The Day my Mother Disappeared

I remember the way the grass glittered and sparkled in the crisp February air when the woman that I once called my mother, but now only call curses in my mind, brought us on the porch to tell us the news. The words each fell like atom bombs sprinkled into the fragile life of a six year old child and I fixed my watering eyes on the cracks in our porch, trying not to cry. 

“I’m leaving,” she said casually. 

“Moving to Idaho. And I’m going to start a better family and you’ll never see me again.” 

My first grade vocabulary wasn’t robust enough to find the right words, so instead the tears I’d been trying to keep leaked from my eyes as I heard my sister start to beg. 

“Mama, please don’t go. Please, please, don’t leave us,” she pleaded as tears rolled down her face. The woman I once called my mother remained stoic. 

“No, it’s your father’s fault. You’ll have to take it up with him. But this is goodbye.” 

I was sobbing and shaking as her arms warped around me and as she pulled away a trail of my snot connected the two of us, if only for a moment. 

“I love you, Deborah.” 

The phrase was uttered so softly that the beat of a butterfly wing could’ve taken the words and blown them away, but I remember. I heard it. Then I watched as she headed down the red-dirt driveway, her suitcase in hand, and hopped into a cherry red Sonoma S10. The dust of the dirt road dissipated after she drove out of sight and my sister grabbed me and began to sob into my neck. The tears were hot and abundant as I began to cry as well. 

My Grandmother, with her tightly coiled salt and pepper hair, pink mumu, and pink slippers found us on the porch clinging and crying. It had only been minutes, but the cold chill of February had sunk into our bones. The grass still glittered as she ushered us to her trailer house next door and wrapped us in blankets on the brown and orange floral couch. She clicked the TV on as she opened a glass canister where she kept marshmallow circus peanuts for special occasions. The jar plunked down in the space between us as she looked us over from top to toe. 

“Tell me one more time, what happened?” she asked with a furrowed brow. 

Of course, I was still speechless, so I nibbled on a plasticky circus peanut as my sister shuttered and hiccupped as she recounted the tale a second time. My grandmother pulled each of us into a crushing hug and stared deeply into our eyes as she said, “This is NOT your fault. I need to call your Dad at work. You both sit tight.” 

Lifting the phone from its cradle on the wall, she glanced at the wall where she kept our Dad’s work phone number and dialed it slowly and methodically. Her voice was a hushed whisper as she spoke with the person on the other end of the line, all the while twirling the phone cord around her pearly pink fingernails. 

“Okay, okay. Bye.” 

“Girls,” she called from the kitchen, “We gotta go back to your house and get yall dressed, okay? Your dad can’t get off work because of the storms last night so he’s still on call.” 

“Are we going to school today?” 

“No, but I’m not gonna let yall sit around in your pajamas all day. Come on, let’s go get dressed.” 

We trudged across the soggy lawn in our pajamas and bare feet. The frost had already melted from the grass but the porch steps were still frosty and cold on our toes. 

“Is mom coming back?” my sister blurted as we ascended the steps. 

“I don’t know, baby. Your Mom and Dad have to work that out. Our job is to get dressed right now, then you get to have a whole day with Grandma.” 

I could tell that underneath her feigned excitement boiled concern but she committed to the task at hand and scurried into our home. 

As we crossed the threshold, the smell hit us. The smell of rotting food inside dirty dishes and trash that had stewed hit you hard when you entered the home, but my sister and I acclimated to the smell quickly; this is what home smelled like sometimes. 

“Yall go back there and get dressed,” she said as she pointed us to our rooms, “I’ll work on some of these dishes.” 

“We tried to do them this morning,” my older sister responded, “but we didn’t know what to do with the wiggly bugs.” 

“Wiggly bugs?” 

“The white wiggly bugs. I’ll show you.” 

She grabbed Grandma's hand and led her to the sink where maggots had made their home amongst some of the older dishes. 

“Grandma will take care of it. Yall get dressed and play in your room until I call you back,” she said as she ushered us toward our room in the back of the house. 

An hour of dishes clanging passed by as my sister and I entertained ourselves with the books and toys in our room. We chatted idly as we avoided the subject of our mother. Suddenly, Grandma  popped her head in our room, her hands wrinkly from working her way through a pile of old dishes. 

“Let’s go get something to eat.” 

We’d both picked at our breakfast then played half-heartedly at our town's decrepit park before heading back to the trailer where we passed the rest of the day slowly by watching TV and eating our way through the jar of circus peanuts. 

The porch rattled with the sound of heavy work boots when our father finally arrived home and Grandma met him on the porch. We could hear the rise and fall of their voices through the thin walls and I wondered what would happen to us. What’s a child without a mother, even if that mother didn’t take very good care of us sometimes? I could feel my heartbeat in my ears as my thoughts spun round and round until finally the door cracked open and there stood my Dad. 

He stood in the doorway smelling like sweat and hard work. He stretched his arms out to us and we ran to him. For a moment everything seemed normal as he scooped us up saying, “Let’s go home.” 

He carried us across the yard and placed us gently on the steps. 

“I’m so sorry, girls. We’re gonna figure this out, okay?” 

My sister and I nodded in unison and I began to cry again. The rest of the evening was littered with bouts of tears as my father cooked us dinner, made sure we took a bath, and tucked us both into bed. I felt safe, knowing that my Dad would always stay and always protect us. 

After he slipped out of the room, I could hear his voice amidst the quiet of our country home. I could hear his anger and I knew that somehow, he had tracked down our mother and was talking to her on the phone. I finally nodded to sleep to the sound of his muffled voice and the chirp of crickets despite the swirling thoughts in my mind. 

The grass glittered again the next morning as he told us. 

“She said she was gone and she’s not coming back.” 

My sister and I dissolved into another round of sobs as our Dad assured us that everything would be alright. 

The weeks that followed were a blur of adjustment as we learned to fill the gaps that she had left. The bitter cold of February gave way to March’s warmth as flowers began to bloom and the grass came in again in a vibrant green. Everything felt new and things were beginning to feel normal. 

I remember the green of the grass and the white flower buds on the tree in front of our house the day a cherry red S10 Sonoma came in a cloud of dust and deposited the woman that I once called my mother, but now only call curses in my mind, back on our doorstep. She smelled like stale cigarettes as she said with no emotion, “I’m back home.” 

She passed my sister and I with little regard and headed into the house that held the lingering smell of laundry detergent. And I remember…I remember wishing that she was still gone.