Momma's Lasagna

“My deepest apologies to you, sir,” my father says into the phone, “Yes, I will make sure it never happens again. Okay, have a good day.”

Once he carefully places the phone back on the wall, he shoots me a look that says, I’m very disappointed in you. I look away.

“Pearl, I thought better of you were better than this, you're gonna be in college soon, stop being immature," his bushy brown eyebrows furrow at the thought of me getting in trouble again.

“I told you, he started it,” I sound like a six year old, whining and creating silly excuses to get me out of trouble, even though it was his fault.

“I don’t care about whose fault it was, Pearl, all I care about is that you punched Johnny Davis in the nose and now his parents are making me pay for his broken nose.”

“Sorry Daddy,” I said apologetically. I never should have punched him, I only did it because he stopped minding his own business and decided to come worry about mine. His mean old momma is gonna do the same to my Daddy and make him pay with money we don’t even have.

Daddy put his rough knuckles to his wrinkled forehead and pursed his chapped lips. I hated making him stressed. When my Momma died, my Daddy and I couldn’t afford the types of lives that the other kids at my school could. He used most of the money he earned being an artist to keep me in the fancy private school that I went to. Daddy always said that someday I would move out of this town and make a million dollars. I always assumed he said this because I had good grades, or that he didn’t like the town of West Oak, but he wanted a better life for me, one better than we had. 

I walked through the narrow hallway, lined with memories from when I was young, down to my room. It had a twin bed and a few books stacked neatly in the corner near the stained glass window that was from when the house was a farm, owned by a large family of Irish Catholics. I wonder what Momma would say about me punching Johnny Davis.

“Pearl,” she would say, her voice like the calm rolling waves of the ocean on a summer night, “You did something wrong, but I sure am proud of you for kickin’ that Johnny Davis’ wimpy ass.”

I could almost feel her with me. The ghost of her wrapping her arms around my bony shoulders. The last time I saw her was in the hospital. Daddy and I knew that it wasn’t going well. Once the three of us found out that she was terminal, I avoided visiting her in the hospital. I couldn’t bear to see my once beautiful mother. One look at her face and I would burst into tears. Her once bright blue eyes were dull and grey with purple circles around them, her hair was gone and a blue bandanna took the place of it on her cold head. She could barely speak or move, but she still managed to smile for us. Her teeth were white, her lips the color of old ham that was left on the kitchen table overnight. I remember visiting her before school a month ago and squeezing her hand and coming back to the hospital after school to find Daddy with his head down, sobbing. I cried enough to fill a river with my tears, the salty feeling was one that I had felt more than any other. My dad and I felt like our world was a water balloon and it had just been pricked by a needle. When there were no more tears left for me to shed, I became numb. It was a battle to get up in the morning and I forgot to feed myself and became stick thin. My eyes swelled and I did nothing all day except stare out at empty corners of our empty house. The flowers that Momma and I grew together died of thirst and the tears started to shed again.

Suddenly, the phone in my room rang.

“Hello,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes, “This is Pearl.”

“Hi Pearl,” a voice echoed through the phone, “This is Louise Martin. I wanted to notify you that you have been accepted for a full scholarship to NYU. Congratulations! I called because we did not get a response when we sent out an acceptance letter.”

My heart skipped a beat. A sharp pain in my chest emerged as I recalled something that Momma had told me when I was graduating junior high. We had escaped from Daddy for a girls trip to the city while he went on a golfing trip in Connecticut. After a week of exploring every shop and boutique, Momma and I visited the campus of NYU.

“Someday,” said Momma in her deep lulling voice, “You’ll be here.”

I grinned, remembering the hopeful glint in her eyes.

“Yes!” I said, enthusiastically, “Yes! Yes!”

Daddy ran into my room, “What is it, Pearl?”

He saw from the look in my eyes and how I stared, in awe, at the NYU poster that hung on the popcorn ceiling above my bed. Suddenly, he bolted towards me and pulled me into a hug. His long arms wrapped around me, a blanket of stars over a forest in the night. In the warmth of his hug, I felt the same ghost around me, congratulating me and telling me that she knew I could do it all along.

I hang up on the phone, thanking Louise and I walk through the hallway of memories. I think about the time Momma took me to the zoo. When we built a intricate sand castle that I wrecked later. When she taught me how to jump rope on the sidewalk outside of our apartment building. And all of the other things that I did with my Momma.

The trace of Momma's lasagna hovers under my nose.

Later that night, Daddy and I sat at the table, smiling. It seemed like it was the first time in forever. We sat right across from each other on wooden chairs that Momma once found at an antique shop. Daddy used Momma's special lasagna recipe even though we both liked it better when Momma made it. We laughed at old pictures of the three of us and happy tears sprang out of our eyes. We held hands in our prayer, thanking the lord for this everything, leaving one chair open at the table.

"Those we

love

never truly

leave us.

There are things

that

death

cannot touch."

-Jack Thorne