A look into loss and legacy, and the moments that keep us dancing.
By Jolie Smith
They’re rainbow children tonight, all grown up and fancy. I’m at their mother’s funeral but Nora is seven and Annie is six so they barely know what mothers or funerals are. In some weird way, I’ve become their mother. I take them to the library where Kat, the cute librarian, does crafts with us. And to the dollar store where their mom tries on cheap shoes before Brice comes home to yell about hospital bills. Some days, we drive to the bakery where Sam works and all three of us share a blueberry muffin. They like her more than me, but that’s okay because Sam bakes us muffins and I’m the one with the rules. Like: finish your dinner, or you can’t keep choosing the same book because you’ve memorized the entire thing, or it’s okay to cry about your mother having cancer. The latter is the most difficult rule because the girls count on fountains in the park to hold their emotions. Sometimes we sit on the edge, our feet dangling over, and throw pennies into the water. I don’t ask them what their wishes are, but I know them anyway.
We celebrated Annie’s birthday five days before the funeral, back when Lil was still alive. Brice is still the same as he was that night—drunk and awful. Now we watch their mother be lowered into the ground by a man who shakes our hands and goes on with it all. He must’ve done this a few times, I think. What is the salary for this type of thing? Or is he paid hourly? I hold Annie and Nora’s small hands in mine, imagining something other than their mother in the casket. Something like candy or flowers or watermelon.
Hours later, we are eating muffins and drawing pictures. Lil is underground, where who knows what happens. My muffin tastes limp and stale, not like the ones at the bakery, and I wonder if Annie or Nora are thinking the same. I want to ask: candy, flowers, or watermelon? I want them to believe in games again, before death sails on and grows them into heaps of women. Beautiful women.
Even though I teach Annie and Nora how to read and bike and swim, they teach me more. Like how puppet shows are most fun in the bathtub and meals are best as picnics. Their imagination is catchy, and soon I’m in another life. Here I pretend that Brice doesn’t slam garbage lids on his daughter’s head or mock his wife shuffling to the bathroom. Maybe in this world there is no such thing as ‘brain tumor’. Or in another life completely, Brice still calls his daughter’s name, but he’s a good father other than that. Everybody falls short in some way. Maybe the best answer yet is Lil is still sixteen in Russia and she’s dancing forever. On repeat. She just can’t stop. She can’t stop whirling and twisting and turning and she’s not dead. She won’t ever be dead.
Tonight, her rainbow children are dancing in front of me. They don’t know everything yet, but one day I’ll tell them stories of their mother. Remember? I’ll ask. Remember how she picked you up and spun you around, and even though she thought it might be the last time she did it again and again? Sometimes that’s where life leaves you, wishing for candy and flowers and watermelon in your mother’s casket. Wishing your mother could pick you up just once more.
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