Chapter 11.1 - Thinking With the Hands

The newborn sounds and scents of summer filled Claire’s heart with an indescribable longing, with the mottled memory of something long gone, very precious and almost forgotten. She panicked like she had suddenly been made aware of its absence. She searched for this something for days, inside her soul and out in the garden, in every blade of grass and every gust of wind. She searched for it in the stones around the pond and in the song of the tree frogs, in the scant light of the starry night and in the blooming of lilies.

The more she searched for it the more it eluded her, that buried impression from long ago. It was lost to the fog of old memories and she couldn’t tell whether it was from this life or from before, from a time with other rules, with other contexts.

This elusive memory was holding the key to a door Claire had been forbidden to open but never given the reason why.

In a daze she lifted her hands to her face and turned them, facing up, joined at the edges like an open book. She looked at them for a while, noticing the subtle details of her palms, the little acid dimple that she got from decorating Easter eggs when she was five, the place where she had cut her index on a broken cup when she was eight, the strange way fine lines joined into a little star at the center of her left palm, the soft fleshy mounds at the base of her fingers, the network of blue veins which showed through the thin skin of her wrists, the translucent tips of her fingernails. As if summoned the sun came out from behind the clouds and filled her palms with light; for a precious second she remembered what she was searching for, a second, no more, and then it was lost.

She folded her palms together in an attempt to capture that flash of remembrance in the memory of her cells at least, if she couldn’t do it consciously, she tried to hold on to it a second longer, maybe feel its substance in her hands, like she had felt the scent of violet or the shape of the fog. The memory lingered for a while, struggling to escape her closed palms with a fluttering of butterfly wings and warming up her hands in the process, and then it melted into nothing. 

Claire reluctantly opened her hands, fearing that whatever was inside them was trying to trick her and pretend it was gone, just to escape the second she let go, but there was nothing, only the touch of the wind.

“What on earth are you doing?” Grandfather exclaimed bewildered. Claire figured how strange she must have looked, reading her own palms like a book. She put her hands down and smiled, embarrassed.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just trying to remember something.”

“And you think your hands are going to reveal it?” Grandfather continued unsure.

Claire didn’t answer, but that was exactly what she unknowingly expected. Everything there was to know that her mind couldn’t recall or understand her hands brought out from the depths of her soul for her: the feelings in her paintings, the touch of the unseen substance of the world, the expression of inexpressible thoughts. Claire’s hands seemed to live under the direct orders of her higher self in a quasi autonomy of sensing and motion that only made sense in retrospect. They were the maps of her soul, her hands, maps, tools, mirrors of her life. They allowed the world to share its essence with Claire and blend it into her being in a soft flow that did not require explanation. Her palms were open doors to everywhere.

“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling. “I guess I’ll just have to try them and find out.”

Grandfather rested his hand on Claire’s shoulder and she could feel its familiar warmth and weight like she did so many times growing up.

“I hope they do, sweetie,” he sighed. “I hope they do.”

“What are you two talking about?” Grandmother showed up from the porch.

Claire expected Grandfather to crack a joke about her weird contemplative session, but he looked serious, consumed by a thought.

“Nothing,” he said, looking up at the fickle sun which moved in and out of the clouds in a strange game of peekaboo. “I guess we’re going to have some rain later this afternoon, I’ll go pick the tomatoes, I don’t want them to crack.”

Grandmother was surrounded by a cloud of violet fragrance and Claire, whose senses liked to play tricks on her and cross wires in ways that shouldn’t be crossed, thought she was having one of those moments again, like the time when she had smelled colors.

“I figured I’d use it,” Grandmother chuckled embarrassed. “Be a shame for it to go to waste. Remember when we found the bottle in the attic? They don’t make this perfume anymore, that’s a pity.” 

As if to disagree the thick clumps of sweet violets at their feet reflected the scent, stirring echoes of it like waves in a pond, if only a little greener and a little less intense. The wind mixed the perfumes together and then there was one and it had familiar top notes - the shrill scent of the color violet and the unmistakable smell of the garden right before the rain. 

“It’s good for the plants,” Grandmother nodded. She looked at the sky, where rain clouds were gathering fast, like they do during summer storms, and smiled, pleased like she’d been presented with a gift. “A strong summer rain is a blessing from above,” she looked at her granddaughter whose worried face looked almost comical. “You look like you’re going to tell nature that you don’t approve!” Grandmother burst out laughing. “Let it rain, bebelle! Let it rain!”

The first drops started falling, large and heavy, and Claire’s hands answered their own calls again. Without thinking she lifted them and turned her palms up to catch the gift from the sky in their shallow bowls.