I've found it nearly impossible to write while ill. I've managed to squeak out five hundred or so rather shabby words in the last month. Very depressing. Here is the piece I read at Spike Gillespie's writers' group back in March. It takes place several years after the first post and is called Which One of My Children Are You?
She was just back one day when I got home from school. Banging in the front door, I drop my books and head toward the kitchen. It smells like somebody’s been baking and since there isn’t a fire truck out front, I guess it isn’t Granny.
I’ve got something to brag about for a change because I got a Holy Card for knowing something that Mary Catherine Moynaghan didn’t. I slam around the corner fast as I dare because its burning a hole in my pocket and I don’t want to take the chance of losing it before anybody gets to see it and everybody starts thinking I’m telling whoppers again.
At the kitchen sink, my mama stands with her back to me. Her hair’s a dark cloud against the white lace of the kitchen curtains. My mama’s home.
I skid to a stop, then hurl myself at her crying, “Mama!” She sways forward, leans into the counter, and makes a little “oomph” sound like I’ve knocked all the air out of her. I’m holding on real tight around her waist and I can’t hardly breathe for crying’.
She stiffens just for a second and it feels like she might run away so I hold on tighter and for the first time since she went away I’m crying, really crying, afraid I might make her go away again. I’m hiccupping and I need to blow my nose awful and if I keep this up, I’m going to need that inhaler I traded to Danny Boyle for a banana that wasn’t brown and mushy.
Mama’s hands move to press my arms away and I’m so afraid I’ll lose her. She loosens my grip a little, turns in the circle of my arms, puts her hands on my head like a blessing and just lets me be.
When she finally speaks, she sounds far away. “I’d forgotten how bright your hair is.” Her voice is very low and scratchier than I remember.
She lets me cry and hold her, swaying just a little while I sob. She feels so warm and smells just like her closet. After a while, she slips to her knees, presses her forehead against mine and wipes gently at the tears and snot that cover my face.
This close I can see everything – her skin softer and paler than any doll’s, her big eyes with impossibly long lashes and thumbprint dark shadows and little lines in the corners, and on her right temple, there’s a red mark, like a burn, the size of a quarter that fades into her hair.
She pulls back a bit, stares at me real hard trying to tame my wild hair a little with her soft hand. Her other hand slips under my chin, tilts my face up a little, and then, her voice still far away, asks me, “Which one? Which one of my children are you?”
Granny who’s been real still and quiet all this time explodes across the kitchen like a chicken out of a hen house. “Now Margaret, you know this girl. You’ve only got the one. Easy to tell her from the boys. This is DG.”
Mama’s standing now, swaying a little, but me, I’m still as a statue and hoping I don’t throw up on Granny’s clean kitchen floor. It feels like somebody’s kicked me in the stomach. I can’t breathe. My mama doesn’t know me. My world turns upside down while Granny scoots me to the table, hands me milk and cookies that aren’t store bought or burnt, and flutters around the kitchen muttering.
My mama, wearing a lavender sweater that matches the shadows under her eyes, stands swaying the in the middle of the kitchen.
Grampa's there too, must have been there the whole time, and I realize that I must have sailed right by him in my excitement to share my good news. He walks toward my mama with his hand out while she says, “Papa,” in a sort of half question.
“Pegeen,” he says, “Come with me. We’ll sit out on the gallery and I’ll tell you all about this girl. I know all her best secrets.” He winks at me and his voice wraps around her like a blanket. That’s his best voice, the one with music in it, the one he uses for stories, the one he usually saves for me. She takes his hand and they walk out of the kitchen toward the front of the house.
My cookies are cold and my milk is warm but it doesn’t much matter because I couldn’t swallow them around this lump in my throat anyway.
“Come dry dishes, you’ll feel better.” Granny commands and climbs up on the milk crate my daddy brought in so she can reach the sink. I don’t understand how drying dishes is going to help me feel better but I hope this is one of the times my grownups are right about something.
“Got any questions you want to ask, girl?” as she hands me down a dish and a cloth to dry it with.
I am the girl whose mother doesn’t know her name. I have no questions.
Granny’s still looking at me, waiting for an answer.
“No, ma’m.”
Then she’s off her crate and bustling out of the kitchen. “Your mama, she’s just tired. She’ll be herself in a little while. She just needs to rest up, eat some good food, get back to her life. She’ll be fine. You’ll see, she’ll be just fine.”
I sit down on the milk crate and tell the empty kitchen, “I got a Holy Card today. For being smart and for being quiet about it. You want to see?”
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