A Well-kept Secret

by Kathryn Henzler

Many years ago the building of The Wall, that great schism, began. It was quite a brilliant invention. No other force had been as effective in keeping loved ones from each other. Had power-hungry dictators discovered and exploited the secret to using it, they would have been unstoppable. Had spurned lovers known of its ways, they would have enacted their revenge on their ex-lover. For wherever The Wall was built, relationships were sure to dissolve.

But the secrets of The Wall need not be known in order for its effects to take hold on the people it divides. For no matter the precautions taken, no matter the scale of the efforts to keep it from rising, The Wall will divide, disperse, depress, and destroy.

The Wall was an edifice that would split many a family over the course of its dominating legacy. One such family began as some ordinary families do, with a woman and a man living happily as wife and husband, two young children completing the picture. But as often occurs in times such as these, fate pulled the card, and The Wall cast its effect on the four of them.

Now this family, victims of The Wall, had been separated for 17 years. The Mother and her daughter were caught on one side, the Father and the brother were sequestered on the other. At the time we will witness, neither party has spoken to the other since their estrangement, nor do they know if their separated kin are still alive; they are cut off, as a paralyzed limb would be from the brain. With each child missing two members of their family, they grow close to their one parent, the little family they have. Too close.

Here, in the eleventh month of the year, we find our subjects, the Mother and the daughter, in East Bruensmin, a city of about 1 million inhabitants.

Anne Margot, a sentient and strong-willed single mother, is in the midst of cleaning the small, concrete apartment she shares with her daughter of 22 years in East Bruensmin. Stooping from years of sitting at a typewriter to record daily supplies for the Office of Machinery Maintenance, she picks up the books her hurried daughter has haphazardly strewn on her cot in a mad rush to catch the bus to the “East Bruensmin Young Adult Compulsory Occupation Training Facility.” Most of the books are old and tattered—books on building bicycles, running trains, planting crops, sewing bedding, cobbling, ordinary, mundane things. One particular book catches Anne Margot’s eye. The tome is pristine, bound in purple-dyed canvas, the size of a small novel.

“Portal.”

She reads the title of the book aloud, confusion visible on her knitted brow. Curious, she thumbs through its tissue-paper-thin leaves. The tops of the pages contain titles: “Entry 3,” “Entry 14,” “Entry 45,” “Entry 78,” all the way up to “Entry 452,” which she reads—

Entry 452

I started keeping this journal 451 days ago. At that time, I was blissfully unaware of the pain with which our family was surrounded. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gone searching for answers. If I had just stopped wondering that day, I could have stayed ignorant. What I have discovered in the past year and a half . . . it just makes it all the more difficult for me to face the reality of the world outside what Mother and I share. To know that the rest of our family is not with us, that there is this Wall that is separating us, it just makes me want to do all I can to tear it down.

But then I also don’t want to lose this life we have. Nothing makes me happier than to be with Mother. Even amongst my peers, I don’t have a friend who is as good a friend to me as she is. In fact, I find that I can hardly bear being apart from her when I go to the training center. I just always feel this something, a tug in my chest, pulling me back to her. It's a pleasant sensation, though. I don’t mind being pulled back. She’s my best friend. If I can help it, we’ll never be apart.

Anne Margot stops reading the last words on the page. “Eleana . . .” she breathes. She sheds tears at the shock of how intensely her daughter feels for her.

Most mothers are lucky if they can get a hug from their children. Most mothers are lucky if their children say “I Love You” to them once. But most mothers haven’t smothered their children in love in an attempt to make up for a missing father and brother. Anne Margot had. And she has gotten more than she’d bargained for in return.

Despite the sheer joy she feels at the power of her daughter’s loving words, she knows that this arrangement cannot continue. It is wrong. Not wrong to love, but wrong to love so much, to be so attached that neither could pull away. For Eleana, staying would be willful. But for Anne Margot, it would be a trap; if her daughter never leaves her, Anne Margot must always love her as fiercely as she had before. She would have no choice but to permanently care for the daughter she so desperately wanted to see independent and happy.

In her mind’s eye, she sees two women, the spitting image of her and Eleana, rowing a boat in the middle of an aquamarine pond. Their sunbonnets match their dresses, and each of them smiles at the beauty of the day, the sun creating natural rouge on their cheeks. As they sit enjoying each other’s company, they are so preoccupied with their own happiness that they remain unaware of the danger approaching. Blue-gray storm clouds gather in the distance, a thunderstorm preparing to unleash.

Determined, Anne Margot turns back to the “Portal,” flipping pages to land at the very beginning of the book.

Entry 1

My mind is in a whirl. Today, while walking home from school through the trees on the right side of the road, I saw a body of water frozen over. The air was frigid, and the hot chocolate waiting for me at home enticed me to keep going, but I had to get a closer look.

I trekked off the road and made my way through the brush to the edge of the water. I couldn’t see myself in the surface like in the summertime, although it was as smooth as glass. Gingerly, I walked onto the plane of its surface. I could feel the cold emanating up through my thin-soled shoes to my feet.

I heard voices just then, so I scrambled back through the brush to the safety of the well-frequented road, back to more familiar territory. I hurried to continue home, but I snuck a glance back at the little pond. Two lithe forms were cutting the glass, creating intricate swirls and patterns as they danced across its surface. A sort of pang ripped through my stomach. The feeling startled me, so I ran home, playing over and over in my head the vision of the lanky boy and the petite girl gliding around and around on that sheet of ice.

When I returned to our apartment block, Mom met me with a mug of hot chocolate and the news that I had been accepted into the prestigious “East Bruensmin Young Adult Compulsory Occupation Training Facility.” Hearing that my path was already decided sent a chill through me. A compulsory occupation wasn’t what I wanted. Of that much, I was certain. Somehow, although there is no way I can see now to back out of that path, I knew that I had to do my best to try and find one. No matter what anyone tells me, like that boy and girl, I will step on that ice, and I will fly.

The vision of the pond from before becomes clearer now. As the storm clouds bear down on the pair in the boat on the water, it hurls words at them like thunder: “Must!” “No choice!” “World says!” “Compulsion!” “Stay!” The water around the boat turns from aquamarine to boiling black as both light and sky are hidden behind angry clouds. The women take hold of their oars, scrambling to keep the boat from tipping over in the thrashing waves. But the world proves to be too much to handle.

A bolt of lightning, a thunderous clap of “NO,” one last churning wave of water, and the boat carrying the two women capsizes. Both are left flailing in the pond, though now it has morphed into a never-ending sea. The circumstances, the storms of the world, hold them trapped as they start to drown in the storm.

Years went by in that stormy sea. The pair did not die because life would not mandate their release. They could not escape because all they had was each other, and they would not let go. That is until one day, when a cool breath of wind began to gently blow the clouds away. Colder and colder still, the wind blew. The clouds left, and somehow, in the middle of the sea, the spot the wind had made the coldest began to harden into crystal.

Anne Margot shivered in the chill, and turning to Eleana, saw a glow she had never seen before on her child’s face. Eleana returned her mother’s look, and after a moment, spoke softly.

“Swim to shore, Mom.” With a wistful smile, she glanced out at the ever-growing island of ice.

Anne Margot closes the book. She sits still on the bed, ready to wait the remaining hours of the day for her not-so-little girl to come home to her.

Ready to help her break away forever, ready to help her find her path.

Even if the world said no.

“Yes, my girl. I will make sure that you can be free.”