Status: One shot. Contest entry. Finished.
Mulberry, Alabama
Mulberry, Alabama
Mulberry, Alabama
“No,” I said, shaking my head as though she could see me on the other end of the phone.
“Stop shaking your head ‘no,’ Luke, Mama wants to see you,” my younger sister Ashleigh said to me. I glanced around the apartment to reassure myself that she was still in Alabama.
“Mama talks to me every Sunday before church. I’m sure she would’ve told me if-”
“She’s dying, Luke,” Ashleigh said gravely into the phone. I exhaled heavily.
“She’s not dying. She’s got chemo coming up this week. Just because I’m up here in New York doesn’t mean that I don’t know what’s going on, Ash,” I said, as I sat down on my couch. I reached for the Sports Illustrated magazine.
“She’s cancelled the appointment. She chose hospice instead.” My hand paused right before my fingers touched the magazine’s glossy cover.
“What!” I sprang up. “What are you doing down there, Ashleigh? Why didn’t you stop her!?”
“Because she’s a grown woman, Lucas!” she hissed at me fiercely. “I can only inform her of the consequences of her actions, I can’t make the decision for her. Mama is a lady, and-”
“A lady always knows when to leave,” I finished dryly. Another one of the southern sayings we’d grown up with, courtesy of Mama. “Only God has the authority to decide when someone leaves.”
“And apparently it’s her time. She’s had both her breasts and her uterus removed, and it keeps cropping up in new places. This time it’s metastasized to her brain. If this isn’t a blatant summons from God, I don’t know what is.” In the background, someone mumbled something about a blanket. A muffled ‘Thank you” followed.
“We need you to come down here and see Mama. She’s been asking for you for the past three days,” Ashleigh said, her voice resigned.
“No, I can’t,” I said.
“Lucas-”
“I have to go,” I said to her, pulling the phone away from my ear. From the speaker, I could hear her say, “If you hang up on me…” Her threat was never completed. I hung up the phone.
Without even thinking, I flicked it back open and pressed speed dial eight, as I reached into the cupboard for two wine glasses. I pulled a bottle out of my pantry and headed towards my room.
“Hey, Jeannette? Quick question. What are you wearing?”
There was a pounding at the door. It sounded like a sonic boom, ripping its way through my ear drums painfully. I opened my eyes, and the light from the window blinded me. Hastily, I pulled on a pair of boxers, clean or dirty I couldn’t tell you, and tripped and fell my way to the front door.
I’d barely unlocked it, when the door was shoved into my face, the knob into my crotch. I hit the floor heavily and held myself. Whoever entered slammed the door behind them, and a searing pain shot through my ears, adding insult to injury. I groaned.
“Suck it up,” Ashleigh said to me as she stormed down the hallway towards my bedroom.
Five minutes later, while I was carefully pulling myself up from the fetal position, Ashleigh was dragging out a naked Jeannette, clothes in hand. She slammed the door behind her and locked it.
“Take a shower and get dressed. I’ll have coffee and Advil ready by the time you get out,” she ordered.
Two and a half hours later, I was showered, dressed, fed, and strapped into the airplane that would be bringing me back home to Alabama. As the flight attendants wished us a happy flight, the plane left the ground and started on the eight hour journey home.
“I don’t see why I have to come home anyway. She’ll have you the entire time,” I grumbled as I got settled into my chair.
“One, because she’s your mother and you owe her at least a proper goodbye. Two, because we both know that our mother loves you more,” she said, pulling out her laptop.
My mother, sister, and I received most of the creativity in our gene pool. When she was in her twenties until she was well into her forties, my mother was a jazz singer at the local bar. She loved it, because she got to meet the new faces, and visit the old ones. She only quit when she was diagnosed with throat cancer. I haven’t heard her sing much since then.
My sister had always been good at creating stories. Her lies were almost imperceptible. My mother used to say that she had a talent for, “Letting her imagination run wild.” It’s no real surprise that she works as an author for a respectable publishing company. She was offered a corner office in Massachusetts, where her company was stationed, but she turned it down to stay and take care of Mama.
I’d never had much patience with school, and instead of paying attention and writing notes, I’d perfected my drawing skills. I went on to make a career out of it, creating one of the most popular cartoons on television.
“Mama loves us equally,” I protested.
“Bullshit. You sprang from her crotch, and that creates some kinda creepy bond between you two. I duck and rolled out of the crotch of a junkie. It’s not the same.”
I laughed at my adopted sister.
“Now, I won’t say that Mama didn’t love me. I’m just saying that she loved you more,” she said. I sighed and let her win, resting my head back on the seat.
I hadn’t known that I’d fallen asleep, until Ashleigh was shaking me so that we could get off. Sleepily, I shuffled down the aisle towards the exit with everyone else.
The next thing I remember, I’m waking up in my old bedroom. Mama hadn’t changed it a bit. I’d left for New York at seventeen, leaving up my beer bottle top collection, posters of half naked models, and…
I glanced up to the spot where I’d hung my graduation picture, and saw that it was gone. Mama had probably snuck it into one of her scrapbooks. I rolled out of the bed, and stood, whacking my head on the low ceiling. I cursed silently as I made my way to the living room.
All of my family was crowded into that one little room, and not one of them said a word. I glanced up at the greatest family heirloom we had, the mahogany grandfather clock. The pendulum had been stopped, the door still open.
I froze. Ashleigh met my eyes.
“She just died, not five minutes ago,” she whispered, but her voice seemed loud in my ears. Everything else was muffled. My heart pounded, and I broke out in a cold sweat.
“Real nice of you to let me sleep through my mother’s last few minutes, sis,” I spat I her. “I can understand that you’re jealous that she loved me more, but that was just pathetic, and childish!” I grabbed my jacket and stormed out into the pouring rain.
The dirt paths were becoming mud, and each step was harder than the last. I didn’t care. Mulberry was too little a town. You saw the same people, day in and day out, and if you didn’t get the hell out of here, you saw them every day until you died.
Because Mulberry was so small, I ended up talking the same route I used to take as a kid. Unfortunately, this led me past a lot of memories I’d rather forget, the reason that being back scared me shitless.
Lia.
I was past the park, before I could stop and see it, the sandbox that we played in together as toddlers.
The corner store was still there, advertising hung duck when they had the best salt water taffy this side of the Mississippi River. Weeds had grown to cover the walkway that led out to the woods where we hid from Ashleigh and played for hours.
The town’s center still held the white gazebo with the ivy growing on all sides. I ran my fingers carefully over the wood that I’d carved our names into the day I’d gotten my first kiss here as a gangly awkward teenager.
The red schoolhouse we’d attended as our high school had been redone to accommodate more children. The same schoolhouse, where I fought Tyler Menasha for disrespecting her, my first love.
The story of our lives ended in the same place I’d hoped to avoid, Mulberry County Cemetery. Without hesitation, I entered the graveyard and found her grave. I could’ve found it with my eyes closed; my heart was leading me now.
I kneeled into the soft earth. The rain had subsided, giving way to wind. It took the trees and swayed their branches.
I ran my hand along the headstone. Her family had let me pick out the words.
‘Here rests Ellia Giselle Hendricks, my porcelain baby doll, as beautiful in death as she was in life. February 1st, 1973- February 1st 1990.’
On the ground, my fingers found the last gift I had ever given Lia. My mother’s diamond engagement ring. After fifteen years of getting to know her, I was ready to marry her.
She was on her way back from an out-of-state college tour and the roads where icy. A deadly pileup only three miles away from home took my baby doll away from me.
I refused to be away from her. I fell asleep near her grave, with tears for her in my eyes, and a prayer on my lips.
‘If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…’
At my mother’s funeral, I came face to face with my graduation picture, the last picture Lia and I had taken together before her death. Our faces smiled at me from nineteen years in the past, the best day of my life. It had been blown up and was hung during the ceremony.
At the bottom, in my mother’s writing, were eight little words:
‘Don’t be sad. Now you have two angels.’
“No,” I said, shaking my head as though she could see me on the other end of the phone.
“Stop shaking your head ‘no,’ Luke, Mama wants to see you,” my younger sister Ashleigh said to me. I glanced around the apartment to reassure myself that she was still in Alabama.
“Mama talks to me every Sunday before church. I’m sure she would’ve told me if-”
“She’s dying, Luke,” Ashleigh said gravely into the phone. I exhaled heavily.
“She’s not dying. She’s got chemo coming up this week. Just because I’m up here in New York doesn’t mean that I don’t know what’s going on, Ash,” I said, as I sat down on my couch. I reached for the Sports Illustrated magazine.
“She’s cancelled the appointment. She chose hospice instead.” My hand paused right before my fingers touched the magazine’s glossy cover.
“What!” I sprang up. “What are you doing down there, Ashleigh? Why didn’t you stop her!?”
“Because she’s a grown woman, Lucas!” she hissed at me fiercely. “I can only inform her of the consequences of her actions, I can’t make the decision for her. Mama is a lady, and-”
“A lady always knows when to leave,” I finished dryly. Another one of the southern sayings we’d grown up with, courtesy of Mama. “Only God has the authority to decide when someone leaves.”
“And apparently it’s her time. She’s had both her breasts and her uterus removed, and it keeps cropping up in new places. This time it’s metastasized to her brain. If this isn’t a blatant summons from God, I don’t know what is.” In the background, someone mumbled something about a blanket. A muffled ‘Thank you” followed.
“We need you to come down here and see Mama. She’s been asking for you for the past three days,” Ashleigh said, her voice resigned.
“No, I can’t,” I said.
“Lucas-”
“I have to go,” I said to her, pulling the phone away from my ear. From the speaker, I could hear her say, “If you hang up on me…” Her threat was never completed. I hung up the phone.
Without even thinking, I flicked it back open and pressed speed dial eight, as I reached into the cupboard for two wine glasses. I pulled a bottle out of my pantry and headed towards my room.
“Hey, Jeannette? Quick question. What are you wearing?”
There was a pounding at the door. It sounded like a sonic boom, ripping its way through my ear drums painfully. I opened my eyes, and the light from the window blinded me. Hastily, I pulled on a pair of boxers, clean or dirty I couldn’t tell you, and tripped and fell my way to the front door.
I’d barely unlocked it, when the door was shoved into my face, the knob into my crotch. I hit the floor heavily and held myself. Whoever entered slammed the door behind them, and a searing pain shot through my ears, adding insult to injury. I groaned.
“Suck it up,” Ashleigh said to me as she stormed down the hallway towards my bedroom.
Five minutes later, while I was carefully pulling myself up from the fetal position, Ashleigh was dragging out a naked Jeannette, clothes in hand. She slammed the door behind her and locked it.
“Take a shower and get dressed. I’ll have coffee and Advil ready by the time you get out,” she ordered.
Two and a half hours later, I was showered, dressed, fed, and strapped into the airplane that would be bringing me back home to Alabama. As the flight attendants wished us a happy flight, the plane left the ground and started on the eight hour journey home.
“I don’t see why I have to come home anyway. She’ll have you the entire time,” I grumbled as I got settled into my chair.
“One, because she’s your mother and you owe her at least a proper goodbye. Two, because we both know that our mother loves you more,” she said, pulling out her laptop.
My mother, sister, and I received most of the creativity in our gene pool. When she was in her twenties until she was well into her forties, my mother was a jazz singer at the local bar. She loved it, because she got to meet the new faces, and visit the old ones. She only quit when she was diagnosed with throat cancer. I haven’t heard her sing much since then.
My sister had always been good at creating stories. Her lies were almost imperceptible. My mother used to say that she had a talent for, “Letting her imagination run wild.” It’s no real surprise that she works as an author for a respectable publishing company. She was offered a corner office in Massachusetts, where her company was stationed, but she turned it down to stay and take care of Mama.
I’d never had much patience with school, and instead of paying attention and writing notes, I’d perfected my drawing skills. I went on to make a career out of it, creating one of the most popular cartoons on television.
“Mama loves us equally,” I protested.
“Bullshit. You sprang from her crotch, and that creates some kinda creepy bond between you two. I duck and rolled out of the crotch of a junkie. It’s not the same.”
I laughed at my adopted sister.
“Now, I won’t say that Mama didn’t love me. I’m just saying that she loved you more,” she said. I sighed and let her win, resting my head back on the seat.
I hadn’t known that I’d fallen asleep, until Ashleigh was shaking me so that we could get off. Sleepily, I shuffled down the aisle towards the exit with everyone else.
The next thing I remember, I’m waking up in my old bedroom. Mama hadn’t changed it a bit. I’d left for New York at seventeen, leaving up my beer bottle top collection, posters of half naked models, and…
I glanced up to the spot where I’d hung my graduation picture, and saw that it was gone. Mama had probably snuck it into one of her scrapbooks. I rolled out of the bed, and stood, whacking my head on the low ceiling. I cursed silently as I made my way to the living room.
All of my family was crowded into that one little room, and not one of them said a word. I glanced up at the greatest family heirloom we had, the mahogany grandfather clock. The pendulum had been stopped, the door still open.
I froze. Ashleigh met my eyes.
“She just died, not five minutes ago,” she whispered, but her voice seemed loud in my ears. Everything else was muffled. My heart pounded, and I broke out in a cold sweat.
“Real nice of you to let me sleep through my mother’s last few minutes, sis,” I spat I her. “I can understand that you’re jealous that she loved me more, but that was just pathetic, and childish!” I grabbed my jacket and stormed out into the pouring rain.
The dirt paths were becoming mud, and each step was harder than the last. I didn’t care. Mulberry was too little a town. You saw the same people, day in and day out, and if you didn’t get the hell out of here, you saw them every day until you died.
Because Mulberry was so small, I ended up talking the same route I used to take as a kid. Unfortunately, this led me past a lot of memories I’d rather forget, the reason that being back scared me shitless.
Lia.
I was past the park, before I could stop and see it, the sandbox that we played in together as toddlers.
The corner store was still there, advertising hung duck when they had the best salt water taffy this side of the Mississippi River. Weeds had grown to cover the walkway that led out to the woods where we hid from Ashleigh and played for hours.
The town’s center still held the white gazebo with the ivy growing on all sides. I ran my fingers carefully over the wood that I’d carved our names into the day I’d gotten my first kiss here as a gangly awkward teenager.
The red schoolhouse we’d attended as our high school had been redone to accommodate more children. The same schoolhouse, where I fought Tyler Menasha for disrespecting her, my first love.
The story of our lives ended in the same place I’d hoped to avoid, Mulberry County Cemetery. Without hesitation, I entered the graveyard and found her grave. I could’ve found it with my eyes closed; my heart was leading me now.
I kneeled into the soft earth. The rain had subsided, giving way to wind. It took the trees and swayed their branches.
I ran my hand along the headstone. Her family had let me pick out the words.
‘Here rests Ellia Giselle Hendricks, my porcelain baby doll, as beautiful in death as she was in life. February 1st, 1973- February 1st 1990.’
On the ground, my fingers found the last gift I had ever given Lia. My mother’s diamond engagement ring. After fifteen years of getting to know her, I was ready to marry her.
She was on her way back from an out-of-state college tour and the roads where icy. A deadly pileup only three miles away from home took my baby doll away from me.
I refused to be away from her. I fell asleep near her grave, with tears for her in my eyes, and a prayer on my lips.
‘If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…’
At my mother’s funeral, I came face to face with my graduation picture, the last picture Lia and I had taken together before her death. Our faces smiled at me from nineteen years in the past, the best day of my life. It had been blown up and was hung during the ceremony.
At the bottom, in my mother’s writing, were eight little words:
‘Don’t be sad. Now you have two angels.’