Life in Debris
by
Maria Rachel
Hooley
Life in Debris
©2011 Maria Rachel Hooley
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations in printed review without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Contents
Waiting For Houdini
Turning From Copernicus
Stuffing and Broken Thread
Future Shocks
Grounded
Praying for Rain
Feathers
A Loss I Can Never Hold
The Mach Band Region (Excerpt)
Life in a Bulletproof Vest
How Can You Say Goodbye When
You’ve Never Said Hello
Vocabulary
Strands of Mermaid Hair
To Play In Hell
Purgatory
Finders Keepers
Swimming in Annie’s Heart
Colorblind
Sacrificing Angels
Bedtime
A Thin & Crooked Line
Moulin Rouge
Waiting for Houdini
My first really strong memory of my father is one where he was showing me a card trick with his favorite deck of cards. He’d purchased them in Las Vegas. His long, skinny fingers flipped the cards until they come to mine, and I plucked the queen of hearts from the top of the deck while squealing in a five-year-old’s delight.
“How’d you do that?” I demanded, tugging at his sleeve. “How’d you find my card?”
“Magic,” he’d said, taking the card back and stowing it the deck. “You chose the right card, baby. You’ll always be the queen of my heart.” Then he picked me up and threw me into the air, giving me wings for a few seconds. Living with him was like living with Houdini. He had spent years practicing his tricks, and every day he showed me something new. Something magical. Every day until he was drafted to fight in Vietnam.
Since his return, he had lots of time for card tricks because he hadn’t held down a job since the war. Once I’d heard mom say to our neighbor and her best friend, “Tom has more flashbacks than future.” She didn’t know I was standing in the doorway, listening. Or maybe she thought I wouldn’t understand. Maybe she didn’t care.
For a long time I thought flashbacks were a magical trick, something he’d show all the kids in the neighborhood. I never asked him because I figured if he wanted me to know, he would have said something. Even then, I noticed my mother’s rigid back always turned toward my father when he walked into the kitchen. Even then, I saw the great distance that divided them, and sometimes I felt my body being used as a bridge they stepped upon while trying to remain in the same life while a “For sale” sign swung in front of them.
My father had tried to be a doctor again, but he couldn’t fix himself and there was no point in trying to fix other people after that. My mother never got over his unemployment. By the time they’d divorced in 1985, I was living with Mike, my boyfriend of four years, and the aftershocks didn’t surprise me. My mother headed for San Diego and my father moved to Bowie, Texas.
Even though we occupied the same state, I didn’t drive from Houston much, probably due to the extensive hours I spent working as a reporter. I always thought of him as I looked at the stories coming from the Associated Press about Iraq or whatever country the United States found disfavor with at the time.
Although my mother remarried and sent snapshots of some squirrely artist she’d fallen for, my father remained alone, living in a small trailer house that I was surprised had in-door plumbing. It was like he had retreated from the world he’d once known. He didn’t even have a phone.
In just a few months I would be getting married, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the man who had made magic when I was a child. It wasn’t just the cards. It was him. The thought of walking down that aisle without him seemed unbearable. Instead of writing to him, I drove to his home. When I pulled up in front of his gravel drive-way, I double-checked the address and shook my head. A burnt orange couch sat beside the front door. Half the cushions had been ripped out and stuffing was strewn about the yard. The neighbor’s dogs left ample fertilizer, and I looked down, careful where I stepped as I walked to the porch.
The screen door swung in the slight summer breeze and I rapped on the door. “Daddy, it’s me, Carol.” From inside the house, I heard things shuffling, falling. “Daddy, are you okay?”
The door jerked open and I found the barrel of a revolver pointed at me. “Daddy?” I managed, while staring at the gun. “Please put that away.”
“Carol?” he said, lowering the gun. The door slid open and I saw my father’s bare chest, his skin washed in a paleness. Beneath the skin, his ribs poked outward, prodding the flesh like bones stretched against a plastic bag. “Carol, what are you doing here?” He reached out with his free hand and drew me into an embrace.
“I just came by to check on you.” As I lingered in his embrace, I smelled stale whiskey and sweat, not the Old Spice cologne I had been used to.
He set the gun on the table beside the door and hugged me even tighter before letting me go. “What a surprise,” he said. “A visit from my little girl.”
I stepped around him and surveyed the room. Dirty dishes were scattered across the counter. Dirty clothes lay across the floor, and dust covered everything, even the television as the talk-show filled the room. At the moment, I felt as though I were seeing double, as I noticed the soiled room and then thought of my father’s once faultless order: a line of shoes in his closet, his clothes hung neatly on hangers. The bed perfectly-made.
He picked up one of the glasses from the table and drank the last of the liquor in it. “So what now?” he asked, sprawling across the sofa.
I took a deep breath and stared at his face, the hardened lines scratched around his eyes and mouth. His brown eyes narrowed as though he were simply peering at a stranger instead of me and for that moment, I felt like a child lost in the circus like when I was six and he had found me in the arms of a clown where I had cried because I couldn’t remember my daddy’s name, only that he liked Houdini. Besides, I didn’t have to know his name. He was magical. He would be able to find me because he loved me so much.
“Got any new magic?” I asked, picking up the deck from the table and holding them out to him.
“You’re too old for card tricks,” he said, picking up a pack of cigarettes from the table. He pushed one between his lips and lit it with a match. “And there ain’t no such thing as magic. Hell, even Houdini knew that.”
I stared at the top of one card, a picture of a desert with one pair of footprints trailing in the sand. “You really liked Houdini. You believed in his magic.”
“He was just a man,” daddy said. He pushed the glass back and forth between his hands. “He died performing a stupid trick.”
Blushing, I set the cards down. They had felt warm in my hands. “What have you been doing these days?” I asked, sitting in a recliner across from him.
He threw his arms wide and gestured to the trailer house. “What you see is what you get. I ain’t been able to work. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember my father’s speech patterns before the war, but I couldn’t. I didn’t think he used to talk like that, and he never used to pronounce my name Caril. “How about a trip, daddy? You could come visit my home in Houston. You could meet Mike. We’re getting married in a few months.”
“I can’t,” he said, tapping the cigarette against an ashtray.
“You mean you won’t,” I corrected in a quiet voice.
“I see where this is going.” He rubbed his left shoulder where a tattooed eagle clutched a dead fish.
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“You don’t want me to give you away,” he said, reaching out with one hand and squeezing mine. “You ain’t mine to give away anymore, and I’m not good church material anyhow.” Daddy folded his arms across his chest.
“There’s nobody else to give me away.” I knelt in front of him. “You’re my father.”
He reached out and touched my cheek. “I’m in your blood, girl. I always will be. But the man you knew as your daddy ain’t living in this skin and bones. Daddy is just another word. Just like magic. I can’t give you back either one, no matter how many card tricks I perform. That’s all they are, just tricks.” He pulled away from me. “Besides, I like it here. It’s where I belong. I don’t want to leave.”
“It’s just for a visit,” I protested. From the corner of my eye, I kept seeing those damn cards, piled upon each other, waiting for his hand to touch them.
“I don’t want to visit, baby.” Daddy shook his head and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a twenty and laid it across the deck of cards sitting on the table. “Take that with you.”
I recoiled from the money. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it.”
Daddy picked up the money and the cards and proffered them to me. “Damn shame, girl. You don’t know what you want or need until you haven’t got it no more. Take the money and buy a wedding gift. Give the cards to Mike. Maybe he has the magic you’re looking for.” He pushed them into my hands.
Daddy stood up and held the door open for me. He squinted as sunlight streaked through the door, highlighting the grey that had consumed his black hair. I clutched his gifts to my chest and walked out.
Once I stepped out his door, I looked at the cards as I heard the screen door close. The corners were bent and torn, ragged from use. My father had probably spent half his later life playing solitaire. I took the twenty and shoved it under one of the orange cushions on the couch. Then I started walking to my car. When I reached into my purse, the cards slipped from my grip and tumbled to the ground, some face up some face down. I looked at them and found two cards lying at my feet. The queen of hearts peered up at me. Across her lay the joker. In that macabre outfit of red and black, he grinned at me and I thought I could hear the bells on his hat chiming in the foolish breeze of my heart.
Bending over, I pushed the joker from across the queen and picked her up. A breeze fanned through the tree branches and swept the cards away. That was the last I saw of the joker as he cartwheeled down the street and out of my life.
Turning from Copernicus
Six months after your funeral mass
Grass covers your grave and I sit beside the headstone.
You are the sun in my heliocentric universe,
And I am earth rotating in your orbit.
All the unfinished details of your life,
A damaged roof, toilets that won't flush,
A garage door that needs to be replaced
Have become my life, and every time
I think at last there are no broken things left,
A new one appears, pulling the floor from under me.
My Moro reflex kicks and my arms flail,
Hands reaching for something to break this
Endless ellipse,
But there is only space.
At every turn I see signs of you--compact discs you listened
to,
Your name on the computer as I log on,
Your face surfacing in picture after picture.
But I am as alone in this journey as the planet earth is,
No other planets to destruct into.
I look at your headstone and conjure an image of the man who
Once loomed so tall, he blocked the sun as I stood in his
shadow.
It didn't matter that you were flesh like me
You were my father and that made you invincible.
Till now. When once your body abided gravitational
commands,
Now fleshless, you command the push and pull
Of my world. I think of the sea,
The rough waves that you taught me to swim in.
Once I went too far and you swam to get me
Your hands quick, worry lining your forehead.
As you deposited me on the shore where I stayed,
Watching the waves break.
I remember now with every ocean tide's roll and return,
How the beach looked when the tide stripped it.
Blinking, I yank a tall weed from beside your stone.
And wish I could find a geocentric pattern
In your absence.
Stuffing and Broken Thread
“It’s a typical summer day,” I tell myself as I scrub the kitchen sink with Comet. Sunlight streaming through the window pane warms my skin, and I brush the sponge against the sink and rinse the green soapy murk down the drain. Then I dry my hands. Outside, the sparrows sing.
To my left, a muted television flashes images that hint at the evening news line-up. A wrecked pick-up fills the screen, then a bank. Finally, I see his face—Harley Bernard--ten years older than when I’d last seen him. Much of his blond hair has greyed, and his face, which was much thinner before, has rounded into fullness.
Then come the other pictures-twenty wallet-sized faces, all brunettes with long hair parted at the middle-- a singular blueprint with random minor changes: this one has bigger eyes; that one has a straighter nose; she’s got fuller lips; the next has thinner eyebrows. Kimmie is number eight, the one with the dimples and thick eyelashes, wearing a striped shirt and a butterfly necklace.
Rick, wearing his work boots and faded denim worksuit, stands in the doorway. I eye his muddy soles. “I just mopped.”
He looks down at the invisible line I have drawn. “I wasn’t coming in,” he mutters, taking the Red Sox ball cap from his head; he runs his fingers through his thick crop of gray hair, and slides the cap back into place. “I was going to see Kimmie. You want to come?”
“No.” I open the cabinet, snatch a glass, and fill it with water. Out of habit, he waits for my answer before leaving, though he knows what it will be. I can count on one hand the number of trips we’ve made to the cemetery together; he’s usually a morning visitor, and I go late in the afternoon. It’s not just about the differences between us--the grave looks somehow different, depending on the time, as a cluster of trees on one side shades it in the morning. By the time I go, the sun, high in the sky, hits it head-on. A nest of sparrows clings to a high branch, and if I’m lucky, they sing while I sit beside my only daughter. I know the landscaper, Garvey Simmons, is a friend of Rick, and as a personal favor, has tried to drive the birds away, but the tree is tall and knocking one nest down doesn’t stop the birds from starting over.
Rick hates the birds. It’s not just about the cemetery. He hoses down the mud and grass clumps the sparrows keep dragging onto the tiers of our roof, but it doesn’t stop them; it just keeps them moving.
I stand at the window and watch him look over the cream daisies in the east bed, selective in what he will cut. It’s a small bouquet he’s after, and I try not to think too much of Kimmie’s favorite flower—the same sort she’d thrust into her hair or weave a ring for her head. She used to take them from the neighbor’s flowerbed until I planted a few seeds that flourished to blossom.
I blink away the image of her childish face with a floral ring and watch my husband slowly walk toward the cemetery down the road. He hunches his shoulders as though an icy wind has sliced its claws through him. When we’d first moved into this farm house, I’d hated living so close to the dead; now, ten years since the ground has seamed with Kimmie inside, I know there’s nothing the dead can do that’s worse than the living.
I turn back to the television. A car salesman is gesturing to a new SUV. I sit at the table and sip my water, my fingers unsure what to do. From the counter, I grab a box filled with hand-made fabric dolls, all of them naked, ugly things meant to be prodded and poked, smashed and beaten as a way to alleviate stress. The other ladies of the church have sewn them together. They have written in permanent marker all the fitting places to prod. Stress doll, that’s what they’re called. Now I have to fill them with stuffing, and if I get a chance, sew the eyes in place. In my hand, I hold this stupid toy made of too thin a fabric. I could destroy it just by pulling too hard.
As I sew, I see another story about Bernard flash onto the television screen, then a shot of McAlester’s interior. France used the guillotine; England a handy ax and block. The United States, however, can’t seem to make up its mind how best to accomplish justice. In Oklahoma, lethal injection is the preferred method.
Staring at the doll reminds of Kimmie’s doll—Betty, the dirty, naked baby with blonde hair and blue eyes that Kimmie dragged everywhere. Once I’d tried to throw the doll away, promising Kimmie I’d get her a new baby.
Kimmie shook her five-year-old head and pulled the doll from the trash bin. “No, Mom! You can’t just throw Betty away because she’s dirty. You wouldn’t throw me away!” She didn’t wait for my answer before whirling around and rushing off to play.
As I push the stuffing inside, I remember the police officer coming to the front door one late February evening, carrying the small necklace Kimmie had worn the day she’d went missing. For a year, she had remained missing. Then, hearing that uniformed officer ask me if I recognized it, I nodded. But later I would wonder if I had said “no” would that have stopped the future. If I’d denied the butterfly charm, would that mean I’d spared Kimmie?
At thirteen, Kimmie had loved make-up and frilly dresses. She spent hours primping, curling the long dark hair that more than once I’d suggested she cut in a more fashionable style. She’d plant her hands on her hips and say, “Mom, please--it’s my hair. I like it this way.”
That fall, she grew too embarrassed to be seen with me. We’d argued a lot, and she’d even told me her friends knew more than I did. Maybe they did, but what did they know about?
These are the things I think of: the way Kimmie died, how she’d met Bernard in the first place, and why I didn’t startle into wakefulness the moment he’d hurt her. Why hadn’t I known? There had been a time our bodies were joined. She couldn’t have survived outside my womb. How had I kept sleeping? It’s a small list, but I have no shortage of answers—the fake ones I want to believe into truth and the real ones the police and every newspaper from here to Canada have written into fact with black ink.
Rick reads those newspapers. He does not value my “what if” games. There is only one truth, one means with which to half repair what Bernard has broken, but the truth he can’t see is that some things stay broken despite how we glue or tape them. There are some tears no needle and thread can seam together. My fingers tremble badly and I prick my thumb while trying to sew the eyes on the doll. I stick my finger in my mouth and close my eyes, hating the silence. I wish the birds would sing.
Rick reappears in the doorway, a hand braced on either side of the moulding. “It’s almost time,” he says, fighting to meet my gaze.
“I’m not going.” I look at the doll and jab the needle into the ‘x’ that marks the spot for the eye. “I’ve told you that.”
Rick shakes his head, his fingers tapping the wood. “Damn it, Adele. This is for our daughter. It’s justice. Nothing more.”
I want to ask him, “Will killing him bring her back? Will she walk back through that door the minute his heart stops?” But I am silent, a stone. I pull the thread taut.
“How can you sit like a store mannequin? This is our last chance to face that monster.” He waits for a response I don’t have. In his weighted stare, I feel the betrayal he can’t put into words. He has spent these ten years following every story about Bernard, always waiting for this final outcome. I, too, have followed the stories, but for different reasons—I want the missing moments of Kimmie’s life. They are part of the things I will never have. He knows them. He has kept them fettered in his mind, unwilling to let them fall into my care. How can I watch him die, knowing those silent moments will die with him? How can I let the lethal drugs take away the last moments of my daughter’s life. He killed her. But he also carries a part of her—the last part.
Rick turns and heads out the door. A moment later, I hear his pick-up growl to life, and he drives away. I finish the doll and pick up another, glad there is a whole box of dolls to stuff.
The last memory I have of Kimmie is the day after Christmas. It’s early in the morning, and I have just crawled out of bed. Rick, on the other hand, sits in the recliner, sipping his coffee as Kimmie whispers to him, smiling broadly. Then, seeing me, she picks up her over-night bag, stuffed with last night’s gifts and walks to hug me.
“I’m driving back, Mom,” she says, kissing my cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You just got here a few days ago. Why are you rushing off?” I frowned, wondering where the two days went. Probably in wrapping gifts and cooking. Once again I feel as though time has forgotten me in its rush to get past.
Kimmie slips from my embrace despite me wanting to hold on. “Mom, I’ll be back. I want to spend some time with my friends.”
“But what about your family?” I ask, watching her walk to the door.
Rick gets up and nods to Kimmie, giving his approval despite my protest. “Adele, let her go. She’s grown.” He frowns at me.
I fold my arms over my chest. “She may be grown, but that doesn’t mean she has to leave so soon. She hasn’t hardly seen us.”
Kimmie scowls and grips her bag too tightly. “Mom, I’m not five anymore. I have a life.”
“And I’m not a part of that life anymore, am I?” I try to look into her eyes, but she averts them, preferring the carpet.
“I didn’t say that.”
Rick walks up to Kimmie and sets his hand on her shoulder. “Give her a break, Adele.”
I glance between the two, unsure of which conspires more against what I wish. I want Kimmie to be ten again. Even twelve. I’ll take twelve. I focus on my breathing, wondering how the body remembers what to do so automatically. “I just want to spend time with our daughter. Is that too much to ask?”
Rick hugs Kimmie one last time and watches her go. “She’ll be back, Adele.”
But she never was.
It is mindless work that keeps me busy for the next couple of hours, and so unguarded in my task that I am not ready for the news banner that scrolls the bottom of the screen, proclaiming Harley Bernard’s death. One last flash of his face, then he is gone--Kimmie with him.
I keep seeing her during those last moments, keep thinking about what I’ve lost, how many moments I’ve tried to collect, but she was always walking away, always out of focus in the camera lens, always more independent than I expected. I close my eyes, fingers from both hands gripping the doll, pulling until the fabric tears open, allowing all the stuffing and broken thread to fly through the air like clouds crashing to the floor. At once the sobs rip through me and I fall to my knees, my hands covered in remnants of fiberfill. I am dimly aware of the quiet world bordering on night that lives outside these walls. I fold my arms across my chest and hold my body together as Kimmie’s name fills my mouth, coming out as an unintelligible strangled rasp.
The television screen shows Rick’s face as a reporter speaks to him. Righteous anger has colored his cheeks. I watch his lips move, superimposing my words in the way his lips move. “Kimmie is dead. Kimmie is dead. Kimmie is dead.”
Future Shocks
We’ve gotten good at pretending the past
Sheds no blood,
History takes no prisoners,
And time itself sleeps
Until your daughter says something
That reminds me of you.
She screams in a tone
You would use, and I’m waiting
To hear your words in her voice.
On the other side of the alliance,
My son refuses to speak to you
In anger or fear.
He locks it away behind arms
Folded across his chest,
Fingers curled to fists.
And when we put them together,
I avert my eyes.
I close my ears,
Denying that the aftershocks
Still tremble in those two bodies
As an earthquake that brought us together
Also split us apart,
Slivering fragments of both of us
In them.
Pretending the past
Is black and white print,
I touch the divorce decree,
Time blurs, and the ink still seems wet,
But looking at my son’s face, stained with
Silent tears,
Hearing my daughter’s demanding tone
About how things should be,
I keep the papers folded and shoved
In the back of a
drawer that the future can’t find.
Grounded
Five minutes before the blue sedan crossed the center line and slammed into the passenger side of my car, my mother screamed at me. “You’re grounded, Sam! You’re not going anywhere until you get your grades up!”
“It’s just a stupid English class!” I shouted back. My hand gripped the wheel, twisting. A semi rolled past, and the car shimmied from the momentum.
She glared at me, her left hand toying with the name badge she still wore from work. “Oh, no. It’s not just a ‘stupid’ English class. It’s a math class and a science class and a history class.”
I sighed and fumed as a fine rain speckled the windshield. “Big deal. School is so stupid.” I clenched my jaw to keep from telling her just how stupid I thought it was.
“Is it?” she snapped, unpinning the tag from her blouse. “That’s why I’ve been working at the same job for two years without a raise. That’s why I’ve been working my butt off to get my GED. That’s why every night I hope for something better for you.”
“Who cares about high school? I can find a job without a diploma. It’s just a stupid piece of paper.”
She laughed. “Yeah, maybe if they don’t do a drug test or expect you to be there on time. Even just to be there.” She threw the badge into an empty cup holder.
“I haven’t taken anything in six months,” I spat, tapping my nails on the wheel.
Don’t think about last night, I thought. Or the one before. I reached down and turned on the radio. A heavy rock beat filled the fracture between us.
“Right. Pull over.” Mom’s voice grated against the music.
I tossed my head to the beat. “I can’t hear you.”
She reached down and turned off the music. “I said pull over.”
“There’s nowhere to go.” I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the building tension. Another semi sped past.
Mom pointed up ahead. “A Circle K. Pull into the parking lot.” I gritted my teeth, and she said, “Don’t worry. It’ll only take a minute of your time.”
I put on my blinker, slowed, and veered into the half-empty lot. I pulled into a vacant slot, shifted gears, and parked the Civic.
“Now look at me,” she ordered, staring at me.
I bit my lip. “We’re going to be late for dinner. We promised Dad we’d meet him in fifteen minutes.”
I stared out the windshield, watching a thirty-ish woman carrying a little girl in her arms. The mother’s hand strayed to her daughter’s sandy hair, and, as I watched, I felt hands petting my own. But they were hands from long ago, built of mist and memory.
“So what if we’re late. You’ve been late a lot of times, Sam. Don’t tell me this one is different.” She waited for me to answer, but anything I said at that point would be the wrong thing. “Look at me.”
I slowly turned my head, comforted by the fact that she couldn’t see my eyes. She couldn’t read what was there.
“Now take off your sunglasses. It is raining, after all.”
Mom’s fingers trembled as she laid them upon her knee. I knew those fingers wanted to touch me, and I prayed they wouldn’t. Even if her words couldn’t make me feel squat, her gentle touch could.
I sighed and tugged off the sunglasses. “Happy?” I jibed, staring at the passing traffic.
“Look at me,” she said again.
I turned to face her. “All right. Now what?”
“Tell me it’s been six months since you’ve used.”
I looked at her earlobe. It wasn’t really her, just a part of her that didn’t matter. “It’s been–-”
”Damn it, Sam! Look me in the eye and say it!” She thrust her hand under my chin and forced me to meet her gaze.
I jerked away. “It doesn’t matter what I look at when I say it. The important thing is that I am saying it!”
Mom shook her head and looked out the window. “No, that’s not the important thing to me.”
I smacked my left hand on the steering wheel. Immediately my palm stung from the impact. “What do you want from me? I’m not the little girl who could always please you. I can’t be her anymore!”
Mom leaned against the window. “I never said you failed to please me or I wanted that little girl back. Still, somewhere deep inside you I know she’s still in there.” She rolled her head to the side so her cheek touched the glass. “You think that I hate your friends simply to hate them. You think I disapprove of you for the sake of disapproving. But I see the bigger picture. I see the drugs and how you hurt yourself with them. You’re not hurting me with them. You’re hurting you.”
Her voice cracked, and I could feel her staring at me, but I didn’t know what to say. She went on. “God help me, if it were a person hurting you, I could use my hands to stop them. I could use fists or a gun or anything else to keep you safe. I could tell them, ‘To get to her, you have to get to me.’ If it were a car coming at you, I could step in front of it. But this--you want me to watch you destroy yourself and not say a word.” She sobbed lightly. Her tears trailed down the glass like rain that had seeped inside.
I cringed, tasting the salt I refused to shed in tears. Silence wrapped around me, suffocating. My body ached from sitting so still. “We’d better get home.”
“Yeah,” Mom agreed, dabbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “Dad’s going to think we flew away.”
I drove back through the lot and looked both ways to check the highway, making sure the lane was clear as I pulled out. The fine rain turned into a sudden downpour my wipers couldn’t keep up with even after I switched them to the highest setting. I drove towards home cautiously, purposely keeping my speed slow. Lightning cut the sky, and I saw a huge, dark blur rushing toward our car. It had shot across the lane. I screamed and tried to swerve. The other car slammed into our passenger side.
“Mom!” I screamed. Then the world skidded into black.
I came back to consciousness at the hospital, but it would be hours before they told me what my heart already knew. As I’d come into this world, my body had been slicked with her blood. During the impact, flying glass had cut her and slicked me again, baptizing me anew as her spirit left. Yet I was still grounded.
For six months after her death, I saw her in faces I passed. I heard her in other voices. I felt her in my dreams. It was almost like every time I turned the corner just before the living room, I knew she’d be there in the next room. She was always in the next room until my father drove me to the cemetery where there were no rooms, only a blue sky, blossoming trees, and the pink flowers I carried for her. My father touched my shoulder and asked, “Do you want me to go with you?”
I looked at the landscape of headstones and shook my head. He hadn’t been with me when the accident happened. “No, I want to do this alone.”
“I understand,” he said quietly. “I know this is hard.”
I gripped the flowers, wishing these roses still had thorns that would cut my hand. Maybe that pain would overcome the other I couldn’t seem to shake. I wanted to tell him he had no idea how hard this was. He hadn’t been there. But sometimes we aren’t given the words. “I want to do this by myself,” I said.
“I’ll wait in the car.” He turned off the engine and leaned back in the seat. “Take as long as you need, Sam.”
Nodding, I opened the door and stepped out onto the gravel road. Looking to the left, I saw the monument my dad had erected. I was close. I looked at the stone and set the roses against them below the word “Mother.” The letters blurred as tears burned my eyes, and I watered the roses with my grief just as the sky had washed that windshield. I slipped to my knees and held fast to the rough stone. I rested my forehead against the smooth cement slab. The raspy sobs cutting through me as I finally whispered, “It’s been six months since I’ve used.”