Vigil

I don't know why I am here. I don't feel like I want to be here.
Everyone here wraps themselves around me like blankets protecting me
from what they suspect may hurt me.


My sister Susannah is protecting me from grief. "Be strong
Naomi. We must be strong." I don't feel like being strong. I feel like
being somewhere else but I can't leave the vigil.


My best friend Kissy is protecting me from my fear. She
buzzes around speaking to the emergency services continually and brings
us tea. She updates us thirty times and hour. Kissy is a one woman
breaking news service. When this is over, I may recommend her to
CNN.
"Kissy. Find out what time the accident happened."
"I already did. About one o'clock they think."
"They think? Can't they be anymore specific?"


My mother steps in and calms her lamb.


My mother is protecting me from the fear of loneliness. She
lost my father many years ago and surely can't bear me to course in her
weary steps. My mother's name is Rose but everyone calls her Mumu; some
retained baby talk we guess.


We all three are close, but not the closest.


Sharing is not a tradition that endures beyond the dinner
table so when desperate and dangerous times come a calling, each of us
is awkwardly upset and in the way. This is the reason I can't share
with them the burden of what is strapped to my heart.


The vigil has lasted fifteen hours. None of us has slept
since the phone rang this morning. There's nothing we can do except
stand under the hot halogen lights and tremble, hands in pockets, hands
holding hands, hands over mouths to keep their hearts in.



Crowds have joined the vigil along with the television crews.
It's like being on a stage with nothing to play. My false tears
captured for posterity, sting like lemon juice.


My husband Mike is in the darkness below with his comrades.
I've no idea whether he's trapped, blinded, suffocated, drowned or just
plain ol' dead, but I have some idea of what he's going through.



The mine has supported generations of the town's families and
now it chooses to crush us quite arbitrarily. I sympathise with the
mine in some respects. After decades of waiting whilst it's cavities
are drilled, gauged and bored, the patient has finally decided to bite
its clumsy dentist. It has already claimed a few fingers; we watched
for a nervous hour for an official to approach us but no-one came so we
remain in vigil.


I've been here so long that I've forgotten about my own body.
I've been transfixed like a bhudda on the entrance to the mine. My
feet, now I think of them are colder than the sea in winter. I try to
stamp them but it's too painful, it's almost as painful to think of how
cold it must be for those men down there. I've never been down below.
Most of the wives have; an annual trip organised by the Company down to
the first level. I'm not claustrophobic but I am suspicious. Mike told
me that the trip is a way to keep the troops loyal. I prefer the facts
and the facts are that mining is only as safe as the people you work
with both in the short term and it is as safe as the stuff you're
actually mining the long term. A little known but perverse fact is that
more supervisors die in the mines than miners, but either way 70 people
die every year in the United States and it's mostly because of
machines.


"What is taking them so long?" My mother won't shut-up. She
doesn't understand but I forgive her. "Mike could have climbed out by
himself by now surely?" Her hope is inherent. My hope hovers up and
down like the news helicopter above the rescue site. I'm not sure what
I'm hoping for.


This morning before Mike left for work, I prepared his lunch
as usual. When he works the dayshift, he likes a lot of fruit and big
thick sandwiches, cheese laced with chutney or caramelised onion is his
favourite. On the nightshift he prefers pie or cold versions of our
evening meal. I'm constantly over cooking, they should give us a food
allowance, he burns so many calories. This morning I placed a letter in
Mike's heavy duty lunchbox under his sandwiches. The letter had taken
me months to complete, and years to formulate. I figured that the only
sensible place that Mike could get the news of my leaving was two miles
underground. I thought he'll wreck the place anyway and I'd sooner not
be around when he does it. Don't get me wrong, he's not a violent man.
He has never laid a finger on me, it's just that the men 'round here
are, physical.


Mike knows why I'm leaving him. My reasons are as prosaic as
the next disgruntled wife. Last night as we lay in bed on our sides,
his dark pitted back loomed like the walls he pounds. He twitched the
way he sometimes does in his sleep and something dropped from his hair
onto the sheet between us. It was a tiny fragment of coal. I stared at
it. Unable to help myself I pressed down on the fragment with my index
finger, raised it to my lips and swallowed it whole.


There is some commotion and the familiar sounds of American
joy. Kissy has missed the most important breaking news of the day. I
remain rooted to the spot. Mumu is confused for all of us. "Have they
got them out? Where's Michael?" "C'mon." My sister tugs on my arm.
"They're out, they're all out."


I step carefully across the site. A group of helmeted men are
breaking into longer strides and sprints to greet their wives, partners
and children who work through the momentary confusion since the men all
look the same, blackened by coal dust.


Mike's walking not running like the others. I can only assume
that he will walk right by. Instead he coolly walks up to me and stands
close. Compared to me, he is a giant and so when I look down, I look at
his belly. I feel a long delicate kiss on my forehead and I see tears
staining my dusty shoes. A voice comes from behind him.
"Mike." A rescue worker out of breath. "I couldn't leave this behind."
I peer out from behind my husband. The man's waving Mike's battered and
crushed lunchbox. The rescue worker hands it to me. The lunchbox is
almost unrecognizable as the object it was this morning and it's
clearly impossible to open.


The man speaks up again. "Mam. Along with that lunchbox, your
husband saved a lot of lives."
"Well we should get that put that on display." I hand the lunchbox back
to the rescue worker. I look at Mike. I've stopped crying now and feel
brave enough to muster a smile. "C'mon hero let's go get you cleaned
up."