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Show Motherlunge a novel 33 Pavia and I were watching TV on the couch when I called; to muffle the sound, I put my hand over the receiver after I spoke, and I waited for my mother's reaction. In fact, Dorothy felt a great energy around this news. A Great Energy! she emphasized. Then she handed the phone over to someone she introduced as Joseph, and made me tell him the same news. "Right on," said Joseph, "Peace." He hung up on me, and I turned to Pavia. "Her new friend," she told me, flipping through the TV channels. "And I think she's in a mood. She's been calling me at work, asking for money." I felt my jaw clench. According to Dorothy, my jaw is my stress storage area. "Are you sending money?" Still staring at the screen, Pavia pulled her legs off the floor to sit cross-legged on the couch. "Yeah." I began working my jaw like that martial little Nutcracker, up and down, loosening it up. I was used to Dorothy being sad. In my mind, she still belonged in the sour-smelling back bedroom where she slept most of the day, most of the years of our childhood. When Pavia and I were growing up, Dorothy's forays into the rest of the house had seemed rare and benign. Pope-like in a flannel housecoat, she emerged each morning before school to wave her hand weakly over our cereal bowls, and read aloud the day's affirmation from her flip calendar. lam guided into my true place. I trust the universe to provide abundantly for me now: I am a perfect jewel of wholeness. But in the last few years, starting before Pavia's wedding, things had changed. Sometimes Dorothy |