I fell asleep on the sofa. The moment I opened my eyes I saw Valerie cuddling her teddy bear, sinking herself into the armchair just before me. She looked at me with curious big eyes. I looked at her, half-woken, and my intuition told me that no one had told her about Mike yet.
"Good morning, Mommy." Valerie got up from the armchair and pasted a kiss on my cheeks. The little ritual we had every morning. But this morning she won't be kissing her Daddy, and tomorrow's morning, next weeks', next months', next year's, forever.
"Morning Val." I stroke her brown curls and I didn't know what to say after that. I wanted to blurt out Mike's death to Valerie and got it all done, but every time it was about to slip out, I swallowed it back.
Valerie climbed up the sofa and cuddled besides me. I looked at her, she's such an adorable angelic child with the lovely brown curls all over her head like swirly ribbons. She inherited Mike's beauty gene, those same big brown eyes, so big that it seems to draw you deep into their souls. Looking at those eyes just saddened me. Why does Val look so much like Mike? If she looks a little more like me, it wouldn't hurt so much.
"Mommy"
"Yes?"
"Is Daddy not coming back anymore?"
I was stunned hearing this question. It must be strange for her to see me falling asleep in the living room and there was no sight of Mike anywhere in the house. I couldn't think of an appropriate answer to that.
Suddenly memory about Mike intruded to my mind.
It was a day in the year when Valerie was 18 months old. Valerie was crying so hard on that day. She was not particularly well-behaved, in fact she cried a lot. But then that crying was unusual, it was like she's yearning for something so badly. Mike and me were so busy rocking her to stop her from crying, we have done everything we could. Val didn't stop until Mike gave her the teddy bear and mimicked an Elmo voice as if the teddy was talking to Val. I remembered Mike's smile, that genially curled lips and the smiley sparking brown eyes, he turned to me and said, "this is not the hardest part. The hardest part comes when she can talk, she'll be bombarding you with questions, this little curious brat."
Yea here comes the hardest part, the hardest question I have ever encountered.
"Is Daddy not coming back anymore?" it echoes in my head.
"Auntie Mel told me that Daddy's in the sky." Valerie said, leaning her head on my right arm.
I was surprised that somebody has told her about it already, I was relieved, Mel knows that her little sister are no good at words.
"Val, Daddy is not coming back," I tried hard to suppress my tears, "but I'm here, Auntie Mel and Grandma will be here with you too"
"But Daddy will be here too" Valerie looked at me with her curious big eyes. I looked at her, thinking that I have heard her words wrongly, we stared at each other for a minute.
"Ms. Ronnie said, when people go up to the sky, they come back to see us, but we can't see them." Ms. Ronnie was Valerie's favorite teacher in school, the amiable round middle-aged lady.
I was surprised at how much Valerie has learnt, how much she knew about death. Suddenly I felt I've got a pretty easy job to be a mother of Valerie, there were so many people around us to tell her things and she learnt so quickly. I tried to recall what I have taught her for the past years, but it seems, I could only tell her a lame fairy-tale and perhaps taught her a silly little nursery rhyme. Then the days of my childhood seems to come back to my mind again, it seems so near, it seems like things that had just happened yesterday. My Barbie dolls, my plastic Minnie lunchbox, my mother's delicious pancakes, the fight with Mel over the Cinderella pop-up story book, my childhood neighbor fatty Matty.
And all of sudden, I realized that I'm 25. I'm a clueless housewife when so many of the girls at my age are striving for a career and pretty boys. I turned my head and looked back at six-year-old little Valerie who has just asked me a Christian philosophical question, would I still marry Mike if I didn't have Valerie when I was 19?
"Val, Daddy will be watching over you. He'll be with you to protect you, he has become your guardian angel."
"Daddy, good morning." Valerie turned her head as if Mike was standing behind her, she blew him an air kiss.
She's handling this so well. But what about me?