Faded Glory
I have always hated hospitals. The smell, the artificiality, the aura. And when my mother died of liver failure (or maybe heart failure?) I couldn't be there. It was alright though, I suppose. I was around when she was alive and the rest of her family was with her at the end. Well not dad, of course, he’s been dead for years. In my head they're all perfectly centered around the bed, like when Jesus was born. So when the phone rang and Andy asked me to clean out mom's house I wasn't thrilled. I got dressed and pulled up to it. It was a sad thing. Going up the long and uneven driveway felt like I was on a boat or something, it rocked so hard. My hands couldn’t rest on the steering wheel, I had to keep them moving. Grand victorian old thing, like you'd expect, with the window panes broken and the shutters falling off practically and the trees looming over it, overgrown. Faded blue like a robin’s egg. Very secluded. Why didn't anyone take care of this thing? The old oak was still there. Cecilia's kitten crawled up it and couldn't get down. It was stuck for hours crying and crying. She looked like a little grey speck from all the way down here but we could hear her cry for miles. "She's never coming down!" someone said. Cecilia cried harder and that someone got smacked. My dad grabbed his rifle. The whole neighborhood could hear them cry--Cecilia and her little grey speck too. I got out the keys Andy had given me that smelled like blood and stained my fingers brown. The door gave after a while. The house was a disaster. The sight of it made me get that feeling when you've missed a deadline or you're scared someone left without you while you were getting ready in the bathroom and then you put your mascara down to see if the car left and it has. Heart pounds a little faster, panicky feeling in your guts. It was me standing in the doorway in front of all that house. The porch was covered in tiny white and pink petals that look like snow. Everything was grey tinted inside, but once you blew on it it all went away. The gun’s barrel is a dull, tasteless grey. It’s kept in the basement high high above any of our grasps but one day I found it and I took it down. The gun is very dangerous. The gun is forbidden. I never heard that word before. Something terrible will happen if you touch it, so don’t touch it or you’ll get smacked. Am I understood? Yes. Say yes sir. Yes sir. I had to stack up my play kitchen, dad’s military box, and a Barbie Jeep just to reach. It has a camouflage fabric, thick and course, all around it. It’s wrapped up like a little baby but it’s heavier than any of my dolls, heavier than little William even. I held it in my hands, I didn’t struggle beneath the weight, but kept it close to me. The air got all stuffy all of a sudden and my heart was so loud I thought my dad would come down the stairs and he would know on account of my heart’s racket. It felt like church and my breaths came flighty and far between. The lights in the basement didn’t work. There was a big window and the sun shone through the blinds; it didn’t touch me and it didn’t touch the gun. I closed my eyes and held it some more. I had come to the house unprepared to say the least. What I needed compared to what I’d brought was laughable. Add that to my chronic righteous indignation. I always say being self-aware counts for something but my mother would have disagreed. She would’ve said that makes you all the more accountable because you recognize it but don’t change it and God doesn’t like those types. This house hasn’t heard the matronly hum of a vacuum since 2006 and that’s no secret. Still intact I suppose, but certainly not a one woman job and that’s for sure. Certainly not a one woman-who’s-hasn’t-used-a-Mr. Clean-product-before job. That’s for sure. The house is still so pretty. It's like the ghost of what it used to be, I see it in the spirit around the Baby Grand, and in the old chimney. There are still logs in the fireplace. An aged grace, a beauty queen, a sad little number. Faded glory—Faded Glory! That’s what I was looking for! On the old bookshelf was a carved horse, practically dead, ribs showing, eyes hanging low. Her back was concave with age, her belly sagging, her coat spotted. Her black eyes were long. Very cartoonish, but on the little pedestal she stands reads Faded Glory. Mom loved this thing. I couldn’t see any Glory, only a shame. A real shame. We all got out a big old blanket for the kitten to land in. It was a quilt from the living room, a deep blue with green and orange and yellow and white and mom always said it was the garden of Eden but I could never see it just right. Mom grabbed a corner, so did everyone else. I held on tight and my fingers and knuckles turned white. My dad shot the first bullet. Bark jumped off the Oak Tree. A piece got in my eye. The kitten shut up and Cecilia didn’t. I shook like the Oak. I couldn’t stop and my hands went numb. Dad shot again and the kitten peered down, I barely could see her pink nose. She was scared but she had to jump and this was the only way, kitten, there’s no other way, you gotta jump sweetie, mom said. But I dropped the blanket and ran. Andy, Cecilia, mom, dad, William looked after me, still holding their pieces. Well not dad of course. And I looked back at them as I ran and ran and fell down in the grass and covered my eyes and covered my ears and Cecilia shut up and that poor little grey kitten shut up shut up! All I can hear is me, I’m crying and shaking and rattling like a leaf bunched up in a ball but I keep my eyes locked on the stone wall even though I can’t see too well because the water in my eyes and I cover my ears good and tight and cry and cry because I know the kitten is almost ready, she’s gonna jump cuz it’s the only way and there’s nothing I can do and the ground is so hard I can feel it now and I just know she won’t make it to the blanket it’s too far little kitten it’s-- William had made me feel like the worst person alive. I had a few choice words for him but he was grieving so I kept them to myself. Because he said I could’ve made it home, he said that, and I hated him for that. He says I didn’t have the guts to suck it up and be there and watch her go because sometimes you need to be watched. Now I’m sitting on the stairs with my chin in my hand. I leaned against the balcony and saw all the framed pictures on the wall leading up and up. All different frames so it was ugly. Some were gold and thick but some were silver and slender like a mirror and close up it was just so ugly but far away it looked alright. But I wasn’t far away, I was up close staring at my little family. There’s no lights on in the house so the sunshine comes in through the blinds and everything is striped, but not me because I’m on the stairs and the light never hits here. Only my shoes are striped. There’s one picture I want to find from the beach because I remember how mom looked in that one. Oversized beach hat and long, impossibly long, brown hair. It was always so long. I went up the steps to look at other pictures but the light was too dim to see anything, so I explored upstairs. For the first time I noticed the weight of the silence. I felt like the last person on Earth. Everyone surrounded me, they blocked the sun so that it shines behind them bright white and they look like angels. I taste a piece of grass in my mouth. Cecilia is clutching the kitten like an afterthought. Why do I feel bad about that? Mom makes iced tea in the kitchen and no one knows what’s wrong with me I think, except her because I saw both of her eyes, and except William because of the way he held the kitten out to me. It was hard to drink the iced tea, because I hate iced tea, and because I can’t stop crying and spilling it. Dad says something about how he nearly shot the cat! and Cecilia holds her tighter, and he talks about how she’s not the real scaredy-cat, I am, but it’s alright because I know that you were just too scared to see that kitten get hurt weren’t you and I nodded my head up and down with the glass still up to my mouth but a whole stream came flowing from my eyes again and I panicked because I didn’t watch her fall and I didn’t help her fall I ran away from the Eden quilt and my knuckles weren’t white for anything. My room’s window was one of those that cut into the wall. It was crusted over and I couldn’t lift it at first but desperation often overcomes limitation so I did it and it was wide open and I could see the ground where they held up that old quilt. And I wrapped my fingers around the old mare’s belly and felt the ugly words Faded Glory and the heaviness of it. Then I threw it as far as I could. The fall took such a long time like the old thing didn’t want to leave the house. And when it was in the air I wished I didn’t throw it quite so hard but it fell all the same and shattered in the way things do, and I counted all the pieces that broke when it hit the ground with the white and pink crabapple tree petals, and only when I went outside to pick it up what was left did I remember to cry.
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AuthorStephanie Ballas ArchivesCategories |