Margaret

Contains sensitive content: death, fires



Grandma’s chair grates as she rocks, back and forth, back and forth. Her knitting needles clack clack clack and the first bats of the evening chirp, searching for the moths at Grandma’s lantern. I sit on the top step of our porch, running my hands back and forth over the chipping wood. I’ve gotten more splinters than I can count, but the rough texture of unfinished wood is one of my favorites.

I hear footsteps approach—my Ma’s—and the door squeaks open.

The breeze carries the scent of chocolate and mint from the cocoa Ma brings out. She hands me a mug and sits beside me. Ma smells of the cleaning products she uses at work. She always scrubs as hard as she can in her after-work shower, so she can forget about work for the night and focus on family. It doesn’t work, but I don’t mind. I know she works hard to take care of me and Grandma.

The cocoa burns my tongue because I never wait for it to cool. I love Ma’s cocoa. 

“It’s brown, the cocoa,” she says, as if I don’t remember that. 

I savor it anyway, every time she tells me about colors.

Brown is sweet and soft. But the stoop is wooden, and Ma says that’s brown, too, just lighter. It’s coffee with a breeze and birdsong in the morning, instead of a warm, still night with the sound of crickets and the heat of the lantern. I tell this to Ma, and she considers it before answering.

“I could never describe colors the way you do. You have a way with words.”

I don’t, though, not really. Ma says the way I feel colors is poetic, but she wouldn’t if she knew it’s the only way I understand them at all. As textures and emotions and memories and sounds. She just sees them. As colors. Something flat, external, I guess. I can’t think of colors that way. Dark brown is chocolatey and smooth, light brown is rough and cool.

Grandma says softly, “Close the lantern, Betsy Ann, the sky is exploding tonight.” She stops her knitting and the night is emptier than before.

The lantern hinge is rusty and squeals as Ma closes it and I feel moths fly into me and one another, confused now that yellow warmth is gone. No one says anything more. I almost ask Ma to describe the sunset, but it won’t make a difference.

I know that night is dark indigo, and that it feels spacious and safe. But before that, the sunset has orange clouds, content and peaceful, in magenta skies, which feel rushed, like the sun is impatient to get to bed. I know there are streaks of violet, tired, like I am now. I wonder if this sunset has the bright pink Ma loves so much.

I don’t like pink. It reminds me of the too-tight winter coat I had to wear to school two years ago, the one that made Maude tease me and pull my hair when she thought I couldn’t hear her beside me. I told Ma, and she threw out the coat, bought the expensive one all the others were wearing, but I still don’t like pink. It’s too sweet, like the cotton candy that gives me a stomach ache each year at the fair or the perfume the girls at school like to wear.

I shiver, and I know the sun has dipped below the horizon and left us in a pleasantly cool night. I try to imagine the stars. I can never quite get the stars. I think it’s like the fizz in a Coke when you don’t expect so much carbonation but Ma says they’re softer than that. Grandma says the stars are whatever I feel they are, that they’re there for us to enjoy in any way. Night noises grow louder, tree frogs joining the symphony of crickets and bats and bugs and Grandma’s chair. Everything feels black– familiar and close and total.

Ma shifts beside me- it’s time to head in. This is my favorite part of the day. Ma closes the shutters around the narrow windows and puts out all the lights. We say goodnight to Grandma and head to our bedroom in the back, me leading Ma because she cannot see in the dark and I know the furniture better than she does. I measure my steps and avoid the squeaky floorboard, but Ma lands right on it, just like last night. I grin.

Tomorrow is Saturday and everything is perfect.

I wake up in the middle of the night. It’s quiet. I stay still, waiting, wondering. The night air is colder than April expects, and the neighbors’ earlier bonfire is still smoking. The wind carries the acrid scent through the tiny open window near the ceiling. I hear Grandma cough from the other room. I slip out of bed and get a glass of water from the kitchen. In a moment of boldness, I unlock the front door and step outside, careful not to make any noise.

Ma always says to stay inside at night, because more folk are getting robbed these days and drunk people go around at night. But there’s something unsettling tonight, and I can’t go back to bed yet.

On this side of the house the smoke doesn’t smell so much. The house is a bit of a windbreak, I guess. That’s good, because I’m chilly and my jacket is in storage until summer ends. My hands find the railing and I lean against it for a few minutes. I try not to think too much. I just want to relax and find drowsiness again. It comes eventually, but I’m not quite ready to head back in. Instead, I sit in my usual spot on the top step and lean my head against the post beside it, breathing in the openness of night.

I wake a while later, stiff and too cold and scared for a moment, when I realize I’ve fallen asleep alone outside. I stand fast, heart racing and anxious to get back inside, but I’m clumsy in my hurry and I knock into the lantern Ma forgot to bring inside. It tips and spills open.

I hear it rolling across the porch and I can’t find it in time. Heat swells up and I’m frozen in place and somehow the fire is all around me and I don’t know how long I stand there until I come to myself. I’m disoriented and afraid and where’s the door? 

I find the door and hiss at the burn I’ve just received from the knob but I run inside anyway. I go to Grandma first. She is already awake, confused, but I yell “Fire!” and she finds her way outside. The door slams shut behind her. There’s a loud crash moments later and I hear her give a short yell but I don’t go to her, not yet. Ma first.

Ma sleeps deeply and it takes a minute to wake her. I think she understands my quick breaths and fear even though I can’t speak, so she grabs my arm and yanks me to the front door. She’s not careful and I hit the couch and the table on the way. She turns to Grandma’s room.

“Mom? Mom!” Her voice is shaking.

Grandma isn’t there, of course, but those words get stuck in my throat and I feel as if I might cry. Ma starts for the bathroom. The heat is stronger now and I’m right by the front door. I think the fire is inside now.

“She’s outside! She’s outside!” I’m the one screaming and crying, but it sounds like someone else. Ma comes back in a moment. I try to open the door, but the knob is too hot. Ma kicks at it, slams against it. It shudders like it’s in pain but holds and fire surrounds us and the only way out of our home. She doesn’t stop, even when the fire pushes me further into the home, away from its angry reach. 

The door splinters, finally, and Ma gives a cry of relief, but her voice sounds too far away. I can’t move. I hear Ma say “Mom! Thank God!”

Something hits my shoulder and I fall, vaguely aware of more crashing around me and Ma’s screams as she realizes I didn’t follow her outside.

I take a moment when I wake up and my memories catch up with me. They feel distant, like they might have been a mildly uncomfortable dream. I don’t feel any pain, either, and I feel calm. I’m lying on something soft that I feel and don’t feel. I open my eyes.

It’s like I can’t breathe, but I’m not sure I was breathing in the first place. I close my eyes and count to ten, then open them again.

There’s a weight in my chest, but it’s not heavy. It’s an understanding, a new part of me I didn’t know was there. It makes me want to cry, but the tears blur my vision and I force them back into my throat. I don’t know how I know, but I know. These are colors. I see the sky above me, blue with white clouds—blue! with white clouds!

I sit up, slowly, still watching the clouds. I stand, carefully, as distant treetops catch my eye. Then I look down at the grass. Green is joy and contentment, I’ve always thought. I kneel and caress tall blades as if it’s my first time touching grass, because, in a way, it is. Eventually I force myself to look beyond the grass at the wildflowers sprouting here and there, and at the birds and squirrels hopping about. Brown. Red. Yellow. Pink. Somehow I know their names, like it really is a part of me. I turn, half expecting to see Ma behind me, waiting for me with a smile.

She’s not there, but something in me tells me she is safe.

“Mama,” I say softly. I haven’t called her that for years.

Slowly, as if not wanting to alarm me, a figure fades into view. I see Ma but she is still not there. She sits in her sister’s house, with Auntie Charlotte holding her hand, murmuring hushed words to her. In her other hand is a photograph of me and her and Grandma. A tear drips onto the photo from Ma’s chin and her shoulders begin to shake.

“Shh, Mama, don’t cry.”

She can’t hear me, of course, I know that, but I hear her crying.

“Mama, don’t cry. I’m okay.”

A hand touches my shoulder. I recognize the person’s scent and glance behind to see Grandma smiling at me. Her hand travels down to hold my own. She shifts her gaze to the image of Ma in front of me and I follow.

I reach my hand out in front of me, trying to comfort Ma. I know she can’t really feel me, but I place my hand where her shoulder is. She stills, lifts her head sharply.

“Margaret?”

She knows I’m there. She knows I’m okay. I return my hand to my side.

“Mama, I’m okay now. I don’t hurt. I’m with Grandma, and she’s beautiful, like you’re beautiful.

"Don’t cry Mama. I can see the colors.”