Mother wore her sorrow like a wet, fur coat. Every step she took weighed her down. She carefully dragged her body around until it pained her to move at all.

We couldn’t recall when Mother didn’t blame us for her illness.

First, she grieved about the two unwanted pregnancies. Apparently, our constant need for nutrition while in utero had left her bones dry, leaving nothing but emptiness behind.

Second, she couldn’t understand our selfishness. It seemed our demands came before her desires. Our dreams squashed her goals. Our shadows blocked her time in the sun.

Third, and most importantly, her disappointment in how we turned out hollowed out her soul. She knew other children provided for their mothers. Other children loved their mothers unconditionally.  Other children worshipped their mothers even though they weren’t as wonderful as she was.

She warned us to be nice to her.

She warned us.

“My sadness sinks deep down in my bones.” She always followed her declaration with an exaggerated rubbing of her neck and shoulders, then a hard wringing of her hands. “Remember, be nice to me or I’ll die early. When you realize how much you hurt me, it will be too late. Your guilt will become your curse.”

Shortly before her fiftieth birthday, she was released from her misery. Instead of her golden jubilee, we held her memorial service. All the friends who were to celebrate her life came to give her the send off I’m sure Mother felt she deserved. 

My sister and I sat through the tributes, and periodically, she rolled her eyes at me. She couldn’t get comfortable in the wooden pew and kept shifting her weight from one side of her body to the other. I patted her hand, acknowledging her frustration. She had never quite bought into Mother’s Sadness equals Death theory and she certainly wasn’t going to start now.

Annoyed by the fake testimonies, my sister sprang up to leave.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

She looked at me in horror. “It’s the curse,” she whispered as she fell back into her seat.

I put my arm around her, and tried to explain that it was nothing. “Everyone ages. Everyone’s bones crack.”

As I listened to the splintering, I wondered if our mother’s sadness had indeed crept into our marrow, slowly sucking us dry.

# # #

Yong Takahashi won the Chattahoochee Valley Writers National Short Story Contest and Writer’s Digest’s Write It Your Way Contest. She also was runner-up in Gemini Magazine’s Short Story Contest and Georgia Writers Association’s Flash Fiction Contest. Some of her works appear in Cactus Heart, Meat For Tea, and Spilt Infinitive.

Photo: Jilbert Ebrahimi