A Jaded Hope

This story contains content associated with grief.

This distorted point of view still satiated my burning hunger for her, my woman. But even now, I wished my feet were big enough to fill the shoes of the men she permitted inside of her. I envied the therapist that would never hear her story. Her thoughts shimmered behind the display of her stoic face begging me to commit my first crime. The cups of my binoculars uncomfortably pressed against the brim of my eyes, but I was unwilling to sacrifice this view. The lenses were broken, but finally I could see her. This view temporarily silenced my ravishing longing to know her, to love her, to be with her. I was nestled between mountains of boxes in the corner of her bedroom and my crouched position was causing my feet and legs to go numb. As she frantically filled garbage bags with clothes, her Chanel perfume awakened the memory of the last room just the two of us shared.

Krause Funeral Home was lined with mahogany pews and warmed with yellow lights. Sunlight poured in through the stained glass windows and bounced off the small porcelain white casket. We both stood in front of our baby who laid behind us dressed in a dazzling white dress. Her head was brimmed with a silk hat and a red rose rested on her still chest. We angled toward the camera interrupting the moments that could have been. People walked by giving hugs and commanded my woman to be strong even though they claimed to understand how hard it was to lose a child. With each pass of a person, I watched her tears dry. Her heart and mind were pleading for a moment to be weak, but their objections were quickly overturned by the world who told her to be strong. This left her soft soul with no other choice, but to harden. As everyone filed out, just the two of us shared the space. Both lost for words, we stared into each other’s eyes briefly before she put her sun glasses on and walked away. She never stopped walking and we never found the words to say to each other. It wasn’t long before she moved states away. I was left to try to make connections with people who could never measure up to what she was. They never could complete me the way that she did. So although she ran, she could never go far enough to keep me away forever.

She seemed to be moving faster now. As if she was running away from the impending threat of being discovered by my eyes. I kept her face in my view, it had been forever since I was able to see her this closely. Her full lips had the slightest red tint from the lipstick she wore last night. Her almond skin remained unrevealing of the stories of her years. She paused and stared at something in her hand. Briefly, a smile split across her face revealing her high cheek bones and small dimple on her left side. I pressed harder against the binoculars and my breath caught with the view of her eyes. The whites of her eyes illuminated against her hazel contacts. The dark depths of her pupils hid the inner parts of her I had spent my whole life searching for. I leaned forward hoping to pry into her eyes to begin to understand the woman I loved. The box beneath my elbow simultaneously broke and cried out with a loud burst before the mountain of boxes toppled forward. I lowered my binoculars.

“What are you doing?” she shouted as she jumped away with fear quickly curdled into rage.

“Mommy, I found these binoculars while I was cleaning!” I gleamed. I was trying to hold on to the image of her eyes I had captured just before this.

She turned away, tying the drawstring of just one more of the countless amounts of bags she was planning to lug through our next move across the country. “Girl, go put those bags in the car.”

I watched her as she left the room. My heart rang with pain but my mind quickly readjusted to our familiar view of her back, helping to silence the noise of my heart.

I scaled the mountain of boxes in front of me and made my way to the last few bags that remained in the room. Each bag was twice my size, and yet I twisted the plastic strings around my hand and began to pull. The strings buried themselves into my fist and my face tightened with the agony of carrying the weight of my mothers years. But, I persisted until the bags reluctantly began to slide across the carpet. My feet bore into the ground and I began to let out a breath as I was able to increase the speed of my back pedal.

I caught a glimpse of myself in our living room mirror just as I was at the threshold of the door. I was arrested by my reflection. I dropped her bags and met myself in the mirror. My legs ran for miles and were the darkened evidence of the rays of the southern sun. My shorts unintentionally hung loosely from my bony hips and my shirt mounted my budding breast. My mouth gaped open as I poured into my eyes. I traced the almond shape with my finger. I inched closer, closing my mouth to stop my breath from fogging the glass. I peered into the shallow depths of my eyes as the darkness began to swallow the tears of a jaded hope. The eagerness that once fervently pursued my mother was smothered with resentment and distanced to the innermost parts of my being. The muffled noises of my mother stuffing her bags into the car begged me to concede, but I refused.

“You ready?” She stood at the door. Our matching eyes meet each other in the mirror.

“Let’s go” I turned and skipped into the inevitable cycle of a generation of hidden women.