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Show Motherlunge a novel 100 Instead she came and stood next to my chair, leaning against the wall as if we were in a waiting room with restricted seating. She put one smooth and chubby hand on my shoulder. Perhaps if I had had a terrible illness in childhood-leukemia, cerebral astrocytoma-she would have stood like this and been all right. She would have had to take care of me. I could have drifted off to sleep in her arms, the heart and 02 monitors blinking in the dark like stars, like moons, abiding as rhymes and waves on the sea. What a wonderful mommy you are, you are, you are! What beautiful mommy you are. A Dorothy was stroking my shoulder, then my hair. "What's the matter?" she asked vaguely. My throat was tight, hot; I couldn't say. I shook my head. And when Dorothy took her hand away, then my corrosive tears rolled down. They scored shiny lines on my cheeks the way acid rain makes cathedral angels cry even as they smile, because the people who made them and loved them are dead. |