Deep to Deep

If Cylia had any intention of quelling Finlee's bruised feelings, Finlee was having none of it. She stormed into her room and locked the door. Despite her mother's pleadings, she did not respond but tore through her room, throwing anything and everything she could lay her hands on. Damn them all! she screamed internally. Even though she was mad as hell, still that internal monitor in her head wouldn't let her swear out loud. How dare they say they'd just up and leave? What was it about her that drove people away? and with that thought, the anger swirled up inside her transforming to deep intense sadness and all the holding back and making like she was fine got washed away just like a dam of leaves gets washed away by a rain-swollen river. She threw herself on her bed and sobbed.

Almost everyone had gone up to the room and said they were sorry and promised that they'd find a way to work things out but to no avail. No responses from Finlee...just more tears. Supper had come and gone and still she had not come out of her room.

"I don't know what to do," Cylia confided to Rosie down in the office the following morning. "I've tried to get her to open the door but she won't. She doesn't stop crying but for only short periods of time, which I think is because she's fallen asleep. She hasn't come down for lunch today either. Maybe I should have Jaime break down the door? I'm really worried."

During the afternoon, all the residents had come out of their private spaces and begun to gather in the main living room as they usually do. Everyone was aware of this new crisis with Finlee and feeling guilty that they had been the cause. Several groups of them were talking about what could be done, how they might be able to cojole her out with promises of trips to the mall, a new yearned for sweater or perhaps her favorite dessert for supper if Ruby could be prevailed upon making it. Eli was sitting in a deep upholstered chair by the fireplace all the while this was going on. He seemed to be reading the paper but he had really been listening to all this chatter and getting more and more irritated by the moment. Then he noisily closed the paper and tossed it to the floor and leaned forward. "Is this the best you can do?" he demanded of them and then stood up and left.

He walked over to Cylia's office and stood in the doorway until she noticed him.
"Yes?" Cylia said.

"I'm going to go upstairs to talk to Finlee. I wanted to make sure you would not mind."

"Really?" She was puzzled by this offer as Eli had not shown any interest in Finlee or anyone else in the Home since he had arrived.

"Yes." he said without any emotion.

With her efforts proving to be impotent, she could only nod her head. Eli turned and began to walk towards the center stairs that led to the top apartment. "Not sure all those stairs will do him any good." she thought. She also wished she could be the proverbial "fly on the wall" to hear what he had to say. If Finlee didn't come out by supper, she was going to have to do something drastic.

By the time Eli had gotten to the top floor, he was severely winded. He had never been up here, had no idea where Finlee's bedroom was but he needed to sit and catch his breath! He walked over to a small settee that was to the left of the stairs and sat down. The kitchen, dining room, living room were all one huge room to his right and beyond it another room that looked like a bedroom. The door was wide opens so he didn't think that could be Finlee's. Then he heard sobbing coming from the room just across the hallway from where he was sitting. Yes, there she was. he thought. Taking a very deep breath, he leaned forward and pushed on his knees to boost himself up. He walked over to the dining area and grabbed one of the ladderback chairs there and dragged it across the dark mahoganey wood floor to just outside Finlee's door. He turned it so he was sitting sideways to the door itself. He sat down with a plumph and knocked on the door.

"Finlee?'

The crying stopped.

"Finlee? It' Eli." he said just loud enough for her to hear him. Sniffles,

"What do you want? I don't want to talk to anyone. Please just go away."

"Is that what you want, for me to go away?"

Another sniffle, then more crying.

"I'm not going away Finlee. I'm going to sit right here until you want to talk. So go ahead and cry if you want. I'll be right here." The crying continued for awhile and then it got quiet.

"I"m still here." Eli said.

"You don't even like me," Finlee said sucking in her breath with a hiccup. "why are you here?"

"When I first came to this house, I didn't want to be here. I wanted to go back to my own apartment where I was alone. But..." he threw his hands up in the air, "here I am. So I spent most of my time watching...watching your mother and how she runs this place, the people who live here and what they talk about, what they do with their time, the people who work here and what they do. I watched. And I listened too. Their troubles....what happened in the past, what they hope for the future. But I didn't talk to them much because nothing they talked about meant anything to me. It had nothng to do with me."

"Well, you have to get to know people before you can be friends." Finlee answered with some emphasis.

Eli didn't respond to that but continued, "Then there was you. I watched you a lot. I listened to you a lot. I can see quite a lot from my open door downstairs you know.'

"You were spying on me?" came an accusatory voice.

"I was watching you like I was watching everybody else. Like you watched me and thought I didn't like anyone here. No, this is not about getting to know people. It's like playing an instrument, if a string is going to vibrate it only vibrates to another string that plays the same note. All the others are playing a different note than me. I just couldn't feel what they were trying to say. But the note you were sending, that one I could hear, that one I understood."

Silence on the other side of the door. Eli continued, " When I was six years old, I lived in Hamburg, Germany with my mother and father and 3 brothers. Joshua was the eldest, then Jacob and Aaron." He paused and looked up and closed his eyes as he said their names slowly and softly. Then as he remembered suddenly what he was doing he began to speak again but this came all out in a rush. "We were Jews and as the war got going, we were made to move from place to place which was harder on the rest of the family than me... I was with my family, that's all that mattered to me. But it wasn't long before we were sent to a concentration camp and there we were all seperated. My mother went to the women's camp, my father and brothers all went to the men's camp. I got sent to an area where all the younger children were kept." He paused here for a long moment. "I never saw any of my family again."

He stopped and bowed his head rubbing his hands up and down his thighs slowly like a gentle massage. Minutes passed with only silence between him and the little girl on the other side of the door.

Then a voice close to the door asked, "How did you get out?"

Eli wiped a lone tear that was sitting on his cheek. A smile crossed his lips, and he rocked a little side to side and wrapped his arms around himself. "My mother bribed a washer woman, with what I don't know, but something, to smuggle me out of the camp in a dirty laundry bag. I almost didn't go with her because I didn't know her. Not till she told me the first line of my favorite song that my mother used to sing to me before bed. That's how I knew she was from my mother." He softly sang..." Komm lieber Mai und mache. Die Bäume wieder grün"

"That's lovely. What does it mean?" Finlee asked.

" Oh my....something like.. Come dear May, and make the trees green again. Anyways...I went, and an elderly couple in the nearby village hid me in their cellar until they could smuggle me south and eventually got me across the border to Switzerland. I was alive but I was dead. I felt dead. I went through the days, eating and doing chores, doing what needed to be done but inside, I was dead. I know what that feels like. I know what it looks like." He put his hand on the door and turned his head to the door and very softly he said, "I've seen that same thing in you, little one. On the outside all smiles and politeness but inside such sadness. I see you, that's all. I'm here, that's all. I can wait." He patted the door and then sat back in the chair and rested his hands in his lap. There were minutes of nothing then first a click of the lock. Slowly the door opened and Finlee, red-eyed and sorrowful stood in front of Eli. They looked at each other, their inner sorrow meeting and joining before Eli reached his arm out to pull her to his chest and then onto his lap. And there they sat together, Finlee crying softly and Eli singing his mother's song as he gently rocked them both side to side.