Written with the prompts: you know how we are, working on a list of things to do, no gray only black or white, what?, doors with round corners, rusty knife under the pillow, felt blue, what is your heart doing, worry a lot less every day, remembering/forgetting, it looked impossible, Mom smiled down at me, sell the house, palmed his meds, get more, felt a need to leave, not much more to life than that, shivered at the thought of__
When I got to the house, my older brother Chase informed me that Mama was barely cold. I’d just missed her last breath. He was sitting in the front room in what used to be Daddy’s favorite chair working on a list of things to do. “You go on back and say your goodbyes,” he told me in that perfunctory way he has. I nodded, knowing that this black and white/no gray demeanor he throws on is just how he copes. No point in taking offense.
In the front bedroom, I came across my niece Jenny raking through the closet. She held up Mama’s red-dyed alligator-skin open-toed shoes with the chunky heels and ankle straps. “These are my shoes,” she announced.
“What?” I asked, amazed at this nonsensical moment.
“Grammy told me,” Jenny insisted. “She told me, so they’re mine.”
I squinted at her and moved on. In the kitchen, my younger brother Zander was clutching a can of beer and I don’t think it was his first. “Do you want the house?” he asked by way of greeting. “I think we should sell the house.”
I was tempted to tell him that first we should sell every drop of alcohol in the house and then we might be able to make a reasoned decision. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, suddenly remembering the way he’d palm his Ritalin before school, save it for later when he could take a week’s worth at once and party all night. I squeezed his arm. “Let’s give it a little time,” I said.
I crossed into Mama’s darkened room off the kitchen and saw her lifeless body lying covered with a blanket up to her chin, one eye half open, her lips slightly parted. “What is your heart doing?” I felt her convey and we both felt blue, remembering, forgetting, remembering. I shivered a little, wondering if there’s not much more to life than this. Do we all just finally feel a need to leave? So much undone, so much finished, so much open, so much closed.
“Where are you now, Mama?” I whispered, and I felt her smile at me. No, wait, she was actually laughing.
It wasn’t her, it wasn’t me, it was all of us together, the universe and Mama too, speaking to me in one voice: it seems impossible now, but you’ll worry a little less every day. All the corners will round off, cuz you know how we are. Just go get more chocolate. You’ll be fine.
I caressed Mama’s cheek and hair, and told her still body I loved her. Then I went off to collect any rusty knives hidden behind the couch cushions.
Even now, so much later, I still hear Mama talking to me the way Divine Energy talks—wind, river, birds, traffic, panting dog, purring cat.
You know how we are, Sissy; it says. You know how we all are.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
