She’d been about to die for so long that most of the furniture was gone by the time she was, what with one relation after another, can I have this old chest when you’re gone, Big Mama? after another and another. She’d been cursed with a fruitful womb. By the time she’d topped ninety-four, she was past caring what they wanted. It helped not caring when you can’t remember all that much too.
Big Mama, where’d this washstand come from? She loved bursting bubble dreams, she’d say. Smiling and winking. I bought that from the Sears Roebuck catalogue three, four years ago. Whispering so that Charlene couldn’t hear. Really it belonged to Mama Jack and was old when her mama got it as a bride. She watched as Charlene walked on down the big hall, shopping. She let them take whatever they wanted pretty much till she was left with little more than a bed, a few chairs, her kitchen table, and her books.
Looking around this morning there’s not anything left worth taking. The house advertised its age and its emptiness sealed tight as a pharaoh’s grave some ten years after she died. Nobody ever comes in. Not since the funeral. Instead they fight: who’ll get the land with the old home place and who’ll just have to settle for hundreds of acres of farm and forest land? They’d never call it greed. But what was it they thought it was? Whenever they got a phone call, word a brother or sister had died, their piece of the pie just got bigger was their first thought, their odds to inherit the house got shorter.
The door facing out at the river was drawing me, the midday sun had bleached the world beyond the door, its long windows curtained. The light, like my footsteps, echoed on the pine floors, broad bright lines stretched from the windows deep into the unlit entry and the hall beyond. She’d sewn those curtains herself. How they still hung there was pure mystery. All that remained were shreds of what had been. Ghostly, if ghosts stood rock still and silent and smelled of dust and dry wood and mold. Reflections of the river were as bleached as the rest of the scene beyond the door. The light out there made the darkness in here darker.
She’d be particularly unhappy about the state of the curtains. Every morning she’d drawn them back. First thing getting out of bed, she would go to the window to look out at the river. Pulling back the curtains, she’d admire the scrolling of the heavy wrought iron door protecting the old French door, a screen wired to it, as efficient as it was ugly. Milton had put that there a decade or two ago. She’d open the doors wide, and let them stay that way, flies be damned, step out onto the porch wrapped all the way round the house, and she’d breathe that heavy wet hot air coming straight up the river off the Gulf. Like I was about to do, hoping the curtains would hold.
Curtains, a Story
She’d been about to die for so long that most of the furniture was gone by the time she was, what with one relation after another, can I have this old chest when you’re gone, Big Mama? after another and another. She’d been cursed with a fruitful womb. By the time she’d topped ninety-four, she was past caring what they wanted. It helped not caring when you can’t remember all that much too.
Big Mama, where’d this washstand come from? She loved bursting bubble dreams, she’d say. Smiling and winking. I bought that from the Sears Roebuck catalogue three, four years ago. Whispering so that Charlene couldn’t hear. Really it belonged to Mama Jack and was old when her mama got it as a bride. She watched as Charlene walked on down the big hall, shopping. She let them take whatever they wanted pretty much till she was left with little more than a bed, a few chairs, her kitchen table, and her books.
Looking around this morning there’s not anything left worth taking. The house advertised its age and its emptiness sealed tight as a pharaoh’s grave some ten years after she died. Nobody ever comes in. Not since the funeral. Instead they fight: who’ll get the land with the old home place and who’ll just have to settle for hundreds of acres of farm and forest land? They’d never call it greed. But what was it they thought it was? Whenever they got a phone call, word a brother or sister had died, their piece of the pie just got bigger was their first thought, their odds to inherit the house got shorter.
The door facing out at the river was drawing me, the midday sun had bleached the world beyond the door, its long windows curtained. The light, like my footsteps, echoed on the pine floors, broad bright lines stretched from the windows deep into the unlit entry and the hall beyond. She’d sewn those curtains herself. How they still hung there was pure mystery. All that remained were shreds of what had been. Ghostly, if ghosts stood rock still and silent and smelled of dust and dry wood and mold. Reflections of the river were as bleached as the rest of the scene beyond the door. The light out there made the darkness in here darker.
She’d be particularly unhappy about the state of the curtains. Every morning she’d drawn them back. First thing getting out of bed, she would go to the window to look out at the river. Pulling back the curtains, she’d admire the scrolling of the heavy wrought iron door protecting the old French door, a screen wired to it, as efficient as it was ugly. Milton had put that there a decade or two ago. She’d open the doors wide, and let them stay that way, flies be damned, step out onto the porch wrapped all the way round the house, and she’d breathe that heavy wet hot air coming straight up the river off the Gulf. Like I was about to do, hoping the curtains would hold.
MJ