COUNTING TIME ROCKING

This is from long ago (40 or so years ago), and partly true and partly not. I’ll leave it up to you to know which is which.

COUNTING TIME ROCKING

So she sat silently, in her grandmother’s stark wooden rocking chair she’d managed to salvage from what her mother had left behind, staring at the wind-up clock and counting the ticks, one, two, three, four, five seconds, until sixty, and a minute had passed, and she was still there, still breathing. Rocking in time to the clock, counting the ticks, holding on to the present and the future. She knew where her husband was, with at least the seventh of his flings in the past six months since they had married; he never bothered to hide the girls, but flung them in her face with a triumphant, superior smile. Younger and younger, these past few couldn’t be past sixteen, maybe fourteen. But wild beyond forty miles of bad road. Rocking, creaking in her grandma’s chair, back and forth, back and forth, tick, tick, watching the time pass, holding on to time, one minute, one second in a breath. Counting her breaths, counting the ticks. Time and passing minutes keeping her sane, keeping her alive for at least one more moment. Then two hours had passed, and she was still rocking, still counting the ticks, but now she smiled, feeling a calmness spread through her, the time, the permanence of time. The dark night began to show a slim dawn around the edges, just before five. Rocking slowly now, counting the seconds to herself, one to sixty, then again, beginning with one. Just one more second, one more minute, one more hour, one more, one more, rocking, rocking, one more. He’d come home soon, in one more, one more hour, one more. All she could do was count, rocking, one, two, three, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, four. Come through the door, five-Mississippi, six. Counting was an angel, her angel keeping her alive, giving her three last hopes. Keep rocking, keep counting, keep listening to the ticks, they are all that’s real, not one other thing is real. She is real if the time is real, if the rocking is real, if the passing of one to two to three to four to five and on to sixty is real. Hold on to the counting, to the rocking, to the hope that reality is moving from one dimension to another. Then steps coming up the front stairs, many steps, and here they are, he and his two new girls. She sat watching them, rocking and smiling, knowing they would be staying for more than a day.