Eyes that See
Mona’s mother was named Birdie Mae, and she had shiny brown hair that was always curled up and light gray eyes that were never eyes. Birdie looked, but Mona knew that she couldn’t see. Those eyes never noticed, never took in. They served only as windows into a house with nobody living there, a car nobody was driving.
Each morning Birdie woke up with the sun. She undid her hair from sponge rollers. She smeared on red lipstick and base powder far too pale for her sun-spoiled skin. She framed her gray eyes in thick black mascara. She was only 29, but she felt 30. She felt old. She looked at her reflection and knew she was still pretty. She reapplied the cherry polish to her fingers and toes. She put on a dress. She went into the kitchen to find the sky turning hot orange as God tinted the horizon with His holy watercolor set. She admired His talent. She went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee only to find that it was already bubbling in the percolator. She then went to find her husband on the couch with a bottle clutched to his chest and woke him so he would not miss his shift at the furniture factory. She dodged the bottle as he swung it at her face, then went into the kitchen again where his coffee would be ready to pour. She found the pot empty and already placed on the drying rack, and two feverish mugs of coffee on the kitchen table. She felt feverish. She brought him his coffee, and he took the cup and apologized for his outburst. She knew he didn’t mean it. He didn’t think he meant it. He left. Birdie waited until she heard the engine of his truck sputter, then growl and moan down the driveway as it began its 18-mile journey to Earl Beaufort's factory. She then closed all the windows (she didn’t remember leaving them open). She took off her dress and makeup, put on a housecoat she had received as a wedding present in 1973, lit a cigarette and climbed into her bed.
Each morning Mona woke up before the Sun. She went into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. She opened all of the windows to clear out some of the stale cigarette and sweat that held onto the air like clouds. She swept the floors and the porches, put away the dishes from dinner, fed the chickens, made her bed. She put on one of the Magnolia Elementary t-shirts Mrs. Parson had given her. She put on her jeans and her one pair of shoes, placed her books and pencils into a plastic grocery store sack. She went into the kitchen, poured coffee for herself and Gary and Birdie, leaving their cups on the kitchen table. She grabbed a piece of bread from the loaf in the cupboard above the sink, picked up her plastic sack and started on the half-mile walk down a gravel road in the sticky Louisiana heat to the school bus stop. She then rode the bus for forty-three minutes until it arrived at Magnolia Elementary School, where she got off of the bus and walked into Mrs. Parson's fourth grade homeroom.
Mona knew Birdie was sick. She knew this because of Birdie’s “vacations.” Birdie often stared out the window, posed with a cigarette in her hand as her eggs burned on the frying pan she had received as a wedding present in 1973. Mona would slowly move the pan and turn off the burner, and Birdie would stand there like that, eyes tracing the flight patterns of birds in the back yard. Eventually the cigarette would burn down and catch the end of her skin-and-bone finger, and she would jump and give a little yelp, and quickly turn back to her skillet only to find that the eggs had long been eaten and the pan was washed and on the drying rack. And then Birdie would laugh to herself, and light another cigarette, and wander into her bedroom before the laughter turned to muffled sobs.
Other times, it would happen while she was washing laundry. When she came-to, she found the bed sheets wrung and pinned to the line, and the basket in the house behind the couch where she had always kept it.
Birdie forgot about Mona from time to time, and especially in the mornings. It was like she was running a race, and when she went to sleep she had to stop running and go back to the starting line, then wake up and start it all over. She didn’t remember Mona until eleven or noon most days, some days not until around two. But when she remembered Mona, she remembered that she was the most beautiful girl in the whole world and that she loved her more than anyone. Every day when Mona came home from school Birdie was sitting on the couch smiling.
“Hi baby! Did you have a good day?” Her gray eyes were almost, almost lit up. But Mona knew the truth, that Birdie didn’t see anything.
“Sure Momma,” replied Mona. Most of the time this was true. Sometimes it was a lie. Mona knew lying was bad, but she also knew that Birdie was sick and sometimes you have to lie to sick people to help them get better.
Birdie taught Mona about guardian angels.
“They are always with you. Sometimes they’re on your shoulder or in your pocket. Sometimes they fly around you or behind you. They’re real small you see, so they can fit into tiny places and make sure they’re always around.”
After that Birdie went out on the back porch to smoke another cigarette, and Mona stuck both of her hands into the pockets of her jeans, but she didn’t feel any guardian angels. She figured it was just a story Birdie told, like the time she said Mona’s rabbit Charlie had hopped over the creek that separated their yard and Mr. Turner’s woods and went to be with all the bunnies who lived in the forest. But then Mona went to his cage in the back yard and found the chicken wire all ripped up and pieces of fur that were white just like Charlie’s had been on the ground underneath it. She knew Charlie had been eaten by coyotes, but she also knew that Birdie was sick and sometimes you have to lie to sick people to help them get better, so she smiled and said Charlie was probably much happier in the forest than in his cage.
When Birdie told Mona about the guardian angels, she knew Birdie was just storying. But Birdie believed the story about the angels, so Mona had to pretend to be her angel so she never found out they weren’t real because Birdie was sick and sometimes you have to lie to sick people to help them get better.
Mona knew about her Daddy. His name was Robert and he worked on the railroad and one day when Mona was not even two years old he went to Phoenix to work on the railroad and never came back.
“He didn’t want you and he didn’t want me and that’s that,” was all Birdie ever said about him. That was enough for Mona. If he didn’t want them, they didn’t want him.
Mona didn’t want Gary either, but Gary paid the mortgage.
Mona was small for her age. She had curly strawberry hair that Birdie often called “the only good thing Robert ever gave us.” She had brown eyes that she got from Robert too. She wished every birthday that she didn’t have Robert’s red hair, and could wake up with soft chestnut curls like Birdie.
She didn’t pray for Birdie’s gray eyes, though. She still wanted to see.
