We Endure

Lit Up — January’s prompt: Winter

“Princess Bunny isn’t moving”, she says.

Eight months pregnant and heavy with my load of unborn freight, I stir reluctantly. “Hmm?” I ask, but I’ve already processed the question in my sleepy mind. “She’s probably sleeping, honey. Go back to bed.”

I think she’s gone back to her room when suddenly her small voice is insisting, “She’s not; I poked her and she didn’t move.”

I’m awake now. The four-year old won’t allow her mama to curse, but you can bet I’m mumbling “shit!” inside my head as I fumble along the side of my bed for my slippers.

More like an extended room than an apartment, the place (space) we’re renting in Vermont can be traversed in half a dozen steps. So I push back the sheet that divides the rooms in place of a door and arrive instantly in her bedroom.

RIP — Princess Bunny is dead. No need for a doctor to declare it, her tiny corpse has already stiffened in the night. A mystery how she survived the move in a bouncing yellow Ryder truck all the way from Mississippi only to die two months later. Maybe she had held out for the promise of Fall colors. But the branches were already bare when we arrived.

“I want to bury her and put flowers on her grave,” my daughter announces. Instead of grieving, she has moved on to the funeral arrangements. A lot like me when my mother died, I think to myself. Even at four, she bears a scary resemblance to me, the good and the bad. Relieved to avoid tears, I agree, find a shoebox, and quietly slip Princess Bunny inside while my daughter eats her morning Fruit Loops in the other room.

I’ve slipped on my snow boots and coat when she catches me. “But I want to come with you!” she says. Her cereal bowl in hand, she hurries to drink the remaining milk.

“I know, honey, but it’s too cold. Look outside.” As if on cue, the wind whips up a handful of snow and tosses it against the single-paned window. “I’ll set up a movie for you instead.”

Ten minutes later I’m outside, shoebox in one hand and shovel in the other. A light layer of new snow freshens the ground. A fitting burial, I think, preparing to drive the shovel into the ground beside the porch steps.

“Chink!” The shovel hits ice less than a centimeter in. Of course, it does, I groan. It’s Vermont in January, and the ground is frozen solid.

The wind beats me (as if I wasn’t beaten already), and I stand there taking it for a moment, my heavy belly weighing me down like my thoughts. Then my eyes light on the dumpster, and in a split second, Princess Bunny has found her final resting place.

When I open the door of the apartment a few minutes later, my daughter runs to greet me. “Did you bury Princess Bunny?” she asks, her eyes wide with trust.

“Yes,” I lie, “now let’s get dressed and go buy some flowers for her grave.”

Six months later, we move out of the tiny apartment. We have been transferred back to Mississippi, and dressed in a short-sleeve jumper, I’m carrying the new baby in my arms. Before we load into yet another bouncing Ryder moving truck, my daughter pauses beside the porch steps. Without a word, she slips her hand into mine. Winter is now a memory, but the plastic flowers are a reminder of what we have endured.

Thank you for reading my story. If you would like to read more by me, please click here. xo