Rest Easy

Original Edition: iv. yiska

"When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening in the air, heavy as water more fit for grills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh, only more of it, an obesity for grief, you think, How can a body withstand this?"

[Ellen Bass, The Thing Is]

♦

Whenever Dudley had trouble sleeping as a kid, his mother would always wash him in hot baths and make him something warm to drink before bed. She was like a magician or a good witch; one with an array of herbal remedies and soaps, and the house would be saturated with sleepy smells and sounds that could knock someone out for a millennium. When she was discharged from the hospital eight years ago, she was adamant to start her life over in the best way. She quit her day job and began selling homemade soaps and dermatological treatments that were well-received in the South Harlow communities. Dudley had clear memories of walking door-to-door through the pretty suburbs with his mother, promoting her products on hot weekend noons and interacting with the flashy residents and their pampered dogs on their marble patios. Eventually, she did well enough to be able to set up a small shop downtown, which she decided to name Yiska.

That was what she called Dudley when he was an infant, as he had always been restless. Back when she was still studying for her high school diploma from home, she would be up all night with him wailing in his makeshift crib, as she was inches away from pulling her own hair out. She called him Yiska because it meant "The Night Has Passed" in Navajo, and that was normally when he'd finally doze off—as the morning sun clocked in for its regular shift. He was like a nocturnal creature, spending the light of day in a deep slumber, and fully animated at night. Only every so often would his circadian rhythm align with the earth's rotation, but it was rare until he grew a bit older. She'd always address him as Yiska, until he began kindergarten and his father decided it was best she called him by his proper name, and that if she had a problem with that, she could move and take him back to the Rez and live with her family. Still every so often, she'd call him Yiska, and whenever he would fall out of a diurnal pattern of rest, she'd roll her eyes and tut as he'd emerge sleepy-eyed from his room at three in the afternoon on a Saturday, and tell him, you need to sleep along with the rest of us, not when The Night Has Passed. Yiska, my boy, you're missing out as life goes on without you. Rest easy, sleep calm, close your eyes, when the moon is up. Don't let the night swallow you whole.

His childhood nickname had two meanings. The literal one, and the metaphor. The Night was the Dark, the place that people didn't want to live in. When it was over, light would shine upon everyone who needed it the most. The pained, the paralysed, the drained, the worried. The Night Had Passed, the Day is New, we need not worry, we can rejoice without fear. His mother always reminded him of the silver linings and the lanterns that shimmered along the horizon, right at the opening of the obscure tunnel. When she died, the Night seemed like it was here to stay. He spent every living moment in it, waiting for the light to come back. The Night was Here and it was never to leave, and all Dudley could do was traipse mindlessly through it like a transient in an infinite dusk.

Her soap shop was closed down shortly after her death. It was still an empty lot, waiting for someone else to rent out, to make it their own. Dudley sometimes stood outside the glass doors, peering into the blank walls and dreaming of the days when he'd find solace in the little world his mother had made for them. By now, he could walk straight past it without looking, but it always called for him. The rustic-style sign that once hung above the store called him like his mother used to; Yiska. He could act like the shop never existed, but it always reminded him that it did, that she did, and the tight, tugging feeling in his chest was never going to subside for as long as he was to live. He just needed to bide his time and wait patiently for better days to come.