Accidental Catharsis

There must have been good times. Certainly there was laughter, merriment, and smiling. At this time of night, I remember the red and black of ambulance lights flickering onto closed apartment doors that hid where other people slept and breathed and dreamed in a healthy way. They would wake up the next morning, clean themselves up and maybe go to the store, or visit a friend. I would wake up in a place that I could not remember getting to, and not understanding why my mother wasn't with me.

The last house we lived in, just the two of us, was on a woodsey plunk of land on Monroe Street. We had never lived so deep into the island, and that might be why I picked that house, that blue square house. Maybe I wanted it to feel like we were really somewhere new. And I did pick it, all by my ten year old self. My grandmother drove us. We sat at the road in front of it and looked for a while. I had never seen so many trees, it was shady and leafy and everything moved when the wind blew. There was a dried out fence to climb on, and a large brick grill to the left of the house.

Mama told me to go inside and look, she didn't think she could manage the steps that day. There were three or four steps, and no porch really. I put the key in the door and walked inside. I probably looked back at my grandmother's deep red Cutlass Supreme before going in, for a bit of reassurance. It felt like playing house in the scariest kind of way. There's no need to take much time describing the house. It was small. But, so was I then, and it seemed like the biggest and most wonderful place on earth at that moment. It wasn't an apartment, and we could make new memories.

I got back to the car and they wanted to know what I thought. Well, I just had to live there. I told them it was wonderful, and that Mama and I would love it. Mama said that it looked sort of small from the outside, was I sure? YES I said, PLEASE. She said she wasn't sure about the steps, but I told her they were shallow steps, and I could help her.

So, we moved in. Once Mama got inside, she said that it really WAS a tiny house. I didn't know it then, but thinking on it now I realize that it was a huge sacrifice for her. It was far away from the few conveniences she had, and the Bingo parlor she liked to go to, and it had those steps. I wonder now if it was a gift, that she had intended to let me pick the last place we would live together. She just gave in too easily, it didn't make sense then, but it does now. Like that old grill, the bricks have fallen apart and have hit me, just this moment. She knew.

That last year and a half she tried so hard to give me happy memories, because she knew what was about to happen. I had no idea, and she knew. The jar of change that she collected and a change sorter she gave me for my birthday, and tickets to the amusement park. The party with balloons taped to trees and the best vanilla ice cream I can ever remember. Any house I wanted, she would have tried to give me. It's taken 15 years to realize, but I get it.

I sometimes tell myself that I was only 11, that I didn't get to know my mother that well, not like I would if she were still here. But she was smart, so very smart. She knew that I would eventually understand. I'm still getting to know her. I never thought she was selfish, but now I know how giving she was. People have told me that she held on as long as she did, for me. I wasn't hearing it. In my own time now, I accept that, I believe it. Oh God, it hurts, and I'm so thankful.

This started out as memory of that house, of remembering the bad and trying to draw out the good, and it's turned into something so much more. My mother is with me. I might have begun to forget that, but now I know. It feels like it might change everything.