Open Door Marriage by Naleighna Kai

Author:Naleighna Kai [Kai, Naleighna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Girls Publishing
Published: 2014-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

The wind whipped about and screams rented the air. Six-year-old Alicia and her nine-year-old brother, James huddled in the closet as the roar of what sounded like a thousand engines rattled the house. Alicia’s heart slammed against her little chest. Her brother wrapped his arms around her. His shirt was plastered to his brown skin, making it cold to the touch. “We’ll be okay,” James whispered, rocking her back and forth. “They’ll come back for us. You’ll see.”

Alicia moved closer to James and they sat in the darkness for an eternity. She missed her twin, Lisa, who was at Nana’s house learning how to sew. Their parents had left the house when their mother went into labor. That seemed like days ago. Before the rains came. Nana was supposed bring Lisa home and come stay with them while their parents were at the hospital, but the silver-haired woman never made it.

“What if the wind took them, too?” Alicia asked him.

“No, they promised to come back. Mommy and Daddy always keep their promises, don’t they?”

Alicia nodded, almost as unsure of his words as she was that the house wouldn’t come down around them. The wind had made a shower of branches and limbs slam against the house, breaking the windows and sucking out some of their belongings. That’s when they had run from the bedroom to the closet.

James pulled the blanket about her shoulders. He sang to her, just as he always had when the shadows that played about her bedroom wall kept her from falling asleep. James was so brave and smart. He could chase those shadows away with his voice and she would drift into a happy place until the sun touched her face the next morning. But there was no sun this morning. Only dark clouds. An even darker sky. And rain. And the sound of the wind in its angry journey through their city.

As she listened, Alicia noticed there was something different in his voice this time. Something she knew quite well; something that James was beginning to understand. Fear. The feel of his hand trembling as he tried to comfort her; the slight hitch in his breathing was enough to bring on a different thought. If her brother was afraid, then they were definitely in trouble.

She focused on the words of the song. Come by here, Good Lord. Come by here. Yes, they needed God. They needed someone. Against her will, Alicia’s eyes began to close and she drifted into an uneasy type of slumber with his arms wrapped around her.

When she awakened, the world was a frightfully different place. They were no longer in the closet. As far as the eye could see, mountains of wood, metal, and glass stood in places that once held houses and families along a tree-lined street. The sky above them was tinged with a murky grey. The wind brushed across them from all sides, bringing with it a biting cold air that made Alicia shiver. Somehow she believed that the wind had carried them faraway, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

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