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Daddy handed me Mama's beige open-weave sweater two weeks after she died. "It's yours if you'll have it." I took the suede handbag and matching pumps I'd helped her pick out at Belks a few years back. The sales clerk special ordered the pumps.
I gave Daddy the only thing I could think to give him on February 11, 1995. I said I'd come on back home and take care of his land. He was dying. I knew he'd never understood why I left. Williams' didn't do that. They stayed where they were brought up. I quit my job and drove on back home to live in the house where I was raised. The contractor was to start on the house in a couple of weeks. Mama's clothes had not been worn in ten years. I had somehow managed to lived through the illnessess and deaths of both of my parents. Sifting through their lives - one love letter, one box of instant grits, one get well card, one pair of underwear at a time was another matter that almost woke me from the coma I had willed upon my conscious self. The garbage bags I bought at the convenience store smelled of old grease. Each time I tore one off I became deathly sick. Thinking I was having some sort of physical reaction to capitulation, to death, to watching my hands rape my parent's home over and over, I poured myself a stiff drink. It was later at my sister's house that I began to recognize the symptoms. The sausage on the platter would never pass my lips. I pulled my biscuit through the syrup over and over. I was pregnant. The remainder of the cleanup would be done without anything to dull the ache. Now my constant companion was a case of morning sickness that lasted until I closed my eyes at night. I packed, threw-up, and then went on to bed. My sister could not bring herself to do what my hands were doing. I understood. I boxed, bagged, tore down, ripped apart, scattered every momento, every memory, everything that said home. I did this thing with hands so like Mama's. I tore up her housekeeping, pulled out her cabinets, eviscerated her scared spot. I finally threw out the cans she had stored in her special baking section, cans that were now bloated -- cans she touched with a special recipe in mind. Go To Page: 1 2
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