by J. Caleb Thomas
For as long as I can remember, Mother rang a silver bell every morning at six. It was small enough to fit in her palm but loud enough to wake the dead. Even when she was bedridden and pale with fever, she kept it on the nightstand and rang it at the stroke of six.
Some mornings, I was already awake. I’d be sitting at the kitchen table or staring out the window. Still, she rang it. She told me the bell belonged to her great-great-great-grandmother, passed down through the women in her family. It was rung every morning to begin the day. I believed that for a while. I even thought it was quaint. But sometime in my late teens, the charm wore off, and it began to feel like a ritual with no soul. I remember standing in the hallway at fifteen, hearing it ring, even though I’d been up for an hour. That’s when the question started to burn in me: Why ring it at all?
It came back again this morning, louder than ever, because this morning the bell didn’t ring.
It was my eighteenth birthday, and I just woke up. The sun had taken its time rising over the field, like it was hesitating to touch the house. For the first time in my life, the morning was silent.
I’ve lived on the farm with my parents all my life. I was homeschooled, kept from most things except church and groceries. Every Sunday, we drove into town, where I saw other kids my age in stiff church clothes. Heather and Isaac were two of them. They went to public school in the city and liked to act like they knew everything.
I told them about the bell once. I thought it might make for a quaint little story, the way Mother told it. But Heather looked at me like I’d just confessed to a crime.
“Sounds like OCD,” she said.
Isaac laughed, but Heather didn’t. She gave him a sharp look, like maybe someone in her house had it. She changed the subject and smiled at me.
“You must be a morning person then, James.”
“I’m not,” I told her. “But the farm doesn’t wait.”
Heather kissed me that summer behind the church. I thought that meant something. But by fall she and Isaac stopped coming, and she never said goodbye.
These memories ran through my head while I lay in bed, watching the clock tick past six. I just knew the sun was up and there was work to do. Ten minutes became thirty. Then an hour. I stayed still as stone. I’d seen Mother ring that bell through the flu and worse. Maybe she overslept, I thought. Maybe Father was already outside. But my gut was heavy. I felt sick in my stomach, like something sacred had broken.
Finally, I sat up. The floor was cold. The air was still. Without the bell, the day didn’t feel real.
I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. My parents’ door was closed. That was nothing unusual, but this morning it felt like something was hiding behind it. I walked up to it and listened. The silence seemed deeper than any silence I had ever heard. I knocked softly. Then again, more loudly. Nothing.
“Mom?” I called. “Dad?”
No answer.
It did not even occur to me to open the door. I had never been permitted into their bedroom. When I was younger, I had wondered what went on in there, as all children do. But by now the prohibition was instinctive.
Panic came slowly, like cold water soaking through my shirt. I told myself it was my birthday, that maybe they were letting me sleep in. But they had never once let me skip a morning’s work. And the bell. The bell had never been silent.
I tried to shake the thoughts loose. Maybe Father was out in the field. Maybe Mother was in the kitchen. I went to the front door, stepped outside, and scanned the land.
She was there. Kneeling in the garden, motionless.
“Hey!” I called. “Why didn’t you ring the bell?”
She didn’t turn. She didn’t move. I walked toward her. When I got close, I saw her shoulders shaking.
She was crying.
“Mother?” I said, soft.
She turned. Her face was streaked with tears, and there were spots of blood on her shirt, her neck, her arms. I looked for a wound, but there wasn’t one.
“What happened?” I asked.
She blinked at me like I wasn’t real. “James,” she said. “I had to. I had to do it.”
I didn’t speak. I bent down and took her arm. She let me lift her to her feet. She was trembling like her bones had come loose inside her skin.
We walked to the house together. I got her to the couch in the living room. It was the closest place she could sit.
“Where is he?” I asked.
She cried for a long time before she answered.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Gone where?”
“Behind the toolshed.”
I stood still, my mind trying not to believe what it already knew. “Why?” I asked.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and rimmed with something darker than sorrow.
“You couldn’t know what I’ve been through. Not behind your back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have to see this.”
I walked to the kitchen and picked up the phone. No one in the house had a cell. My parents said they were for cowards and sinners. I’d never argued.
I dialed. The dispatcher picked up.
“What’s your emergency?”
“I think my father is dead,” I said.
I don’t remember much after that. I sat with Mother until they came and took her. Then I went to the police station and waited until my aunt Terri showed up. She was Father’s sister. She offered me a place to stay.
The funeral happened fast. Mother wasn’t allowed to attend. Nothing felt solid. Everything was made of fog.
After the funeral, I learned Father had left me the house and the farm. Some money, too. Mother had been named in the will, but his side of the family was already looking for a way to block her from getting anything. They called it justice. I didn’t know what to call it. I believed her when she said something terrible had been going on. I didn’t ask what. I didn’t want to know.
A week later, I came back to the house with Aunt Terri. Police tape still clung to the doors like the place was holding its breath. I wasn’t going home. I just came to collect my things.
“I can come in with you,” Aunt Terri said.
“No. I’ll be quick.”
I stepped through the front door, two trash bags slung over my shoulder.
In the hallway, I stopped. For the first time in my life, I saw my parents’ door was wide open, splintered and sagging on its hinges. The police must have forced it open during their investigation, I gathered.
I had imagined this door open a hundred times, but never like this.
After a moment of fear turned to courage, I stepped inside.
The mattress was flipped. Drawers dumped out. Closet emptied. The whole room looked like it had been thrashed by a storm.
I looked for the bell. It wasn’t on the nightstand. I checked the floor. Nothing.
I stood there for a long time.
Then I walked out and shut the door.
I didn’t need to see it to know it was gone. The absence was louder than the bell ever was.
I used to think Mother rang the bell to start the day. That morning, I learned she rang it to make herself believe the day could be started at all. If the women before her did the same, then there must be generations of pain I can’t even imagine.
Now, sometimes when I wake, I hear the bell ring. It isn’t real, but it sounds clear as ever. I haven’t visited Mother since her arrest. I hope she hears it too.