Lookin' Up

The following is a short story I wrote for an English assignment on metafiction. It borrows the style of a piece we read in class, though I'll be damned if I can remember the name of that story now.

Lookin' Up

“I don't know why you even ask me about momma now. Been dead six years. Ain't no use in digging up bones.” Emily sighed and dropped the dishcloth she'd been washing with. “Even if I did pull out my shovel and start, it's not like she ever let me near her long enough to know anyways.”

“C'mon, now, you know she tried. Don't you? She never...” The words were cut short before they had a chance to be aired.

“Yeah, she never. That's just all there was to it. She never tried to have anything to do with me unless it was to get me out of the way.” Bitterness soaked every word.

“She never once kept me home. Always just sent me away til she needed me to do something for her.”

“That wasn't the way of it.”

“Wasn't it though?” Emily turned back to the sink full of dishes and slowly began to run the rough cotton dishcloth over the soiled surfaces under her hands. The distant fog of a forgotten time rolled into her eyes as she stared past the kitchen window. Her voice came floating out soft and low like the rumble of thunder on the horizon as she began to remember.

“You know, I must've been just over the age of remembering, it was so long ago. I can see it – like pictures gone all old and yellow, creased and worn around the edge – just snapshots one or two at a time. All I'd known, all I'd had... when they tell me I have to go home. Just out of no where one day. You're going home. Wasn't nobody listening while I cried. I was home, but they send me away to this woman who says she's my momma.

Three days of dust and dirt on that bus. Young as I was, nothing but the note the ticket man had pinned to my shirt and a grubby paper sack of soggy sandwiches. Finally the driver who'd watched over me came and said it was time to get down. I stepped off into the heat and you know the first thing she said to me? 'Quit walking like a dog been beat too much.' Ain't forgot that my entire life.”

She fell silent a while longer, still swiping at the same dish, oblivious to the fact that it'd been clean since before she started. She seemed to be lost that fog of hers, unable to escape back to this place she'd made for herself. Her next thoughts rushed forth with the sharp crack of lighting in a tree.

“Even when she had me home, she didn't want me around. Sent me off to that school, they called it. Was nothing more than a pen full of dirty kids too poor and too coarse to go to proper care. Might as well just been cattle. I begged her please. Please don't leave me there, let's go anywhere else, but she always sighed and asked me if I thought money grew on a tree in the backyard. Learned fast not to cry after her when she left. That old fat cow that sat watch over the pen would smack you if you went to crying.

When I got too old to stay with the rest of the herd, it was off to the hospital. Horrid green place that always smelled of ether. Don't how they thought they were gonna get us better. Didn't see a kid in there that was sick for anything but love. But they still sent us off to 'treatment' in the ice baths and gave us pills to make us 'calm'. Just another cattle pen as far as I saw. When the baths and drugs didn't keep us in with the others, there was always isolation. Long hours strapped to a white bed in a white room. No one to see or talk to.

Of course, she made a show of it, being there on the 'Parent's Weekends'. She never came up with the regular parents. The ones who genuinely thought their babies where sick. No, she stood underneath the balcony with the ones that pretended that the hospital said they couldn't come. But we knew different when we watched other kids wrapped up in the arms of their sobbing mothers who cried even harder when the orderly came to tell them it was time to go. We knew we only had each other. Had to be careful about keeping each other company though. If the doctor found out he'd strap you to the white bed long enough to move your friends to another part of the hospital where you couldn't see them.” She paused long enough to heave another sigh that had the sound of wind rustling tall grass. She didn't seem to notice that the dish water had long gone cold and sud-less. Softly, the next set of words began to fall from her lips.

“When Susan got old enough to be trouble, she finally sent for me to come home. There'd never be a cattle pen for dear little Susan, I was to be her nanny and servant. Even when it was time for me to go to school, she'd find some reason and I'd stay home, taking care of Susan or the newest baby. Once when I was really sick, I made up a game to play with the boxes of things she'd brought for me to sort and clean in my sickbed. Only time I ever got to play it again was when Susan wanted to play.” Emily rinsed the dish and found a cast iron pan beneath the swirling murk in the fresh white sink. She circled the cloth around it slowly at first, then began a more furious scrubbing, as if to scour away the blackness of it. Suddenly her voice rushed forward in a pounding torrent.

“It was only when the other kids went off to school that she finally let me go back to school proper. Waited for her to call me home when Ronnie was weaned, but I think the teacher visiting scared her. Think she knew then that she couldn't call me back again. Not after I won the show at school. Never even bothered to come to that show. Never said a word about after it was done. Like it'd never happened. Like I'd never done nothing to be proud of in my life. Been one of the others, she'd have been there. So I got on my way out, and wasn't nothing going to stop me. I got out fast as I could after that. Ran off and joined a show. Put food on my table from it. Made my family and never once sent my babies away. I did my life different. Wasn't going to be her, not for nothing. Even in the last years, when she came round begging for me to let her take them to see the ocean on her way to Susan's, I never sent my babies away. Never cared a lick for me. Just stood at that old iron of hers telling me not to be the dress on the board. Not one thought in her head that she'd been ironing me for my whole life. Just a crease to get over.” The pan slipped from her hands and fell into the sink, splashing water everywhere and breaking the plate hiding underneath the brown, greasy surface. She cursed something foul at the pan before carefully fishing for the broken pieces. Her hands stopped for a moment while another thought breezed across her mind.

“Sometimes wonder if I got on the wrong bus that morning. Got on the wrong bus and took the long ride. Wasn't no driver, was the ferry man. Was that old ferry man took my coins and left me on the other bank. Lord knows I never saw a single day of grace in that damn house.” She threw a hot look over her shoulder before collecting the rest of the plate in her worn hands. There was a slight pink tinge to the water that ran down between her fingers and collected in a small pool on the spotless counter top. If she knew her skin had been breached, she gave no sign of it. The fog lifted in an instant, leaving her voice cold and stiff as it came across the kitchen.

“You better get on home before your daddy gets back. He'll be madder than wet cat if he finds you here.” She turned back to the sink, nothing more than a gray silhouette against the bright light streaming through the window. Age and time had made her even thinner than she'd ever been, and creases laid heavily on her face. She looked more than a little like her mother had. No doubt the rigors of life would continue the progression.

“I love you, Em.”