Holes in the Sky

I shook my head against the dirt. I could feel a tightness against the back of my skull. I wouldn’t. I would not forget.

My mother sighed. “Sometimes you just have to do things. In those days, I would have done anything to keep Ray with me,” she told me, yanking back up the memory of her early heroism in the wake of their parents’ deaths when Ray was still a boy. “Anything,” she swore again. “That’s the kind of person I am.” Then she turned toward me: “You should know that about me, Baby.”

But I didn’t want to know this — not any of it. My mother’s life was too complicated; it seemed we would never be finished with it.

“It’s not easy raising somebody. I really didn’t think I’d do it again. Not even after I married your father.”

I wished she would stop. It seemed there must be some way of making her stop; but I didn’t know what it was.

My mother had always been stronger than me. She’d had a bigger life; she had survived more. Long after I fell asleep, she would still be there, watching the skies.

“Life just doesn’t turn out the way you think.” Her hand came loose, sliding off of mine. She got quiet for a moment. But I knew that we weren’t finished: “Why’d you do it, then?”

Mom shrugged her shoulders against the blanket. “You find out what you’re capable of.”

I stared upward. My mother had always been stronger than me. She’d had a bigger life; she had survived more. Long after I fell asleep, she would still be there, watching the skies. Counting stars or histories. She was capable of so much — that was the problem.

Across camp, we heard the slow giggle of my brothers in their endless affinity. A flashlight jiggled staccato across the neighboring campers’ truck. My mother clasped my hand again — to claim me, to remind me of how close we were. The wind pushed clouds above the trees; I watched the holes above us fill up with night. My mother’s touch was dewy and warm, but I pulled my fingers into themselves instead, shoving them under the flesh at my hip. You don’t know me, I thought, lying there in the near dark. Giddy crowds and stick balloons, anxious mothers and unloved husbands. By then, I decided, I had learned a few tricks about the world: what people need, and the price they’re willing to pay for it. You have no idea, Mother — my fingers loosened, climbing slowly into a pine-scented sleep — the multitude of things I would do in my life. What all I might still be able to do.

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