Something Worth Leaving Behind

I found this story on a disc a few days ago. Apparently, I wrote it when I was in high school but I don't remember doing so. Parts of it come back to me, but as a whole the story is completely lost on me. But it's good. At least I think so. I was probably

 

         "The only thing prettier than a South Carolina sunrise is my baby," Mama would always say. And somewhere from the recesses of her spring cotton dress she'd pull me out for inspection. "That's why her name is Carolina. Carolina Ray. I ain't never seen anything so pretty 'til the day she was born. And I mean that." And then Mama would encourage the stranger to feel how soft my curls were or show them the heart shaped birth mark on the back of my neck. That's how Mama introduced us to the world. I was her one true success story. She used me to cover her insecurities and her failures. As long as the attention was away from her, she was happy.

         

          As I grew up, most people would say I was lucky to have a mother who loved me so much. They told me that many children held anger and contempt for their parents because they lived in their shadows or because they'd been deprived of love at a young age. Without a doubt, Mama made sure I stood in the sunshine everyday of my life. She loved everything about me and she loved to show me off. I spent my childhood with bright, colorful bows tied in my strawberry blonde curls and sundresses were worn in the middle of winter.

          “Never settle for less than all of the attention, Carolina,” she would say. “Hold your head up high and wear your confidence boldly.”

          Pampered and babied, I was Mama's little doll everyday of my life. I didn’t have other friends. Mama had me in home studies since the very first day that I could pick up a book and read it. Grandma Bird was my teacher and she lived in our house but I knew she’d been there long before I was even born. Mama and Bird were my friends.

          “The older your friends the wiser you will be, Lina,” Mama said. I believed her. They were both very smart. Mama said she was a high school drop out but not because her brain wasn’t smart enough to take it. She got pregnant and then my daddy left and Mama said that high school wasn’t the place for a baby to be. Grandma Bird had been a teacher before she had a stroke. She knew the whole times table by heart and could recite every Emily Dickinson poem that she’d ever read.

          When Mama got sick, the summer before my eighth birthday, Grandma Bird told me that it was nothing to worry about. But I worried because for the first time, Mama wasn’t with me all day, taking me on walks or helping me catch crickets. She would sleep all day and when I would wander into her bedroom, I found her tucked neatly underneath her southern quilt, her chest rising and falling evenly. Grandma Bird took care of her and would always shoo me from the room. Sometimes I heard Mama cough in the night but it seemed to last for hours. I missed my one and only friend and I cherished the times that I did have her at my side.

 

          "Lina, I once counted all the freckles on your face," she said to me one morning as the sun slowly rose over the hills. She was feeling well enough to sit with Bird and I on the porch and I was curled up in her lap, comfortable and at home. "And I counted one hundred and twelve. One hundred and twelve freckles means you'll have one hundred and twelve guardian angels watching over you everyday. And the more angels you've got, baby, the better your life will be. Think about the life of a person who don't have no freckles." And even though I was seven years old, I remember that morning more than any other in my life. That was the day I started talking to my angels.

 

          Out of one hundred and twelve angels, Elisabeth was my favorite. She was the one I talked to. She was my friend. When she first came to me, on a warm summer's day in Mama's garden, she didn't have a name. I asked her what the other angels called her and she said, "Angel 104. But if you can think of the prettiest name that you've ever heard, then I will go by that name." So she was named Elisabeth for I had never heard a name so pretty as that. And her pretty name, of course, had to match her beauty. She was like an angel sent straight from the hand of God, with golden hair that seemed to glow with a soft, subtle radiance and she wore a gentle, summer dress so white it hurt my eyes the first time I looked at it.

 

          Our favorite past time was napping in the daisy's across the road from Mama's house. Elisabeth and I would lie side by side on our stomachs and watch Grandma Bird on the porch. She liked to sit on the porch swing with a home made blanket draped over her lap. And we watched with pure admiration as her old and weathered hands created amazing knitted masterpieces right before our very eyes.

 

          "She's not my real grandma," I told Elisabeth. "But Mama says that Bird's been in our family for so long that our roots ran into hers." And we would laugh as we imagined long, dirty roots crawling out from under the blanket and into Mama's garden at the bottom of the steps.

 

          "Tell me more about your mama," she would always prod and I smiled because even though Mama didn't tell strangers much about herself, I knew it all. I knew that she had always wanted to live in Hollywood because she wishes she could see a sunset on the Pacific Ocean. I told Elisabeth all of the stories I’d ever heard. How my real grandma, Grandma Bird’s best friend, was killed in a car accident when Mama was a teenager. And I told her how Mama thought Grandma Bird was the bravest soul in the world for taking her into her home. Reflecting on Bird’s stories, I told her of Mama’s pregnancy with me and how she promised to devote her whole life to me.

 

          “Your mama really does love you, Carolina,” Elisabeth said, as we turned on our backs and watched the billowy, soft clouds float by overhead. And I knew she was right. Elisabeth was always right. She knew the answers to everything. I enjoyed having her as my friend when Mama was gone. Sometimes Grandma Bird would ask me who I was talking to. “Angels,” I would reply and continue on with Elisabeth to chart adventures and tell stories and fables until we put each other to sleep. Without Mama, I had a Elisabeth. I could get dirty and dusty from the fields and Elisabeth never said a word. She just smiled and always made sure that she helped me home every night. And when I slept, she would swim inside my dreams and be at my side whenever I awoke.

          “Carolina Ray, wake up,” Grandma Bird was saying. She was shaking my body, pulling at my blankets, forcing me to sit up. “Your mama is very, very sick.” I didn’t hear much more than that. There were enough words there to pull me from my bed and send me bounding down the stairs to Mama’s bedroom. She was pale and weak and the cancer was eating away at every shred of strength that she had left.

          “Mama,” I cried, crawling onto the bed beside her. I rested my head against her chest to hear her heart beat. She’d always told me that the sound of her heart beat had always kept me growing when I was inside her stomach. How could I keep Mama from dying? I knew that was why Bird had pulled me from my sleep. The nurse that had been brought in for home care looked tired and hopeless. She watched in agony as tears formed in both mine and Mama’s eyes. But there were no words on Mama’s lips, no sounds from the back of her throat. She was looking at me, crying for me and trying so hard to hold on to me.

          “I love you Carolina Ray,” I heard her say. And although her lips were not moving and her body was pale and tired, I heard her say it again. I pressed my ear against her chest and listened to her heart. The pulse began to decrease ever so slowly but I heard it again, soft and faint this time:

          “I love you more than life itself.”

          Mama died that morning and left me crying on her body. Grandma Bird knew not to move me until I was ready to leave. And when I was ready… when I crawled from my mother’s cold and lifeless body I still saw life and vibrant energy. I had heard her heart talk to me as only a heart can do. I knew that she loved me. And it was like I watched her soul levitate towards heaven and I knew that Elisabeth would take care of her. Elisabeth knew that my mother loved me. She would give my mother a beautiful new home in heaven.

          Mama did love me more than life itself. I never understood that until I was older but she had always wanted my life to be so much more than hers had been. She loved me so much that she gave up the life in her dreams, where she walked the Hollywood hills and drank coffee on the beach. She lived a small and simple life, though ailed with a cancerous tumor, it did not deter her dreams, because she knew that she had something worth leaving behind. Me. She was not a failure anymore. She had me. I was her accomplishment.

 

          Grandma Bird said she saw a new freckle on my cheek, one more prominent than all of the others. I smiled because I knew that Angel 113 had found her wings.

Reviews

[Damian Alan Gray]

A gem! Wonderful writing, HM. I was right there in the daisies with Carolina and the angel, as well as when Mama took her final breaths. You have a great aptitude for displaying the inner workings of the imagination. I found it fascinating that Carolina would begin this tale with something resembling rancor toward her mother, and then near the middle she comes to an acceptance of sorts. Then, toward the end, when Carolina is older and apparently wiser, she all but canonizes her. All this done without so much as the blasphemy of a word toward the obvious. Brilliantly done, my friend. Outstanding work! Three thumbs up!!!