The Temple of Indra’s Jewel: (8 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

G
igi wasn’t feeling better the next morning. My story had shocked her. She’d gone to lie down afterward, only getting up to pick at a small meal later and then lying back down. I wondered if I should have said anything at all. She’d always seemed so tough, but somehow she was growing frail, older by the hour. I worried that it was my fault, that I’d somehow pushed her over the edge with my outrageous story. She seemed so distant; even I was beginning to doubt my sanity. Maybe Nick was right: maybe I hit my head and fantasized the whole thing based on Gigi’s bedtime story and my guilt at losing part of the family heirloom she’d given me to keep safe.

I took the canoe out for a paddle after breakfast. As I paddled back, I felt melancholic. Even the beautiful sounds and smells of nature weren’t pulling me from my funk.

As I walked up the hill to the house, I saw an ambulance parked in the driveway and realized I had heard sirens while on the lake. Gigi’s coat hung loosely around her, unbuttoned, as she was being led to a gurney near the door and helped to lie down. I ran the rest of the way to the emergency vehicle.

As straps were secured over Gigi, she stared up at me with a mixture of alarm and confusion. Two men collapsed the gurney’s legs, picked it and her up and slid it into the ambulance. One of the men hopped into the narrow cabin and began to put an IV in her left hand. I asked to come along, and they allowed me to jump inside. I patted her arm, trying to look calm and reassuring. I didn’t know what to say to break the silence. Minutes seemed to pass before finally the doors of the ambulance were closed. Time was both elongated and slowed.

The ambulance roared to life. I bucked forward when it started out over the gravel. Gigi let out a moan, and I leaned forward, whispering in her ear. The floor vibrated as we twisted and turned. Finally I felt it speed up as we reached the open road. On the gurney, Gigi was a mass of resistance, complaining of the pain in her spine. Watching her suffer was ethereal, as if we were being transported somewhere—not just our bodies being carried in an ambulance. The siren was on, but it didn’t seem loud.
How
will
the
world
go
on
without
Gigi?
In the eerie quiet of the ambulance I felt like I was the one being taken away. I would be alone without her.

We arrived at the hospital. Doors opened, and she was rolled out and into an examining room. Someone asked, “Are you family?” It seemed a silly question. Why else would I be there, tears streaming down my face? Gigi was making sounds somewhere between language and a moan. Finally, someone I took to be a doctor came into the room; dark-haired, he appeared to be in his late thirties. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He looked at his printout and wandered out of the room.

I followed him out to the hall, trying to catch up, before Gigi’s scream rose and echoed with the blood-curdling resonance that only the truly terrified could create.

I ran into the room, called by instinct to discover what pain had brought such absolute horror to my beloved grandmother.

I saw nothing but my aged Gigi sitting up in the bed, her arms stretched out in front of her, all but one finger curled into her fists with a terrible rigidity, as if she was pointing. I looked desperately around the room, meeting the eyes of a nurse as she entered.

“Gigi! What’s wrong?” I cried out. I tried to ease her back down onto the bed, but she was inflexible. The nurse came forward, calling her name, holding her and then shaking her. Once again, Gigi ignored us.

Then she went down. She simply crumpled into a heap in the centre of the bed. The nurse and I looked at one another.

“What’s happening to her?” I asked, my voice high pitched and anxious.

The nurse shook her head, staring at the monitors as if stumped.

“Nothing. She’s fine. Must be a nightmare,” she said before leaving the room.

Green eyes, the colour of grass, opened to mine. They were filled with pain. Her head was haloed by her wealth of white hair, and she smiled sleepily at the sight of my face, as if nothing had happened—as if the bone-jarring sounds had never come from her lips.

“Did you have a nightmare?” I asked anxiously.

Then a troubled frown knit her brow. “He’s there! Turn around!” she whispered in a panicked breath. A sorrow deeper than despair hit me. I wondered if she was hallucinating.

“He wants Mama’s jewels!” she cried. “Hide them.” For a fleeting second, I wondered if Gigi knew more than she had let on. Then guilt hit me as I realized I had done this. I never should have told her what happened—it was just too much. I felt overcome, but I swallowed the sob. A nurse wheeled in another bag, fussed with the intravenous line, attached an access joint to it, and began another drip.

“Morphine,” she said. “That should help.”

As I tried not to think about what she’d just said, I realized I should call my grandmother Greta.

We were moved to a room with monitors, a chair and a television suspended above the bed, with curtains that could be drawn for privacy. It wasn’t brightly lit, but whispers of grey light filtered in through the window. Gigi was transferred to the bed, and I prayed the morphine was working. An hour later, the nurse returned to apply cold compresses to her forehead, as if we were living at the turn of the century and there was nothing to do but apply a damp cloth for comfort.

Gigi bolted upright. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven,” she mumbled. “A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant.”

“Gigi, what are you talking about? Are you singing right now?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Ecclesiastes three,” she whispered. Her words were so jumbled, they were hard to understand, but by the fourth time, I knew she was quoting her favourite passage in the Bible.

“A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” I finished the passage with her, which seemed to agitate her more.

“Too soon. I need to show you.” She fought me as I tried to lay her back down. “You don’t understand. My Bible. Where is it?
Find
it!”

I
guess
everyone
wants
to
hear
God’s
word
in
a
situation
like
this
, I told myself, scanning the room for a bible. Then the nurse returned.

After watching the nurse give Gigi another shot of morphine, settling her quite comfortably, I sat holding her hand until she fell into a deep sleep. The nurses had been very kind and brought me a reclining chair that I could doze in and out of in a dreamlike state.

Finally she woke. She seemed much better. She turned to me, tears brimming in her eyes.

“Come closer, child.”

I dutifully moved out of the recliner and into the chair by her bedside.

“I’m so sorry, Gigi. I never should have said anything.”

“Now, now, hush. Let your Granny speak before it’s too late… I know I romanticized life for you when you were younger, telling you magical stories my Opa told me, but I never told you everything… I never told you what she said… about the jewel being cursed.”

“Who said the jewel was cursed?”

“Oma-Gretchen.”

I shook my head, forcing back tears as she patted my hand.

“Opa-Johanne playfully spoke of it at dinner one night—the night my mother wore the necklace. Oma grew very agitated. Opa called her superstitious, said she was upset because she blamed it for Velte’s disappearance.”

“Velte was your father’s twin who died on the passage over from Germany, right?”

“You do pay attention, don’t you, dear?”

“Of course, Gigi; you never talk of your family much, so when you do, I listen.”

The nurse returned; we both stopped speaking. She asked Gigi some questions about her pain and pulled back the blankets to check her leg.

Gigi groaned as the nurse moved her.

“Is it your back, Mrs. Jackson?”

Gigi nodded, squinting in pain.

“I’ll get you something for that. I think it’s time for a heavier dose. Just a minute.”

The nurse left the room, and Gigi turned toward me. “We don’t have much time. I can’t think through these drugs, so listen up. Oma said the gem was cursed. She said Velte touched it and that’s why he died.”

“Where did your Opa get the jewel set from?”

“He got the original gem from a curator in Ireland. He had it made into a necklace, bracelet and ring set for Mama. It was accompanied by a typewritten note that warned of a curse. The answer lies with the curse.”

“A curse?” I asked just as the nurse returned. I wanted to ask what the curse said, where the note was, but I knew Gigi’s pain was bad. She was starting to shake, and I figured I could wait until she was better.

I never left her side. I woke with every IV and shift change. Sometimes she was lucid, but she was never as clear as the first time. More and more she confused me with her sister, Zafira, and mumbled incoherently about the family curse. That alarmed me, based on everything I had been through. Could she know something more? I rocked back and forth on my feet, needing an outlet for the energy that was rumbling inside my bones. I tried to question her further, but the nurses told me I should let her rest, that the drugs created hallucinations and the patients were apt to ramble incoherently. I had trouble accepting that, but what more could I do? It was like she had a million secrets to tell, and I would never hear any of them.

She died two days later. I went into a numb state. My grandmother Greta and Great-Aunt Addie had been notified, but no one had arrived yet. My friend Leslie picked me up from the hospital and took me home to Gigi’s. I cried for hours, and I just couldn’t sleep. Every time I tried, I had a horrible nightmare.

I was tired, too tired to concentrate on firing my engine back up and yet too restless to continue watching the TV program I’d switched on. Leslie stayed with me all evening, attempting to comfort me. She finally put me to bed in Gigi’s room, where I insisted on sleeping alone, and she retired to the guest room.

I slept for a bit, but it was hard to ignore the scent of her ghost that hung in the air. On impulse, I walked to her closet and pulled her fur coat out. I wrapped it tightly around me. From behind closed eyelids, I could picture her ensconced in the bed the first night I came to live with her. Her room reminded me of a pillow—so peaceful with all its soft greys and muted creams. At the far end were two banks of diamond-paned bay windows, half-veiled by gold-and-cream brocade shades and valances. The windows looked out over the dark, still lake. Chairs and loveseats were arrangement in front of the windows. Against another wall was a large fireplace; across from that was a king-size bed with a large trunk at the end of it. She’d been wearing a sage green peignoir, reclining against a mountain of satiny pearl pillows. There was a tea tray on one side of her, and she had been engrossed in a book. I had been terribly homesick and lost without my mother’s embrace. As I walked in, she had turned to face me. A bright smile lit her tired face.

“Sophia,
darling.
What’s
the
matter?
I
thought
I
tucked
you
into
bed
an
hour
ago.”
Her words rang in my ears as if she’d just spoken them yesterday. She’d held out her arms for me to come to her. Of course, I climbed on top of the giant bed, and she enveloped me in her arms, bending to kiss my cheek. Gigi’s hair had still been that incredible shade of fiery copper; her eyes—always her best feature—were wide and green and striking. Her skin and nails were meticulously cared for. She smelled and even sounded like my mother, so I curled in.

I could feel her ghostly arms snuggled around me now.

“Do
you
remember
the
story
I
told
you
when
you
were
little?”

“Which one?” I remembered asking.

“The
one
about
the
magical
stone
that
controls
time.”

“Of course. I remember every story you tell me.”

“There’ll
come
a
time
you
won’t.”

I shook my head.

“Yes,
dear,
but
it
will
be
all
right.
I
don’t
remember
everything
my
Oma
told
me.
I
wish
I
did.”

“I’ll never forget,” I insisted.

She’d smiled at that.

“You
do
have
a
much
better
memory
than
me.
What
if
I
told
you
the
magic
was
real?”

I’d thought about this for only a moment and blurted, “I’d ask if I could use it to go back and save Mama.”

I could still picture Gigi. She’d swallowed hard.

“If
you
could
 
.
 
.
 
.
I’d
ask
you
to
save
mine
too.”