“The
nature of death,” my mother said, “is that it lacks a knowledge of good and
evil.” She’d thrown my brother’s cat off the bed before I’d woken up. Maybe she
planned on me for bludgeoning, too.
“Well?”
she asked. I could tell something was different. It had been weeks since she’d
mentioned the skin clogging her neck, since she’d tried to burn some misery off
her cottage cheese and Smirnoff thighs with her Congolese acupuncturist’s
rigid, waspy fingers.
“‘No’
means Jesus. Jesus means type-2 diabetes,” I recited obediently until she let
me roll over.
That
was the last time my mother shared her thoughts with me, or anyone else. In the
morning she’d run off for good with a pre-bust dot-commer named Alphonse who
turned out to be an undercover eurotophobe and a third cousin of the Unabomber.
And it would be months before my father immerged from his self-immolated womb
of Who’s The Boss? episodes and pity
Twinkies from coworkers.
That
afternoon, my brother found the cat buried under a very Ellis-esque NO EXIT sign across the
street and I don’t want to tell you what it looked like.
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