been chosen by the lost child a few days later. She’d resorted to garage sales for furniture in those early months of single parenthood, and it was at one of these excursions that the lost child chose the two white-spotted brown-yellow puppies with green-blue eyes. They were his first friends. Even as young as he was, he had already decided that people were to be avoided in favor of other things. Zebra had been next. He was a big panda bear from the Bronx Zoo. She favored Zebra out of all the animals. He represented the precious and the endangered. Protect or else face a lost species. Zebra was her son. Oh, how I love you Zebra, she mourned. Internally she collapsed. Zebra represented species endangered by the wanton cruelty of man, all that was precious. I love you, Zebra, she thought again placing him gently down.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah. There was goofy St. Nick holding a menorah. She had been going out with a Baptist at the time. It had been his idea for them to combine the holidays, and his idea for a gift for her son. During dinner, her lover’s daughter called her son a name, and he responded by clobbering her with St. Nick, the bearer of happiness and gifts. Her lover had insisted that the incident had been her son’s fault. She insisted that the blame lay with his daughter. They had agreed in not so many terms not to see each other again. That had been the last time she chose to date a Gentile, and in this area of the country, that decision essentially ended her love life. A lonely decision, but she still had her son then. Those days that she had him, life had been so beauti–

She saw it. The animal she had called Death. It was so deceptive. White like a virgin going to her wedding, a newfallen snow. That was what other people called it, Snow, but she knew better than to be fooled like that. Soft as it sifted through her fingers, like the sand on a tropical beach. Sweet sugar. She was tasted it, wanting to disprove what her memories tried to tell her, then spat it out as the sharp bitterness pierced her. This animal Death had more life than any of the others. This was the only animal that she had not been with him when her son bought it. This animal, he stole for, lied for. He had loved it more than any of the other animals. He had loved it more than her, in the end. She found this animal cleaning his closet a year ago, and he had walked in on her discovery. She had flung Death at him, and he fled from their home.

She never saw her son again.

Slowly, she returned to the present, watching the small granules in her hand. Death had spilled out of its plastic bag when she’d grabbed it. Several pinches of it were interspersed with the rest of the animals. To think, it had kept company with her memories, her Zebra, Jack and Jill, St. Nick, and the rest of the animals, too numerous to count. She had thought the animals were her friends. But the more she looked at them, the more she saw Death. She screamed, shoving all of them back in the bag, and hurriedly ran with them to the end of the driveway to discard of them, still screaming as she dropped the bag.

She caught the glances of some of her neighbors, who shook their heads, saying to themselves, There goes the crazy lady again, losing it as usual. She knew they said this about her, fake pretenders they were. Only she was aware that, as she walked away from her past, she felt saner than she had in long time. She turned back one more time before walking away, ready to cast the ghosts of Death away from her, finally. Her rage tempered and honed, she felt freer than she had in years. She only had to wait, and the spirits she exorcised could murder someone else’s soul for once. She could wait. She would wait. And she knew her prayers would be answered then.