A Candle’s Tale

by Juan Carlos Reyes

The spring sun drowned the world in more light than the city of Landing had ever been used to. Gleaming windows and bright mirrors, light bouncing off coins strewn across the ground until each nickel and dime emanated the appearance of a gold nugget – the sun poured its rays onto everything it could. Sunlight shone off the trees, and off the leaves that had started to sprout and grow. It shone off the pavement, where even squirrels appeared to blink on account of the sheer.

Indoors, much of Nevaeh Evoba’s bedroom was also susceptible to the sun. As she sat beside her window, sunlight covered most of the bed. It struck the clocks on her bedroom walls and scribbled streaks of light across her desk. It fell across the closet doors, the patches of unthreaded carpet, and even the shoes aligned against the furthest wall. Everything seemed lit but the shadows in the corner of the bedroom that, by every account and physical possibility, can embrace only a diminished sentiment of sun.
“Daddy,” said Nevaeh. She turned from the shadows in the corner of the room to the trees outside. Her voice rushed down the corridor of the apartment to the kitchen, where her father shouted back despite the exhaustion that haunted his voice.

“Yes, honey,” he said.

“There’s so much sun.”

“I know that, honey.”

Nevaeh’s father had been cleaning the kitchen floors all morning, along the bottom of the walls and behind the stove where nothing but mice bred and died like the endless cycle of rain.

“There’s not enough light,” said Navaeh.

“There’s enough of it, honey, I’m sure of it,” he said.

“There’s shadow in the corner and shadow on the floor, daddy.”

“I’m cleaning, honey.”

Nevaeh fell off her chair and crawled. She found the place where the wall met the floor and laid her hands across it so that no bit of sunlight could reach her from the open window.

“There’s a place that doesn’t have light.”

“I’m cleaning, honey.”

Nevaeh pressed her nose to the back of her hands and smelled the floor around her.

“It’s cold.”

Her father pushed the stove back into its place and connected its cord to the outlet on the wall. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a towel hanging off the edge of the counter. A checklist of itemized things hung taped to the wall, and he crossed out the lowest item. He dropped a sponge and dried his hands with the towel.

He walked down the corridor to Nevaeh’s bedroom and knocked on her open door. He squinted on account of the sunlight that poured into the room. His eyes dampened at the sight of his daughter on the floor.

“Why did you throw yourself off the chair,” he said.

“I’m sorry, daddy, it’s dark down here,” said Nevaeh.

“Don’t throw yourself off the chair again,” he said, and he strode across the room to where she lay on the floor. She extended her arms and he bent to pick her up. He hoisted her back onto the wheelchair and strapped the belt across her waist.

“Don’t unbuckle it,” he said.

He pressed the brakes only to find them already pressed, and he raised her elbows to brush dust off the armrests.

“It’s dark there, daddy,” said Nevaeh, and she pointed to the corner of the room where shadows covered a mound of pillows by the wall.

“It’s not that dark, honey, it’s just not that well lit.”

Her father crouched to the floor and picked up a collection of scattered pictures. A spring wind had blown them onto the carpet, and, with the exception of two that slid under the bed and would never be found, they all lay within a contained space around Nevaeh’s desk.

Nevaeh had taken over forty pictures of her cat in the week since her father bought her a camera, and, in each picture, the cat returned the camera’s gaze with an aligned stare, the serene appearance of a house pet that had never wanted anything more – or so it seemed, as it always does to anyone who looks at a cat and sees nothing in the animal’s eyes but himself.

Nevaeh’s father rose and put the pictures on the desk. He piled them at the edge of it by the lamp and laid the weight of her stapler onto the stack.

“Daddy,” said Nevaeh.

“I’m not leaving yet, honey.”

“Can you make light,” said Nevaeh, pointing to the corner, “to light there.”

“I can’t, honey.”

“Can you try.”

“What are you afraid of, honey, there’s more than enough light in the room.”
Nevaeh turned to the open window. She pursed her lips and scratched her thighs. The wheelchair beneath her shuffled, and her buckle came unlatched. Her father bent over to latch it back into place.

“I’m sorry, daddy.”

“It’s ok, honey.”

Her father opened the bottommost drawer of the desk and took out a small white candle. He placed it by the chair and lit it with a lighter from his pocket. The candle came with its own holder, and though it swayed on account of the soft carpet, the holder was wide enough to maintain the candle’s stand.

“This is all I can do, baby,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but there’s more than enough light in the room.”

Her father picked up her feet and rested them on the pedals. He locked the pedals in place, and, before he left the room, he rubbed Nevaeh’s feet and toes with a rosemary lotion that pervaded the room and filled it with a sense of permanence.

“Thank you, daddy,” said Nevaeh.

“You’re welcome, baby.” He left the bedroom and locked the door open with a rubber stopper.
The sun fell across Nevaeh’s face and hands, her knees and legs, and though her shins lay immersed in the shining light of day, her ankles and feet, her toes and heels, all basked in the heat of the candle. Its flame swayed in the occasional breeze. Its stand shook only if shaken by the long curtains that hung along the side of the window like draped and fluttering cloaks.

At first, the candle’s agitation was slight, very slight, but in comparison to everything else in the room that did not move, it wasn’t slight enough. Nevaeh came to realize it when a breeze blew her hair over her eyes. After she brushed it aside, she scratched her arms and thighs and unrolled the sleeves of her shirt. When she, subsequently, leaned over to scratch her knees, she saw the candle’s flame flutter in a bout of strange winds.

She pursed her lips. She sat upright. Her shirt hung low and exposed a scar on her collarbone.  When she scratched it, she whispered with an urgent tone that she couldn’t restrain.

The candle’s flame spun in its small place by the wall. The curtains brushed it on two separate occasions, and on the third, they almost extinguished it entirely. After that Nevaeh could no longer keep to a whisper.

“The candle’s shaking,” she said.

Her father had already started organizing his cupboards, the ginger and pepper with other spices and the ceramic bowls beside the cups, when Nevaeh’s traveling voice filled the kitchen. He stepped down from his chair. He stepped into the hallway and faced Nevaeh’s bedroom that was down the hall. Her door stood wide open. The sunlight that filled the room lit the open doorway with a halo’s shine. It made the shadows along the side of the corridor appear even darker.

“Leave it alone, honey.”

Nevaeh extended her hands to the candle but could not touch it. She sat buckled to her chair. Despite the lengths to which she leaned to the floor, only the curtains scraped the candle. Only they could read it.

“Don’t get out of your chair, honey.”

The bedroom filled with a continuous breeze that shook the curtains and, in turn, nudged the candle. Its flame fluttered. It almost vanished entirely when one of the curtains stumbled into the candle holder, but it ultimately returned after a beat of Nevaeh’s heart.

Navaeh fumbled with the buckle in her attempts to unlatch it. She snapped the lock with her fingers only to watch it snap back into place.

“Stay in your chair,” said her father, standing in the open doorway.

“It’s going to blow,” said Nevaeh, as she reached for the candle. Her ears and eyes turned red. The collar of her shirt hung lower than it had all day, exposing an array of scars across her chest that suggested a habit to scratch that even her father could not control.

When the candle flame finally blew out, Nevaeh sat up and turned to her father. Her eyes were alight. Even though the breeze continued blowing, the window curtains hung still. Nevaeh’s hair hung motionless.
Her father made his way across the room and shut the window. He closed the curtain and rolled the wheelchair to the bed. He sat at the edge of it. He brushed away a tear rolling down Nevaeh’s face and looked into her eyes. Her nose had reddened. Her lips hung parted. The freckles across her face dimmed in the darkened room, and when her father leaned in to whisper, the girl’s freckles seemed to vanish entirely beneath the penetrating thickness of his shadow.