Mother

I watched my mother through the slit in my bedroom doorway. She was in the kitchen; it was around noon and the warmth from the sun was just beginning to seep through the walls of our home. My breathing seemed to be in rhythm with her steps as she walked back and forth, in and out of my six inch wide view of her between the door-frames. Her dress was long, a deep blue color that moved around her like the ocean; she wore no shoes. She always had her hair done before leaving her room each morning — I hardly knew what it looked like otherwise, except for the few times that I was awake early enough to watch her comb her hair out after her morning shower, starting at the ends, one delicate curl at a time.

She was making me lunch, some sourdough toast and butter from the supermarket — the only thing I’d eat. I was a picky twelve year old and my mother spoiled me. “As long as you eat it all,” she would say. I always did; I loved her too much to risk hurting her feelings by not finishing every bite.

“Isabel, come on out, I’ve got your lunch ready,” she’d call. She could have whispered and I still would have heard her, our house was so small. We didn’t need much space, though; it was after all just the two of us. And I liked it that way.

In the summer time I spent the warmest part of the afternoons drawing on our back porch, which faced almost directly to the east. So every evening, when the sun began to set, I would watch the shadow of our roof stretch across the dusty ground behind our house, looking at the blackened shapes grow and shift as they met the obstacles strewn around the yard — a bike, a rake, a tree — each object forcing the boarder between the light and the shadow to twist and curl around it. I would imagine that they were two hopeless lovers, the light and the shadow — always so close to one another but never quite able to come together.

After my lunch, just before the shadows were ready to begin their decent, my mother left for work. Since it was summer and there was no school yard for me to linger around, I stayed home alone for a few hours in the afternoon until my mother’s sister would come over to check in on me and make us dinner. She wasn’t as good of a cook as my mother, but she always made sure to have extra food made so that my mother would have dinner when she returned home.

I always had to be in bed before she got home each night, but my mother would make sure to come see me — quietly slipping into my room through the same slit in my doorway that I would use to spy on her in the mornings. She would kiss me goodnight, tell me about something beautiful she had seen that day and ask me to try to see it in my dreams.

That day, when she left me on our back porch waiting for the sun to cast its shadows, was the last day I would know her. And looking back to that day, as I watched her carefully through the crack in my bedroom door, I almost start to think that I already knew she would be gone soon. Like some sort of dreadful intuition; I watched her because I already missed her.

She kissed me goodbye and I watched her blue ocean dress sway back through the screen door into the house and out the front, locking the door behind her. Locks always seem to give a false sense of security. I waited for her car to start, and heard its crackling engine, in great need of repair, kick and pop down the road until it was gone and all I heard was the clicking of the neighbor’s chickens.

I spent the afternoon on the porch, mostly because the July heat made it unbearable to be inside, but also because I liked to feel the sun on my skin and watch the breeze pick up little speckles of dust and dirt from the ground, twirling them around each other in an untraceable pattern. I liked to tell myself stories, imagining that I could be one of the little dust particles spinning around with so many others — independently beautiful, but also delicately intertwined.

My mother worked at the market downtown. It didn’t pay well, I’d overheard her saying once, but they gave her a good discount on food which made it worth the late hours. It was only the two of us, but since my mother hadn’t finished school this was the best job she could find. She had me when she was seventeen — she didn’t know my father, and her own parents couldn’t help her. She’d never tell me why.

I never learned much about my mother’s parents. My mother would respond to many of my questions with a distant, “I’m not sure.” But I couldn’t tell if she truly didn’t know or if she just didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe it was a bit of both.

The only stories that I’d heard were late at night when I was supposed to be in bed and would listen carefully through my door to my mother and her sister sharing stories that felt like secrets. They would talk about people who’s names I’d never heard and my mother’s sister would always ask her to come to church.

We never did go, but I never really wanted to. I liked our rituals, our life. She did tell me once, though, that she grew up Catholic and had named me after Saint Isabel. I didn’t know who that was, but figured that if my mother liked her that I would like her too.

The afternoons never felt very long, even though I spent them mostly by myself. My mother’s sister would come over at around 5 o’clock each evening to cook dinner and to make sure that I’d picked up my room and swept the kitchen like I was supposed to. Because she lived down the street, she would always walk to our house in the evenings. She said she liked the walk after sitting in an office chair all day. She was the secretary of a private doctor in town who, she told me, only well off people could go to.

Usually when my mother’s sister arrived in the evenings, she would let me watch an hour of television while she prepared dinner. But that day I decided to stay on the porch. The air had finally become that perfect temperature that you only find on summer evenings when the sun is falling and the wind is just right — the dense humidity wrapping around you followed by little sighs of cool air tickling your skin.

That evening, the shadows on the yard felt sharper than the days before. My mother’s sister said it was probably just because the day was hotter. We ate dinner together in the kitchen at our small wooden table with the varnish slowly wearing off in misshapen circles where each of us sat.

I did the dishes after dinner — my mother’s sister always said that since I got to watch television before dinner that she got to watch it after. I knew it was just because she was too tired. She’d often nearly fall asleep to the sound of the local news anchor monotonously informing no one about the most recent updates from the city.

My mother would get home from work promptly at 10:15 every evening, and I’d listen attentively from my bedroom for the switch of the lock inviting her back inside. This night it was just before 10 when I heard a knock instead of the switch of a key.

I instantly jumped out of bed and went to my usual spot by the bedroom door that was the best for eavesdropping, and heard my mother’s sister answer the door. Then, it was as if my ears were suddenly straining to understand a forgotten language, the broken voices of a man and a woman became loud whispers that I couldn’t piece together. So I waited until I heard the lock click back and my mother’s sister came to wake me.

It’s hard to know how to feel in these moments — those that are filled with no sense of understanding and no emotional comparison; those that are definitively hopeless.

My mother had been leaving work at her usual time from the market downtown. The manager wouldn’t let her park her car in the lot — it was for customers only — so she had to park on a side street one block down. The street was dimly lit, with shadows darker than the ones I watched from my spot on the porch. Yet it wasn’t the darkness, but a spark of light from a gun that took her from me. There was no reason, and the police never found the person who did it. It was random, they told us.

I didn’t leave our house for almost two months, not even to watch the light and shadows change in the yard. Their magic was gone; the lovers I had once seen had become enemies fighting each other to the ground. My mother’s sister moved in with me, into my mother’s room. We set up routines; she wanted me to go to church but I’d refuse — my mother never wanted to, so neither did I.

It wasn’t until an afternoon in September, a few days before school was supposed to start up again, that I finally ventured out our screen door and onto the back patio to let the sun warm my skin. It didn’t feel the same; it never would.

I couldn’t help imagining her in the kitchen, replaying that last afternoon I spent with my mother over and over again in my head. When I felt the sun and the light breeze that smelled like fall, I imagined that I could hear my mother pacing in the kitchen, back and forth, in her blue dress that looked like the ocean. And I thought about how she’d promised to teach me how to bake cakes one day, and how we’d planned to repaint my bedroom violet for my birthday.

My first days of school were a blur — filled with an exhausting air of excitement being swirled around me by faceless classmates, reminding me of afternoons spent watching the dust dance on the wind. Still, I was just a spectator looking in at the chaotic beauty of the lives being lived around me, with my own future looking empty and uncertain from behind the protection of my little wooden desk.

And then I thought about how it is this same chaotic beauty that gives complexity and meaning to our lives — pushing and pulling us like dust on the wind. And that even though my mother was taken from me in a gust, I am still my mother’s daughter, and I too deserve my chance to dance and twirl in the breeze.