The Shadows of Time

/                                    The Shadows of Time




Chapter 1

There are moments, sometimes a single second, that an entire life can be defined in.  An instant in which all the pain, and sorrow and love you have ever known is transcended into a fraction of time that tells the story of your life.  So it was with me on that day when I saw a stranger on a spring morning grieving, for what I will never know, but grieving in such a fashion that my entire life was laid bare before me.

I watched her that morning from across the park, her dark hair swinging forward, covering her face as if to provide a measure of protection from the pain that was overtaking her. The sun was shining arrogantly, mocking her with frivolity despite her agony. It angered me;  an unreasonable anger against this brightness, this seeming show of callousness.

Her eyes though were unseeing and shadowed with a grief so intense it filled them with darkness.  I  doubted she even acknowledged its presence. Her hands were balled in tight fists and her shoulders were bent like someone old.  Someone beaten down who had no hope. Some one who had seen tomorrow and did not find the promise of renewal but something instead so terrible she had changed forever. Someone like me so long ago. There was a space deep inside me, a place I had carefully closed off through years of practice that was unsettled and danced its way into the forefront of my heart, all the barriers I had so carefully erected through years of practice eroding. 

I am old now and still scared. I sat there looking from my hands to her face, and then back to my hands, trembling with remembered horrors of years long ago. Memories that I have tried to extinguish, years which I could never quite put behind me. A life, a hundred years ago that is always just a thin veil away. I am seventy six. I was twenty eight years old when I almost destroyed my life. Twenty eight when I changed from a single mistake that would mark me forever. My story was over before it began.  At the age of seven I glimpsed it; at fourteen I knew it to be true.

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                                                    Eva at Nine



She was a tiny girl. Tiny with intense eyes,  eyes that were a startling blue so when you looked at them you either got lost in their depths or turned quickly away so as not to see the loneliness hiding in the shadows.  She was fierce in her smallness and did not trust anyone. Life had taught her that more often than not she would not be the one to come out ahead.  Her clothes were threadbare and tattered and her hair a riotous dark cloud that hung about her eyes in uncontrolled curls. 

Her sister was different.  Elise was tall and blonde and pleasant,  Her speech was polite and kind and her demeanor easy to be around.  She seemed to fit into any situation without difficulty and everyone liked her.  Elise was older than Eva, the tiny girl, but it was Eva who was the leader,  It was Eva who made the decisions,  Eva  who filched  food for them from the street vendors that lined the street,  Eva who stole clothes off of clotheslines for them and  would get chased down the street when she was caught. 

Eva protected Elise and took care of her for in her pleasant way Elise was fragile and Eva was not.  Eva kept her sister from her the pieces of their existence she could not bear to face.

It was 1938 and it was cold in New York, the sidewalk littered with the gray remnants of a recent snow and it was slick under Eva’s feet.  She had to walk slowly so as not fall.  It was almost dark, the sun departing early and although she told herself not to be, she was scared.  She wore the pants of a boy and her wild hair was tucked beneath a cap.  The coat she had on had been her fathers and  despite the rolled up sleeves it hung well beneath her hands.  She trudged along making a trip to her aunts house so she and Elise would have food that night.  Her thoughts occupied her world at that moment and she did hear the footsteps running up behind her.  Her stomach was empty and irritable and it left a dull pain that gnawed constantly. She dreamed of the stew Aunt Katherine made with the thick broth that coated her tongue with garlic and pepper and warmed every bone in her body.  She could feel the vegetables in her mouth and the meat sliding down her throat.  She wondered to herself if that’s what her aunt had cooked that day.  She hoped so.  She hoped on the other hand it wasn’t cabbage.  She hated boiled cabbage, she hated the smell and the slimy texture as  she chewed it  and it slid into her stomach.  She especially hated the taste, the taste of grease and bitterness.  Maybe her aunt didn’t really know how to make it properly she mused because it really was quite terrible.  And how could something be that awful? Oh she hoped it wasn’t cabbage tonight.  Her daydreams had so consumed her that when a hand landed on her shoulder out of nowhere she screamed . 


“Hey!  What’s the matter?”  A boy, only slightly taller than she was indignantly looked at her and held out his hands as if to further emphasize his ire.  “What ya yelling for?”  His hair was red and tousled with curls like her own only he didn’t have on a hat on to conceal them and  his accent was thick and  rolled through his tongue like a rich molasses.

The tiny girl, Eva glared at him and kept on walking.  She was embarrassed that she screamed and she said crossly “What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?” 

Aiden the redhead boy walked beside her, sliding on the ice and said just as crossly “ I didn’t sneak up on you.  I was yelling your name for a block.  It’s not my fault you didn’t hear me.  Where are you going”

Eva sighed,  a long sigh for someone so young, a sigh that should never be heard from a child who was only nine years old. She turned and forced a smiled towards Aiden and tried to grab his hand through the long sleeves of her coat.  Aiden was her best friend. “I’m going to Aunt Katherine's.”  She bit her lip, “We’re out food  and dad…” Her voice trailed off and Aiden squeezed the finger that found its way into his hand.  He understood, he had heard the same story a hundred times before and his situation was in fact worse than hers.

“So why did ya wait so late to go, it’s almost dark and it’s going to snow”

“I dunno.  He said last night he would have some money today, but he hasn’t come home yet and Elise is hungry.  She cried tonight”  Eva looked at Aiden.  “You don’t have to come with me“.  She said it defiantly, willing him to believe she was strong enough to go alone, at the same time desperately wanting him to accompany her. 

“Aww, I don’t have anything else to do and you’ll probably slip on the ice and break your leg if I don’t.”  He said this as he skidded on one leg trying to keep his balance as his shoes encountered a patch hidden ice. “He grinned at her  “See what I mean.”

They walked along in a companionable silence, the snow beginning to softly fall.  It was cold and neither of them were warm in their coats. both old and tattered  and with gloves that had long since seen better days, holes like pock marks scattered about.

“Do you want to stay with us tonight.  He won’t know you’re there.  If he does come home, he’ll be passed out.”  The question was asked casually by Eva to Aiden and he looked at the ground, not meeting her eyes.

“Yeah, sure…Thanks”  And they walked on


Their lot in life did not seem fair, it had been conceived in pain and poverty and the legacy continued with both of them.  Elise and Eva’s father was an alcoholic, a mean and angry man who couldn’t handle his liquor and the basest form of his soul would emerge when he would drink.  Their mother was dead, dying in childbirth after having Eva. Eva secretly believed, even as a child, that her mother had died from a broken spirit and had simply given up, and that she was the lucky one.

Aiden’s parents were both dead.  Of what he was never sure.  He lived the beginning of his life with relatives, until one day when he came home from school and the family had moved.  He was eight.  His story was not unfamiliar in the 1930’s and he landed amidst the cracks in a system that was overwhelmed with stories that mimicked Aidens. 

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Children see events in there lives through a one dimensional lens, a protection  from the harshness they will encounter soon enough.  Eva and Aiden  were never granted that luxury and  had always viewed life as it truly was, bleak and dismal with little hope.  Because she knew nothing else,  Eva did not ask for anything more.

She did wish for her mother though,.  She wished her mother was alive.  It was a longing that lay deep in her soul and filled the corners and empty places with a sweet bitterness that ate away remnants of hope  and filled her dreams with endings that were never complete.  More than anything in the world she wanted her mother. But even at nine she knew it was an impossible dream so she tried to keep it quiet and hidden away in places of her heart that she didn’t use.  It was easier that way. The only time she could not keep the door closed to that one wish was at night before she fell asleep, in that land before tomorrow.  It was during that time the longing became so great huge tears would fall from her eyes.  It was the only time she ever cried and a enormous ball would rise up in her throat and cause her chest to hurt.

Eva and Elise spoke of the mother they never knew often, in an almost reverent manner, the way you might speak of a saint or a god. They gave her attributes that only the dead can achieve, larger than life. She was kind and beautiful and she protected them against their father’s rages, calming him with only a look. It was a fantasy scared little girls developed that when faced with reality had no basis in truth.

At times, Eva thought she would have despised her mother, had she still been living, but those moments were rare and usually she missed her so much she could hardly stand it and would have given away of a piece of her soul  to know her for any amount of time. She wove elaborate stories about her and their family.  Sometimes how she took Eva and Elise away from their father to a house by the sea where she would take them for long walks, looking for shells and telling stories of her life in Brooklyn with  her brothers and sisters.  They would sit on blankets at dusk eating cookies and watching the pink tips of clouds touching the water in a lacy canopy telling it goodnight.    At other times she dreamed all of them, her father, Elise and her mother living together in the city.  Her father never drank and he would hoist her up onto his shoulders and kiss her mother and tell her it was time to go and look at his lady in the moon before they went to bed.

Her father had told Eva a story once when she was small, before his drinking became as heavy. He told her that he never saw a man up there but a beautiful lady, with high cheekbones and upswept hair. He said she fell in love with the night and although her cries of forever never reached him, the Gods heard her and took pity on her plight and placed her profile where it would be seen by the night forever. Eva had always loved that story, and when she knew the moon to be full she would look for this elusive lady.. There was comfort in that sameness, a shared memory with someone she wanted to love and wanted to love her.

When Eva became  a teenager her face eluded her and she saw only a silly dour faced man. She  rarely looked after that.