by W Winters
Mom’s in the ER. You need to come home.
Delilah
Just let it pass. Cody’s text is a single line. His answer to my extremely long voicemail is a single line.
Hours go by before he texts again, hours of driving through the mountains of Pennsylvania and up to the Podunk town in New York where I grew up.
I’m at a gas station before he messages again: This break will be good for you. Your mom needs you and by the time you get back, all of this political bullshit will have passed.
My stomach stirs with the faint smell of gas and the whirl of cars driving down the worn asphalt road beside the gas station. Staring up at the faded sign, I do what I’ve always done—I breathe through it all, not letting it get to me.
My mom’s arm is broken. She’s not sick or dying. I won’t be here for long and then I’m going home to look into that journalist. With my message sent, I slip the phone into the cup holder and finish up at the gas station.
Regarding the article, I’m pissed, Cody seemingly couldn’t care less.
When my phone rings at the swinging red light to get back on the interstate, I nearly answer it until I see it’s my sister. I’m pissed at her too. My heart fucking stopped when I saw her message about our mother.
I didn’t even know it was only her arm until I was halfway here.
She wouldn’t answer; neither would Dad.
Anger swarms inside of me. Coupled with disappointment and resentment. Could anything else go wrong this week?
Some days are harder than others in the career I’ve chosen and it took me a long time to realize it’s like that with family too. Some days … some days I just wish they would be honest. I still would have come. I know Cadence would argue that I wouldn’t have, but I had the time off and I didn’t need to be manipulated into coming back home.
That’s exactly what it feels like and my discontent with my sister is why I drive the rest of the way, nearly two hours, without the radio on and my phone on silent. I didn’t even realize it until I parked in the hospital lot that I hadn’t turned the volume back up. Sometimes a person just needs quiet.
A few hours of quiet to clear my head and let Cody’s suggestion sink in: Just let it pass.
I can do that, I think as I climb out of the car, my purse hanging from the crook of my arm and the light jacket I threw on before leaving not doing a damn bit of good up here where it’s colder. At least I can try, but I can’t stop caring.
Absently, I nudge the door shut with my hip, cradling the bouquet of flowers I picked up for my mother in my arms. As I walk into the small hospital, I can’t recollect what I even packed. It was a furious effort to gather up my luggage and leave immediately.
I asked my sister what happened. She said she didn’t know.
It’s a difficult task not to set my jaw into a straight line when I see her as the glass double doors open and the visitor section to the left of the desk is visible. Mom could’ve been dead. I thought she was dying. How could she let me think the worst and not answer me when I demanded to know more? The words pile on top of each other in the back of my throat when I see my sister, but she doesn’t see. She doesn’t see any of the resentment, any of my anger through her blurred vision.
I nearly tumble back when my sister, slightly taller than me, skinnier and frailer in every way, wraps her arms around me and sobs in the crook of my neck.
I’d hold her back but I can’t move my arms; she’s gripping me so tight and my hands are full.
The anxiousness and fear sink back into my blood, slowly coursing through me.
“It’s just her arm,” I whisper to my sister in a dual effort to comfort her and also remind myself. “It’s just her arm, isn’t it?”
Cadence is slow to unwrap her delicate self from my body. She should’ve been a model, I swear. As she does, I take in the scene behind her. Auntie Susan is in the waiting area too. My God, I barely even recognized her. I don’t see Dad anywhere. The only other people in here include the woman working behind the desk and a man with his son in the opposite corner of the waiting area. There are only two rows of seats on the right side of the entrance. But we have our own corner it appears, judging by the two coats spilling over one chair and where Auntie has her purse on the coffee table next to two cups of what I know is tea. None of the women in my family drink coffee but me.
My gaze is brought back to Cadence when she sniffs and wipes her eyes, apologizing with that hint of shame for breaking down. Steadying her with a grip on her forearm, I ask her, “Where’s Dad?” The rustling of the plastic around the flowers is all I get in a response because Cadence breaks down again, silently crying and walking off to gather a tissue.
Hitching my purse up my shoulder and straightening my coat, I take my time making my way to my auntie.
I set the flowers and my purse down on the end of the coffee table and take off my coat, laying it on the third seat from the end. My auntie in the corner, then my sister, then me.
“Hi Auntie,” I greet her, stepping in front of my sister to lean down and give my auntie a hug. I expect it to be brief but she holds onto me tight, whispering that she’s glad I’m here before she releases me.
Her tone is tense and that’s what keeps me from asking the question again: it’s just her arm, isn’t it? Dread is a difficult thing to swallow; even more difficult to talk through.
“Dad’s talking to the police.” My sister speaks up before the silence passes too long. Her slender fingers run under her eyes gracefully before wiping the mascara that mars the tip of her fingers on her black skinny jeans. I know my sister very well, and she simply threw on those clothes. Yet, she still looks beautiful. Her hair in curls, her face fresh and bright eyed. She’s wearing a chunky cream knit sweater that hangs just low enough to show her chest and the cream against her light brown skin complements her perfectly.
Even with tears in her eyes, she’s beautiful. And she looks just like Mom. Everyone used to say it growing up; her skin is lighter than Mom’s, but that’s the only difference between them. She got our mother’s femininity, and I got our father’s intellect and ruthlessness.
“Why?” I question, crossing my ankles and observing, taking everything in. “What happened that he has to talk to the police?”
My auntie looks off in the distance, staring at the worn mural on the far wall. It’s nothing special, a mundane piece of art displaying trees and a sunrise made of tiny mosaic tiles. Something to comfort people and do nothing more. My auntie stares blankly at it while my sister stares at me, her hand landing on my forearm.
“She broke her arm; she said she fell. But the other bruises are older and she has a number of fractures.” My sister whispers the last sentence, swallowing harshly as she lets the implication hang in the air.
My first thought is that it’s been a long time since they’ve fought. We were children back then and he never touched her like that after. How awful is it, that I know even as my chest goes tight and my fingers cold, that he’s hit her before and yet I don’t want to believe the accusation.
“Did he hit her?” I ask outright. How the question comes out evenly, I don’t know. I can feel them both staring at me, their eyes boring holes into the side of my face as I stare at the steel elevator doors, wishing a doctor would come down and say I could see my mother, so I can ask her, rather than sitting here with people who don’t know. They don’t know. Mom would tell me. She’d tell me the truth. They had their problems early on, but they’re over. She broke her arm, that’s all.
Dad wouldn’t do that; he wouldn’t hit her. My mother is a strong woman. She wouldn’t let him. This is all a mistake. Isn’t it? It’s just a misunderstanding.
Fuck, I think as I drop my head and close my tired eyes. My mind’s playing tricks on me and my emotions are storming inside of me, whipping me around until I can’t think straight.
“Did he hit her?” I repeat myself, louder this time when neither of them answers. Auntie doesn’t say a damn thing
, but she doesn’t stay silent either. She’s deliberate when she grabs one of the two cups off the table in front of us and makes her way around the other side of it, saying she’ll give us space.
It took me a long time to realize the reason for the tension between my auntie and my father.
He came from money, had a white-collar job. He was powerful, older and white, marrying a younger black woman from a poorer neighborhood. “Trophy wife” was a term used a lot when we were younger.
My mother once screamed at her family that they couldn’t be happy for her. That they hated him because he wasn’t like the rest of them.
I thought she was right because my grandmother, her mother, never did seem to like him. But then again, my father’s mother never seemed to like my mother. It went both ways. All of my grandparents died before I was ten and I hardly remember them but I do remember the way they looked at their child’s spouse. Like they didn’t belong together in any way.
I thought my auntie had the same ideas as my grandmother.
Until Mom left him one day, taking us to Auntie Susan’s and both of her sisters told her she needed to leave him. I was too young to realize what was going on. Cadence knew before I did. She’s younger, but she remembers far more than I do. That was the one and only time, though.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” my sister finally speaks, her voice lowered and careful. “They haven’t been getting along recently.”
“Well, what did Mom say?” I question her, feeling my pulse strike harder. I struggle with the way my sister sees my father. I know they had fights, they had bad moments, but there were so many good ones. So many times they kissed each other in front of us. So many happy memories and occasions that were pure joy. What they went through before was a rough patch. That’s what my mom said, it’s what she called it, a rough patch.
“I want to know what really happened,” I comment and as I do, I feel warm tears at the corners of my eyes.
“I think I started it,” Cadence whispers in a choked voice then reaches for her tea. She holds onto it like it’ll protect her, her shoulders hunched inward. “I called Mom because… that guy I was with. He was rough the other night and I don’t know why, I called her and I blamed her.” Her voice cracks as she slumps back into her seat.
“What?” Disbelief runs rampant through me. Unpacking everything takes time, but the first reaction I have is to protect her, to defend her from whatever fucker she’s referring to. “What do you mean he was rough with you?”
“He just pushed me against the wall. I told him to leave when we got into a fight over something stupid. I don’t even remember.”
“Who is he?” I ask and my voice is deathly low.
“No one now. I’m done with him. I blocked him and he’s not interested in me anymore anyway. Not after what I said to him.”
I can only nod once before waiting for her to continue.
“I was upset and I called Mom and told her and she was so… so judgmental.” The hurt is there in her voice, but so is guilt. It’s riddled with it between each quickly taken breath. “So uppity about him and what happened and all I could think is that it happened to her and she stayed with him.
“And I went off on her… I said some things I shouldn’t have.”
“You think she got into it with Dad afterward?”
“I don’t know for sure, but … I just …”
With one arm wrapped around my sister’s shoulder, I pull her into me and let her rest there as her face contorts and she cries again.
“Have you talked to Mom?” I ask her and she shakes her head. “It’s been hours,” I remark.
It takes my sister a long moment to respond, “She was unconscious.”
There are four nurses in the corner of the hospital cafeteria. And then there’s my auntie with a plate she hasn’t touched, and myself. I move the mac and cheese around with my fork, in the same situation as my auntie. Not wanting to eat, but not ready to leave just yet.
My mother seemed fine, apart from her arm wrapped in a cast.
She smiled, she gave me a kiss. She said it got stuck in the railing when she tripped. She was trying to hold onto it and instead she only made it worse.
If it wasn’t for the look on my father’s face, I’d believe her. He got her two vases of daisies, her favorite flower. The smell of them in the hospital room haunts that moment for me. Three vases total, one bouquet from me, lining the room and bearing witness to that conversation.
I can’t be in the room with them. I don’t know how my sister’s doing it. How she can sit there with speculation but not say anything.
“How’s the city life?” Auntie Susan asks me and I bring my amber gaze up to meet hers. It falls quickly to her gray sweatshirt with the block letters from my uncle’s alma mater. He passed a few years ago, a car accident caused by black ice.
“It’s not like New York City.”
There’s a hum of understanding as she stirs a pack of sugar into a steaming cup of tea. Her dark eyes watch the swizzle stick as she asks, “You like it better down there? I bet it’s warmer.”
“It is. It’s ten degrees colder here every time I come up.”
The small talk doesn’t do anything to help the hollow feeling in my chest. Or the numb prick along my arms. I want to talk to someone, but words fail me. That and shame. I don’t want it to be true, but my gut is hardly ever wrong.
“You know what I told your mama?” my auntie Susan speaks up, and the bluntness of it forces me to meet her gaze. “I told her when she went back to him, that I was always there for her. If she wanted to come stay, if she needed money. I told her if she wanted a family dinner, I’d sit next to him but not in his house. I would never step foot in that man’s house.”
Hate seeps into her words, her disgust showing through and the first crack in her armor showing. My auntie’s frame is larger, not at all delicate like my mother’s. She shifts her weight and corrects her expression before continuing, hardening her disposition.
“We make choices, and your mother made hers. Your father made his. I make my own too. I’m not leaving her, but you can’t make sense of it with your mother.”
I don’t speak. Not to her. Not to my sister. Not even to my mother.
I’m silent as I take it all in. Collecting the bits of evidence and forming my own conclusion. I feel dead inside. There’s this pit in my stomach that’s cold and unforgiving.
My mother says it was an accident and that’s all there is to it as far everyone else outside this room is concerned.
I leave before everyone else and without telling them. The last thing I want is to be alone with my father. I don’t want him to look me in the eyes and lie to me. Worse, I don’t want to believe him when I feel so certain that he assaulted my mother and should be behind bars right now.
Flowers are waiting for me at the hotel desk when I check in. I wish they made me smile, but they’re so much more beautiful than daisies. That’s all I can think.
They’re the first thing I see and that smell… the smell fills the entire room. Tossing the keys onto the dresser and letting my purse and the luggage bag sit at the front of the room, I make my way to them.
My fingertips trail down the deep red petals, the smell of the roses covering up the memory of the daisies. A dozen deep red roses.
After washing my face and changing into sweats, I text Cody: You didn’t have to send flowers. But they’re beautiful.
His first text hits me like an ice bath washing down my bare skin. I miss you and I’ve been thinking of you, but I didn’t get you flowers.
A follow-up text from him does nothing to help: Now I wish I had.
He’s the only one who knew I was staying in this hotel. I only told Cody because he asked if I was staying with my parents and I told him, I always stay here.
My limbs are shaky as I move to the window of the hotel room. I’m on the second floor so there’s no reason I should see anyone there, but still, I look over every
inch and then do a search in the room, checking in the closet, in the bathroom. I search every inch and then lock the door before heading back to the roses. There’s no note. No indication of who they’re from and the clerk at the desk said she didn’t know. They were simply left here specifically for me when I checked in.
A dozen red roses that keep me up most of the night until I slip into a light sleep, filled with brutal memories.
Delilah
Three days in my hometown is plenty.
Add in two family dinners with forced smiles and my mother doing her best to tell us she’s fine and everything’s all right, and I couldn’t wait to leave. I spent every moment I could in the hotel providing lies about how much I was needed at work.
There was only one moment I was alone with my father and he called me out on that lie subtly. All he mentioned was the article and he told me the same thing that everyone else did: it’ll pass.
He didn’t say a word about Mom. He didn’t let on that it was obvious there was tension between us. He knows I think he hit her. He knows everyone thinks it.
But in that moment at the restaurant when everyone left and I had to go back for the to-go box of leftovers I’d forgotten, he didn’t mention a damn thing but the article when I ran into him scribbling on the receipt at the table.
Three days of feeling insignificant and like I’m only playing a part in a poorly written film. Four times I tried to reason with my mother, coaxing her to tell me the truth when we were alone. All four times she denied anything had happened other than her being careless. Even when I stared at the other bruises. I’ve never seen a sad smile on my mother’s face until I said I was leaving. I’m just not sure what she’s most sorry about.
I need to see you. My text to Cody remains unsent even though he’s back in town and so am I. But we haven’t seen each other. I spent two days at home before forcing my way back into the office at work.
