because my sister hadn’t been home in a few years and
hadn’t been bedside when our mother died of lung cancer
and I wasn’t there either but had been there all day and
had gone home for something to eat where after rice and
chicken livers smothered in gravy with sliced onions and
bell peppers I slumped on the couch with my stomach
heavy and fell into a dead sleep until the phone rang like a
fire alarm and when I emerged groggy and witless my heart
was punching to break free and when I picked up it was my
brother saying Come now the nurses said she’s passing so I
jumped up disoriented by words that knocked me off
balance and at the same time not all the way awake grabbed
my coat and car keys and when I made it through December
cold my mother had already stopped breathing and my
brother was sitting at the foot of the bed with his head in his
hands and when he looked up there was a faraway look in
his eyes like he watched her go until she was out of sight but
he could not bring himself to stop looking the distance
or utter a word so I climbed into bed with her like I used to
when I was little and had a scary dream but this was not a
dream and I was trembling so I hummed softly in her ear like
she did to comfort me and when my sister flew in from Miami
I asked her if she wanted Mom to be buried in the dress with
purple irises and deep pink azaleas floating in a gray pond of
rayon she nodded her head Yes, began to cry and I had thought
that would have made her feel better because she gave that
dress to Mom as a gift but I didn’t tell her Mom wore it only
once or twice and it hung on the closet door like a picture on
the wall and I knew from her tears that I would have to hold
together what was left of our family so I decided not to cry
until a month later after the undertaker had been paid in full,
the final headstone laid and that’s when I felt the earth break
and my body jerk with breath.
Sheila Carter-Jones, author of Three Birds Deep and the chapbook Crooked Star Dream Book is a fellow of Cave Canem, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She holds an MFA from Carlow University where she facilitates a writing workshop in the Madwomen in the Attic Program.
