Painting Mercy

It was raining when I saw her fall from the edge of the cliff. I will always remember that. The rain. How it beat against the window in paradiddles, like a drummer that was impatient to start the song when the rest of his mates were still tuning their guitars. How it blurred my view of her as she fell, making her look like one of my gouache paintings when I added too much water. How it pelted against me as I ran outside, ran to the edge of the surf. How it froze my skin when I took off my sweater and ran into the ocean. How it made the water rough as I swam to her. How it got in my eyes as I dragged her limp body back to land. How it washed the blood off her head and onto the sand as I carried her back to the house. And how it stopped the second she woke up.

She couldn’t speak for a long time. Or maybe she could and just chose not to. She just stared. Even her tears were silent. But I sat next to her the whole time, and I’d like to think that she was grateful for that. I brought her food that she refused to eat. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from the cliff, which we could see from my bedroom window. I had let her rest in my bed, it was the most comfortable. I was fine on the couch.

Sometimes I talked to her, just to distract her from whatever war she was fighting in her head. I told her about the town, how I was usually the only one up in the wee hours because everybody else liked to wake up late. I told her that I lived away from the rest of the civilians by choice, that I didn’t like the noise and company. I told her my name, that it was my father’s before mine. I told her my parents were away and didn’t like to visit. They’re in a different country now, one where there’s not so much water. I told her how I liked to paint the sea when the sunset hit it just right, or when the stars reflected off the top of the waves and the moon turned the water silver. I told her that I could show her my paintings sometime if she wanted. She didn’t answer me.

After three days she finally looked at me. Her irises were blue and had freckles. They reminded me of the sky when the weather was peaceful. I remember thinking that I would have liked to drown in them. Could one drown in the sky, or was that only limited to the water?

When she spoke, her voice sounded like the rain she had fallen through days earlier. Hushed. Beautiful. Sad. “I didn’t jump.”

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t jump,” she repeated. “I was pushed.”

I thought back to when I saw her fall. She had been the only one on the cliff. I saw no one attack her. But I believed her. How could I not, when she said it like that? “Alright then.”

When she smiled it was like the sun. It was warm, it was beautiful, and you realized that you could never live without it. You couldn’t look away no matter how much it hurt. You would do anything for that smile. And you couldn’t help but smile back.

“Do you remember who pushed you?” I asked. I would have liked to throttle them for hurting her like this. But then again, if she never fell, I never would have met her.

“No.” The smile I suddenly loved more than anything in the whole went away and I wanted to kill myself. “I don’t remember anything from before you found me.”

“Oh,” was all I could say. I felt sad, then. She had lived a whole life before this, and now it was gone forever and she was never getting it back. Just blown away, like sand on a windy day. Blown away like something that didn’t matter. How could memories be lost so easily? It didn’t seem fair that something so valuable could be taken away like that. I wanted to cry.

“It’s okay,” she said. She put a hand to my shoulder. It was cold through my shirt, still wet and salty despite having left the ocean a long time ago. Her hand shimmered in the weak sunlight. “I don’t mind.”

“What’s your name?” I asked after a long time.

“Mercy.” The way she said it was sharp like a blade. A blade that I would have stabbed myself with over and over, just to experience the pleasure of hearing it again.

She started eating after that. I learned that she didn’t like sweet food. Which was fine, because I didn’t either. Mostly I made us fish because that’s the only food that people eat around here. She was fine with eating that because it was salty. She ate it ravenously, really. Her teeth were sharp. She still didn’t talk much, only short conversations. But I coveted the words we exchanged like a dragon hoards gold.

I gave her my sister’s old clothes. They were around the same size as clothes I had found her in.

“Your sister won’t mind?” She said when she came out of the bathroom to show off one of her new outfits. It was a black sundress that contrasted against her pearl-colored skin and bright red hair. Her hair wasn’t like fire. No, that was too cliché. It was like a bouquet of monarch butterflies, I decided. It fluttered and was soft and smelled like flowers.

“She won’t mind,” I confirmed. Dead people don’t mind anything at all.

“Will you paint for me?” She asked one day. I agreed and told her to wait there while I grabbed my easel and brushes. I soon returned and went out onto the porch with her. It was still damp from the precipitation that had gathered during the night, but neither of us minded. I began painting the cliff like usual. She watched me in silence, tracing the blue, green, and gray strokes with her eyes.

Her voice startled me when she said, “You should paint me falling.”

And so I did.

“Why do you let me stay here?” She asked one day. We were sitting in the sand, watching the waves roll by. Somewhere a seagull cried out in triumph, probably discovering a crab or french fry or another tasty snack. I envied that seagull. To be pleased by something so trivial as a small morsel of food.

“Because I’m lonely and you have nowhere else to go.” It came out harsher than I meant to. But she laughed anyway. It trickled out of her mouth like honey.

“Then I’ll stay until you’re not lonely anymore.” She rested her head on my shoulder. Her butterfly hair tickled against my cheek.

I whispered, “Okay.”

The first time I heard her sing, I thought that I would die. It was a sound that you couldn’t hear, not if you didn’t really listen. But it was there, it was everywhere. And it was beautiful. It sounded like water in the springtime. It sounded like fireflies at twilight. It sounded like nothing and everything else in the whole world. It sounded like death.

It was during dinner when she asked me, “Why do none of the townspeople visit you?”

I said that none of them liked me. I left out the part that I didn’t like any of them either. I was fine with my house, my house that was all windows and wood. My house that could keep out floods, no matter the type. She brushed my hair behind my ear and smiled my favorite smile. She said that it was impossible for none of them to like me. And as always, I agreed with her. I would always agree with her. Forever.