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There’s a box under the bed that Ava hardly ever opens. It’s roughly the size of a shoebox and filled with memories. Something she’d bought over with her from South Africa when she made the move to Chicago now over two years ago. She had chosen to travel light, mostly, but that box contained most everything she didn’t want to part with. That she didn’t want to forget. The small things and moments that made up the pieces of her.
That afternoon, though, she wasn’t even looking for it. In fact, she had almost completely forgotten its existence until she went hunting for her running shoes, which had turned out to be under the bed, but were now lying forgotten beside her, in favour of The Box.
Ava opens it up carefully, and really, it’s a wonder the lid ever went on in the first place. It’s packed to the brim, full of photos and scraps of paper and postcards and other memorabilia from her life before America. One where the weather was warm and the sun kissed her skin and she hardly ever had need for a coat, completely unlike Chicago where it seemed you were bundled up for the most part of the year.
Sat cross-legged on the floor, Ava picks up the first photograph that had fallen out when she’d lifted the lid off the box. It’s of a house. A house with light coloured walls and a pale blue door. One where the large, fiery red crocosmia peeked out from over the wall and a chestnut tree could be seen, its branches extensive, spanning wide across the front garden. That was the tree she had broken her arm falling out of when she was eight, Ava remembers, smiling at the memory (though she hadn’t been smiling much at the time, she recalls). She traces a finger across the photo. This was the house she had grown up in, her and her sister Hilde.
Hilde. And that’s who the next photo is of. It’s the two of them sat at the kitchen table, Hilde in front of a large iced cake with seven multicoloured candles, a tiara on her head and dressed in a pink fairy costume. Ava remembers that day well: it had been Hilde’s seventh birthday, and her mother had been crying moments before they had bought Hilde into the kitchen because it had almost been a year since Hilde had been given the all-clear from the oncologist and there was a time when it was hard to believe she’d pull through to make it this far. But she had. She was a fighter.
Ava misses Hilde, wonders what she’s doing right now in that moment, halfway across the world, all those miles separating them as she puts the photo carefully aside and picking up a stack from the box. Next come photos of her childhood bedroom, of her school friends, of trips to Sea Point and down to the beaches. Her parents on their twentieth wedding anniversary. Seashells. Her fifth birthday candle. An assortment of other small objects that send the waves of memories rolling over her, like the tides did down at Long Beach. Letters and birthday cards and ticket stubs. Her mother’s face smiling up at her from grainy photographs. Moments perfectly frozen in time, ones that Ava can almost hear.
She doesn’t even realise she’s started crying until the tears fall onto the photograph she’s holding. It’s one of her with her friends, just after high school had finished. She remembers that one well. And it all just hurts. She doesn’t mean that particular photograph. It’s all of them. All the memories. The time and distance separating her from them, from being back there in her mother’s kitchen, from driving down those familiar roads, from her father’s laugh, from Hilde being just across the hallway from her.
It leaves a deep ache inside of her, which was why she never really opened that box. She didn’t want to get swept up by the past. Because even though she’d chosen to leave, it doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Especially with all that she had left behind, and how, since leaving, she hadn’t been back. Not once. Sure, there had been phone calls and video chats but it wasn’t the same. It’s strange to think of the place, with all the people she’d known and loved and grown up with still existing, carrying on, without her there.
The bedroom light flickers on and Ava looks up, blinking at the sudden light, to see Sarah standing there in the doorway. She hadn’t realised she had been sitting there for so long that it had already gotten so dark. She hadn’t even heard Sarah come home, so engrossed as she’d been.
“Avey? Are you alright?” Sarah asks, concern filling her voice as she notices the tear tracks on Ava’s cheeks, coming to sit beside her there on the floor, leaning against the bed, the pile of photos and memories littered around the two of them. Sarah doesn’t remember ever having seen the box or its contents before.
Ava just shrugs noncommittally, watching as Sarah comes to sit beside her there on the floor, leaning back against the side of the bed. She wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to answer that, to put it all into words.
“It’s silly,” Ava finally begins, filling up the silence, “but I just miss it,” she reveals, gesturing to the photographs strewn about as she leans back against the wall, bringing her knees up and burying her face in them, not wanting to look at Sarah right now.
Sarah takes the opportunity to take a look at the photos Ava had gestured to. There’s one of two girls, one older, with the same eyes, the younger with decidedly curlier hair, both grinning up at whoever had been taking the photo.
“Hilde,” Ava says, by way of explanation when she sees Sarah looking, and Sarah nods in understanding. Ava had told her so much about her sister Hilde, and Sarah could only imagine how hard it must be for Ava to be apart from her, timezones and oceans separating them.
“You both look so happy here,” Sarah smiles, holding the photo carefully in her hands, a window into the past.
“We spent almost the entire day at the beach that day,” Ava says, remembering the day fondly. “Neither of us wanted to go home and we begged and begged to be allowed to stay. And then Hilde fell asleep on the sand under a pile of towels and mum freaked out because she thought we’d lost her.”
Sarah smiles at that, and inches her way closer to Ava, so that they’re both sitting side by side, backs leaning against the wall.
“The sunsets are amazing, Ava tells Sarah, showing her a photo. “The camera doesn’t do it justice. “I’ll have to take you there, one day,” she promises.
“I’d like that.”
“I guess it’s just, even though home is here now, with you in Chicago, it’s hard to see it that way sometimes, when almost all the memories are attached to another city on another continent.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself, Avey,” Sarah assures her. “And it’s not silly. Not at all. Of course you miss the place you grew up, where you spent most of your life. Where your family are. It’s only natural. But, we could go visit, if you like?” Sarah says carefully, posing it as a question, eyes trained on Ava who snaps her head up at that.
“Really?”
“Sure,” Sarah affirms. “Of course, we’d both have to get time off agreed, but I don’t think that would be a problem. I’d love to see where you grew up, and I’m sure it would do you a whole lot of good to see everyone you miss. And anyway, I’d love to meet your sister. Trade embarrassing stories. All that stuff.”
“Oh no, I am making sure you two are never alone together,” Ava decides firmly.
“Relax, I won’t tell her about the time you practically blew up the toaster and short circuited the house because you dropped tin foil in there.”
“You’d better not, Sarah Reese,” warns Ava. “And I thought we agreed to never bring that up again. It was late and I was hungry,” but she’s smiling now.
“Alright, alright,” hushes Sarah, putting an arm around Ava and pulling her close.
“You smell like hospital,” Ava informs her after a little while.
“Well I did just get back from a twelve hour shift,” retorts Sarah. “Not all of us were lucky enough to get a day off today.”
“Take that up with Connor. We traded shifts because he wanted to take Will to some stupid sports game, but, I did get the day off, so who am I to complain? Not when it ends like this,” she smiles into the crook of Sarah’s neck, twisting a coil of Sarah’s hair around one finger.
“Aves, not that I don’t love this and all, but my leg’s gone dead. Mind if we take this somewhere more comfortable?”
“I was comfortable,” Ava grumbles, helping Sarah up.
“Well, if it helps persuade you, I got doughnuts on my way back.”
“You did? From that place on Ellis?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, let’s go, then,” Ava says eagerly, practically dragging Sarah from the room.