Once my mother told me she wasn’t my mother, not really. “Oh,” she said, “I gave birth to you, but –” and here she waved her hand vaguely, the smoke from her cigarette forming a lazy s before dissolving in the air, “mothering. You know. It never really was my thing.”
She was drunk when she said this, of course. But she was right.
She’s drunk again, or still drunk – it’s getting hard to tell. She passed out on the couch tonight. One shoe hangs precariously off her foot, and her short skirt is hiked up over her thighs. Her face is slack, mouth open. Her mascara bleeds into half-moons under her eyes, and one piece of hair, shiny with hairspray, sticks to her forehead. I study her intently. She’s like that Dali painting the art teacher showed us last year, all those clocks dripping and melting all over the dead duck, the dead tree, that dead barren desert. “Time,” he had said. “The artist is showing us how time can stop, move backward, but it never really moves forward. Does that make sense?” I stared down at my desk and nodded slowly. It didn’t make sense, but I understood.
I lay down beside her, wedging my body onto the narrow cushions. I drape my arm around her shoulders. I whisper, “I love you.” The words feel like razor blades in my mouth. I curl my head on top of her large belly. I cling to my mother and unborn sister more tightly. “I love you,” I whisper once again. I close my eyes and melt into their bodies.
Helen Raica-Klotz teaches writing in the English Department at Saginaw Valley University and in regional correctional facilities, homeless shelters, and local libraries–any place where she can find people who have something to say. She has written two non-fiction books, "Empower Me" and "Journal Me." Her poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction has appeared in various places, including "Walloon Writers Review," "Bear River Review," 'The Dunes Review," and "Cardinal Sins." She lives with her husband and their big black lab in Northern Michigan.
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