You Are My Sunshine

            by Celeste Swain

 

Even before she was born, they lived in the dark. The woman, a cold heart with a bitter personality and her husband Larry, a lazy, bearded man who rarely left his bed. Married late in life and against the sincere advice of a doctor, they had a baby one Thursday night in November. A baby whose heart seemed to never surface because it hid in the shadows of their one-story, boarded up house in the suburbs of nowhere.

            “Allergic to sunlight,” it read across the papers from birth, and there was nothing they could do.

            In the next few days all windows and crevices were boarded with plywood, and every possibility for happiness was now closed. She grew up in a room on the left side of the house, lit by two 25-watt bulbs and the yellow flame from a pointy white candle that sat high on the empty bookshelf. The baby wasn’t named for weeks and rather, it was called “the baby” or even “it”. And one day in the midst of a crying fit, the man yelled to his wife, “Go get the little ass!” so her name became Astra. It was, in fact, a family name. The woman’s great uncle’s step cousin was named Astra, but she died when she was twenty-two.

            Some time around Astra’s first birthday was when the woman first commented on her daughters' physical state. “Larry, she just looks so enervated and lifeless,” she said while peering into the dark crib. And it was true. Astra’s muscles hadn’t developed properly and the lack of vitamin D was destroying her fragile body.

            “Yeah,” he replied from his bed in the other room, “she looks like your shrimp lasagna, so floppy and watery.”

            “God dammit Larry, I thought you liked my shrimp lasagna.” And with that, the topic was changed.

           

            It wasn’t Larry’s childhood that defined him, nor was it the slow days of the present. Somewhere between the incident on the yacht and the days with his hands tied away, that his character emerged. Ever since victory in the 2^nd grade science fair, his fingers were always coiled around test tubes and his mind was constantly computing endless equations. Growing up in the comfort of a five-story brownstone on the south side of Chicago, days were spent in calculation. His talents echoed throughout the science community and his face was regularly seen on the cover of The U.S. Science Association monthly newsletter. Then came his downfall. The board of trustees from The Chicago Lab Coat Experiment Foundation (Section 7.1) decided to throw Dr. Larry Phlemburger, PhD, an extravagant celebration out on the lake where he could unveil his new discovery. The night began with champagne drinking, some jazz, and cocktail dresses sparkling under the few stars that managed to peek out despite the florescent city that gleamed from the west. Later on, when everyone was sipping their espressos and all the dinner plates had been collected, Larry made a speech regarding his recent findings in his scientific field. Instead of applause, as his note-card had indicated, “…Thank-you all for coming, now let’s celebrate! (Hold for applause),” Mrs. Dubrovinalanski who was wearing a beige turtleneck and high heels, choked on her biscotti.  All the other partygoers and the seven members of the board of trustees displayed faces of confusion.

            "He's mad.”

            "Is this a joke?"

            "We have a nut on our hands.”

            The yacht was harbored and three large men resisted Larry’s thin flailing arms as he was carried off into a truck. The bright headlights of the padded vehicle tucked away the few stars into the thick, dark sky, and Larry’s lab coats were now replaced with the grimy straightjackets provided by the institution.

           

Eventually, Astra’s body did allow for growth but she still seemed crooked and droopy, and her skin became pale as rice paper. Tough knots bloomed from the dark curls that sat on top of her head and they multiplied with each sunrise and sunset that was unknown in her life.

 

            The Glenbrook Institution for the Mentally Unstable was not a cozy place. There were patches of mold in the corners that smelled like Swiss cheese. It was here where Larry threw away all his mental calculations and began to think entirely of nothing. He spent his free time reading fantasy novels because they conveyed the only kind of world that he could trust. On Sundays, the institution hosted a brunch where all the patients could mingle; Larry refused to mingle. One day, however, he spotted a woman with black eyes from across the cafeteria. Her blank expression intrigued him and he asked for her room number. They spent hours together in silence, and minutes in conversation.

            “The ground on which we tread bleeds only sorrow, as we, the people, the eternal inmates of life, can only watch in pain,” the woman remarked.

            “Pass the sausage and cauliflower, why don’t chya,” Larry said.

            The woman had been admitted due to a failed suicide attempt somewhere on the cornfields of Nebraska. After three years, they agreed to marry.

 

            Astra was never taught about the outside world. The only places she could visit were the ones spelled out between the covers of worn fantasy novels her father had given her. He wanted her to believe in dragons and princesses; he wanted her to believe in everything that wasn’t real. The woman disapproved of this act and would constantly talk her husband back into bed.

            “Reading will only make her curious.”

            By the time she was seven, Astra had read all twenty-eight of the books more than once. She read by the light of the candle. Her favorite story told of Billy, a thirty year-old executive who lived alone in New York City. His routine, dull life was suddenly transformed when gigantic tree-eating turtles that began to destroy the world’s eco-system invaded the city. Astra was enthralled with the setting of a city that seemed so abstract in her bent, little mind. When she slept, she dreamt of buildings, turtles, and the color yellow.

           On special occasions, Larry and the woman would take a few moments out of their day to step back and take a look at their child, the deformed little girl that they continued to create, and they would smile, as if they were saying, “take that society, this is for you.”

           

 

            Larry and the woman both graduated from Glenbrook around the same time. They packed their bags and took a train to where there were no city lights and the moon could shine its lonely rays on the rooftops of the town. They were ordered by the head nurse at Glenbrook to become acquainted with the doctor of the town so that they could regularly pick up their medications without feeling like strangers.

“Psh, I’d rather be a stranger than be a rudimentary clone of human nature,” the woman said. So they never met him.

 

 

If there were neighborhood rumors, they would be about the hairy man and the creepy old woman who stayed locked up behind layers of plywood and never left their run-down house. But the reality was that there were no neighborhood rumors. No community gatherings. No one even knew there was a child wasting away in the dark. No one even cared. No one could have known that there was really an escape that led to the outside, to the cold street that ran down the middle of the empty town. An opening right above the covered window in the man and woman’s room that was regularly closed with duct tape, the kind that is so sticky it leaves residue on everything it touches. This rather large hole served as a portal for when the woman craved new air that hadn’t circulated through her body for weeks. She would leave the house in the morning and come back when star-lit moon hung overhead.  Her bag would flourish with groceries and despite her shriveled heart, would carry antibiotics and new vitamins she would shove down Astra’s dry throat daily with a copper spoon.

 

 

            As Astra approached her thirteenth birthday, Larry received a statement from the bank informing him that his savings were near dry. Aside from the fifty dollar mail-in-rebate from the space heater kept in the master bedroom, there had been no income since Larry’s days as a scientist. For the first time in years, Larry felt ashamed of his lifestyle. He wiped his brow of the sweat that accumulated during his mid-afternoon nap.

“You know what this means?” he asked the woman as his head traced the walls all the way up to the lamp that harbored unlucky moths.

She knew what that meant. Click! With the flick of her finger on the switch, the light went out. In a matter of days, all of the lights went out, for the electricity bills could no longer be paid. However, the fighting began as if a new switch had been turned on.

“I am tired of this darkness bullshit, Larry!” the woman said as she threw a lit candle down to the floor. “I see the light. It glows of wonder. I see it whispering my name, Larry. It’s at the end of the dark tunnel. I need to abdicate from this environment that has stolen our souls.” The flame from the candle was about to grow larger until her shoe came down upon it with full force. “We’ve accomplished what we wanted to, you know we have. I see it in your aura. I smell it in your marrow. Let’s leave this world before our past leaves a permanent stain and before we begin to regret.”

“The only permanent stain I’ll ever experience is from your putrid, oily meat-loaf that now lives on my pants!” He paused for a moment to gather his emotions. “We need to hold on. There’s still more time.”

 

            Later that day, in the lonely hours of the night, Larry was wide-awake, staring out at the black room. It was the first time in more than a decade that he couldn’t sleep. It was questionable whether the lump in his throat was from the un-digestible cabbage quiche served at dinner or if something just wasn’t right. Staring into the room, he thought about space. About stars that shined, and those that didn’t. It was as if he was drifting in space, floating forever, sucked up by the black hole that had really consumed him for years.

Larry grabbed the stump of a candle from his nightstand and lit it with the book of matches that said The Chicago Lab Coat Experiment Foundation (Section 7.1), but in the opaque room, it could not be read. With the help of his arms, he slid his legs across the bed and hoisted himself upright on the floor. Immediately, the oncoming head rush overtook him and he fell back onto the bed, but only for a second. Tiptoe by tiptoe, he made his way out of the room, careful not to wake the woman who was happily asleep to her own nightmares. He wandered straight to the shelf in the “study” (which was actually just a room with some paperwork on a shelf and nothing else). At the bottom of the wrinkled stack, he found the fraudulent medical papers he had created addressing the newborn child “Astra Phlemburger” as deathly allergic to sunlight. Holding the sheets that had confined his family to the inside walls of their own house, Larry smirked as he remembered how easy it had been to manipulate the system. The paper was dry in between his fingertips and as he clenched his fists, the fibers of the thin paper crumpled within. They were of no use any longer. He placed the balled up papers deep in his pocket. It was this particular pocket that held a rather embellished stain.

            “Astra, wake-up” Larry whispered when he entered her room. It was the coldest room in house. “Astra.”

            Astra’s curled spine thrusted her upright as she awoke from her sleep. The air was thick and he inhaled a mothball. Astra didn’t say anything. She never said anything. Larry grabbed her by the wrists and laid her across his shoulders.

            “We’re leaving this house Astra, now is the time.” He encouraged her and said everything would be fine once they left. “We will live in the night that is day, the day that is night. It will be us that will light the sky, you and I, Astra and Larry.” Each step closer to the opening felt like years off his life. “People will understand me. Finally, they will understand.” Yet as he approached the opening covered in duct tape, Astra groaned with each creaky step. The deep sounds scared him.

            “Astra, listen to me! Look into my eyes, THE TIME HAS COME.” The groans were silenced, but she said nothing. “The time when I will be recognized as a genius, not a lunatic, and you will be my greatest accomplishment. I need you. Astra, I need you.” Larry set Astra down before the plywood.  With two hands he peeled back the tape. The stickiness clung to his hands and couldn’t be removed with a swipe on his pants. “God damn tape.”

            Astra gazed at her father.

            “Why? Why are we leaving you ask?” She didn’t ask.

            “Well, it’s simple really. Back in ’79, I was nothing what I am today. I was a scientist. A scientist who wore clean slacks. Well anyways, I specialized in solar personality, a field I created.” He squeezed through the opening and yanked Astra up into the outside air. “I would observe the sun on a day to day basis and monitor its moods and emotions. My peers were all supportive at first and I was the ‘big guy’, you know? The guy with the answers. The guy with the future.”

            Larry, with Astra back over his shoulder, staggered down the damp pavement. “And then one day, after a delicious lunch of honeyed ribs and a lightly dressed green salad, I noticed an irregular pattern on the sun’s social behavior chart, and I knew right then and there, that we were doomed. So, naturally, I told everyone in the science community that I had concluded that the sun was going to burn out, pack up and leave, adios amigo. But that’s when.... that’s when life became a blur. Everything just, it just became…dark.”

            He walked for blocks and blocks, until the houses ceased and the fields began. Vast horizons loomed on either side of the road but were still hidden by the shadows of the moon. “Oh but don’t worry Astra, this is the day. According to my flawless predictions, on November 30, 2009, life will be one long night.” Larry readjusted Astra to his other shoulder and continued his trek. Hours passed, and the fields remained. He never stopped talking to Astra. She never responded. They made their way down the road only to become specks in the distant landscape. Larry was too preoccupied with his stories, with excitement, to notice the red sun begin to rise behind him.