32
2017
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Thankfully, no longer attempting to drive herself, my mother would call a taxi to take her to the bank, to buy booze, and sometimes to make a stab at selecting groceries at Kings Super Market, which she then had delivered. If I had been a stranger walking past her down one of the store’s aisles,
If I had been a stranger walking past her down one of the store’s aisles, would I have had a clue about the universe of singers and chanters that inhabited her?
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
would I have had a clue about the universe of singers and chanters that inhabited her? Tormented by hallucinations, how did she function? Who could comfort her? Maybe her need for comfort was my own projection. Each time the operator reported that my mother’s telephone had been disconnected, I always panicked that this was it. The telephone bill
Bite Your Tongue (mixed media, collage on antique paper, 20x12) by Melinda Fine
was usually the first bill my mother paid when she came to after a siege of letting her mail mount unopened. One time, neglecting her oil bill too long, she ran out of heat and the pipes had burst. How long had water been pouring through the downstairs ceiling into the hall and living room? How long had she been without heat? She told me that a cup of water in her bedroom had frozen.
“Now don’t get all excited,” she said that time. “The insurance man has been here already, and they are going to pay to have the damage repaired. They are even going to pay for painters who are coming next week, and a man came yesterday to take the rugs away. Tend to your own business. I’m managing fine.” But I worried. Had a reputable rug dealer picked up her rugs for repair, or had someone ripped them off? Would they disappear as all her jewelry had vanished? Or the silver dollars her great-grandpa Shearer had given her every birthday as a little girl? Or Carlton’s prize Revolutionary War musket he had mounted on the dining room wall? After two days and two nights of letting the phone ring for fifteen minutes at a time, I had been unable to rouse her. Then her last friend in Montclair, a woman she knew from church, called me to say my mother had not telephoned her in an oddly long while, and she, too, had been unable to reach her. Maybe this time, she suggested, I had better come to Montclair. After the hour drive from our house, when I entered Montclair, I stopped at a deli and bought coffee and Danishes for my mother and me. I parked in front of her house, leaving my purchase on the floor of the car until I could see what was what, walked down the steps of the front sidewalk to the porch, and rang the doorbell. What if my mother did not answer the bell? I still would not know if she were acting out of peevishness or if she were unconscious or dead. I tried the front door, but it was locked. All the windows were fitted with combination storm windows and screens. Fat chance I would get in one of those unless I broke the glass, which I did not want to do. I walked down the driveway. Both the back door and basement doors were locked. I walked back up the driveway and, parting the ivy, pushed one of the basement windows, but it seemed sealed. I tried another, and, hinged at the top, it easily swung open. So much for the impenetrable fortress, I thought, and wondered who else had been in and out. I stuck my head in to size up the situation. With my purse slung over my shoulder and wishing I had