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Mama paid the taxi driver with a credit card. The past few days had been one soul shock after another. Mama had a credit card? I wanted to ask her how she’d gotten one or if Daddy let her have it, but my tongue was numb. My entire being was numb. I could only experience things in my periphery now.
I couldn’t think of what happened, because any time I thought about the reason I was at the hospital my lungs seized up. The doctors said it was a panic attack. I didn’t feel like I was panicking. I felt like I was dying. I nearly welcomed that feeling, too, because what did I have left?
I’d ruined my relationship with Eli and I’d…
Oh lord.
The feeling.
My lungs were seizing up.
I clutched the dark oak doorway for support.
“Gracie?” Mama put her bag down and turned to me. “Gracie what’s wrong? Is it the panic attacks again?”
I nodded. I couldn’t respond because my throat was paralyzed by brutal memories. I had failed. I had failed something that completely and utterly needed me and I didn’t know it until it was too late.
I was basically a murderer. I was no good, like Daddy said.
Tears burned my lids as I slid down the doorway, too exhausted to stand. Mama grasped my shoulder, concern etching her wrinkles like grooves in tree bark. “I’m gonna find Daddy so I can take you to your room.”
In the hospital, surrounded by rules and routine and nightly bed checks, Mama and I had more freedom than ever. We had freedom to choose our meals, freedom to ask questions, freedom to be. Now back in the darkness of our home I understood without hesitation why Mama had l
eft me sufferin’.
When a patient in the hospital was having a panic attack or any type of discomfort, the nurses and doctors dropped everything to attend to them. It didn’t matter what was happening or if they were busy reading, they dropped everything.
I think maybe Mama would have liked to live like that, with the freedom to drop everything and choose. Once upon a time she’d had her choices. She had to have. She’d chosen to marry Daddy, right? Now, her ability to choose was as dried up as the grass on our lawn.
Mama unclenched my shoulder and made her way into the darkness. Even though we’d been back for at least ten minutes, I hadn’t heard a sound from Daddy. He was no doubt ignoring us as punishment for leaving. For getting treatment. For getting help. If all Daddy did was give us the silent treatment, though, we’d be gettin’ off easy.
I lay against the hard, wooden doorway, my breath slowly returning to normal and the spots in my vision disappearing. In the hospital Mama would’ve called for help, but here we waited for Daddy’s permission.
I looked out the open door, past the porch at the dead grass and overgrown weeds. Beyond I could faintly make out the town square. We didn’t have a hospital, just one doctor older than medicine itself. The ambulance had to take Mama and me to the nearest city. It was nearly a forty-five minute drive, or at least that’s what they had told me. I passed out.
I’ll never forget the look on Mama’s face when I woke up. It was like she was seein’ a ghost. Maybe she was. Maybe I was dead and this was hell.
I watched as storm clouds formed on the horizon, casting clouds over the yellow grass and turning it an odd grey color. Maybe the grass was a metaphor for my life: barren and dead, even with rain. As more tears of self-pity threatened to fall, I heard a scream. Mama’s scream. Like the doctors and nurses at the hospital, I jumped up and ran to her without hesitation.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Mama scream over the years, of course. Screams in our house were like crickets at night. At first they were loud and annoying, but then you just started to ignore them. I think something had changed in me at the hospital, though.
Well, of course something had changed in me, but I mean something…mental.
I didn’t want to listen to the screams any more. I didn’t want to willingly let myself hurt and I didn’t want to let Mama hurt either. We’d not yet been home for half an hour and already she was screaming. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t how life should be.
I ran to her without thinking, following her scream all the way to Daddy’s study. As I entered the study I saw only her back, hunched over.
“Mama? Mama what is it?” I stepped gingerly toward her, reaching my hand for her back. “Mama? What is it Mama? You’re scarin’ me.” She wouldn’t respond, even as I touched her shoulder. From behind it looked like she was fixated on something. I stepped to her side to get a better look.
“Mama—” The words died in my throat. In front of us lay Daddy, on his stomach, unmoving. What skin I could see was a terrible blackish green and his hair was falling out. Now, Daddy never had much hair but he did have some and the some that he had was hanging off his head in a way that wasn’t right or natural.
I didn’t need to see anymore, and I definitely didn’t need to smell anymore. The smell was enough to cause bile to rise in my throat.
“Mama.” I grabbed her by the elbow, trying to lead her out, but she wouldn’t budge. She stared at the corpse with a steely gaze that I couldn’t place. “Mama we have to call 911.” My words may as well have floated right through her ears. I let my grip drop and ran to Daddy’s desk, the only place in the house with a phone.
Maybe that was fortune. Or maybe it was fate.
It wasn’t lost on me that this was the third time our whole lives we’d called 911 and most of those times had been this week. There was a saying that when it rains it pours, and I was starting to believe that.
