Page 38 - WTP Vol. XII #2

Dominoes (continued from preceding page) ~
How, how, how, could I have not seen this coming? How did I not realize that Mrs. S’s fall was an explicit sign that I can’t always sense danger surrounding the people I love? That I should have contacted the police right then and let them know that my mother was in trouble? It feels as though there are boulders crush- ing my chest, Giles Corey–style. My lungs shut down under all of that weight. I’m gasping for air when John appears. He’s wearing his green, marching band suit from the Sergeant Pepper album, which is distract- ing, but also, maybe exactly what I need. He breathes with me. In through the nose and out through the mouth. The red tassels on his suit rise and fall with each pantomimed breath. Eventually, my panic attack subsides, but for the rest of my life I will question my decision to not contact the police. Questioning my decisions is something that I do a lot.
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I wrack my brain trying to work out how we can sur- vive this—Carol and I, all alone in the apartment. I double-down on psychic readings, and when we go
to pick up the WIC food supply box, I make an excuse about why my mother isn’t with us. The social worker on duty says she’ll let it go this time, but that my mother will need to sign for it next time. She records something on her clipboard, which scares me, so Carol and I never go for the WIC box again. We go dumpster diving behind the Shoprite instead. John Lennon usu- ally appears (though Carol never sees him). He perches on the edge of the dumpster and points me in the right direction, without touching anything—(John doesn’t like to get his hands dirty). We find entire loaves of bread and perfectly good fruit. We go to the Commu- nity Suppers on the church at 50th Street, and sit next to a homeless woman named Celia, pretending to be her daughters, so as not to raise suspicion. David does everything he can to help us. He sneaks jars of peanut butter out of his house and gets his cousin in Gaskill to spread the word about my psychic abilities, so now I have even more clients.
Christmas is coming. My sister would never believe that our mother would choose to be away from us
for the holiday so a few days beforehand, I tell her
the truth; everything I know and don’t know about our mother—my sure sense that she’s died, but my lack of clarity on the details. Later, there will be more answers. The police will confirm that our mother was shot by a boyfriend we’d never met. That she’d been holed up for several days with this man, a drug addict more paranoid than she was. On that day with my sis- ter though, we are not yet aware of any of this. We only
know that our mother is gone.
We hold a memorial service, just the two of us, in our liv- ing room. We sit on the couch and look at the pictures from our blue photo album. Our mother as a teenager, tanned and wearing a halter top and cutoff jeans, a puka shell necklace around her throat. She’s smiling. Looking carefree. I wonder if her demons have set in yet, if there was ever a time when she didn’t have to worry about her happiness leaking out. Next comes another picture of our mother, lifting a two-year-old me up over her head so that I can pick an orange straight from a tree. I don’t look anything like her. I’m a redhead and look a little like Opie Taylor, from the Andy Griffith show. My mouth is open, like I’m squealing with joy.
“Where am I?” Carol wants to know.
“You’re not born yet,” I tell her. I turn the pages fast so we get to a later time period, and then we see our mother pregnant, standing next to a man, who’s mostly cut out of the picture. I’m guessing it’s Jerry, Carol’s father, a man I sense as being one of the nicest of our mother’s boyfriends, but maybe the most boring. I remember he kept Bandaids in his glove compartment. Finally we get to a picture of the three of us together, sitting on a picnic blanket, each wearing a crown made of daisies. Our mother is in the middle and she’s got her arms around both of our shoulders, pulling us close.
“She loved us,” Carol says. “Yes,” I say. “She did.”
On Carol’s insistence we prop one of our mother’s framed artworks against the TV. We admire the paint- ing, a flowing river beneath a brilliant night sky, and we trace the swirling brush strokes with our fingertips.
“When we touch these strokes, we are one with your spirit,” Carol intones.
“Amen,” I say back, not knowing what else would fit.
We stand there holding hands and take turns saying out loud everything we can remember about our mother. That she smelled like cinnamon and cigarettes, and that once, she let a stray dog take a lick of her ice cream cone.
“She was funny,” my sister says. “Yes,” I say.
That night I fill my sister’s bath with bubbles and after she’s done bathing I comb the knots out of her wet hair, a few strands at a time. My sister has her head bent so low that her chin is touching her chest. “Some-
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