Oil and Water

To say my mother and I had a good relationship, a relationship period, was an understatement. It wasn't an awful childhood; I was genuinely a happy kid. My mother and I never connected like Charlotte and her. I guess you could say our relationship was always based on me being water and her being oil.

Charlotte and I have finally gathered ourselves together enough to go through Mom's things. The Death (because we still can't say it out loud) was hard, but we knew sooner or later we would be in this exact spot. Charlotte leans down to look through yet another brown box that has been warped by time. It looks as if, as time went on, the box tried to cave in more and more to protect the precious belongings inside. Photos.

Char sits next to me, her long brown curls slapping her shoulders. Her brown eyes don't shine like they used to. But I'm sure the same could be said for my green eyes. We were so tired at this point. We've been trying to canvas the house in a tag-team effort, but it's just so big. When you look up the crooked stairs, to the landing and the glimpse of the second floor, the dust dances in a furious bout through the streamers of sun. The smell isn't musty, Mom loved candles. It doesn't really have a scent that screams home at all anymore. Or ever, to me.

Charlotte lets out a small sniffle. It immediately zaps me out of looking around this foreign house. A tear has just hit the maximum capacity of welling and is now streaming down her cheek. I look at the photo in her hands. It's from Char's first baby shower. It was such a fun day of celebration. Everyone was there to bring the little one into the world with as much love as possible. It hit me hard, the bittersweet factor of her finding this picture in particular. It's just another stab to her heart that only a few years ago she was celebrating bringing a life into the world, while now ushering another life out. I wrapped my arms around her petite frame as tightly as possible. I can feel her hands still out in front of her, clutching onto this memory, as they press into my stomach. She wriggles slightly, and her arms come out to wrap around me. We both sit and cry for a moment. She cries because she lost a friend, I cry because my little sister is hurting and there is nothing I can do to make that stop.

After a few minutes, I untie my hands from around her. I stand up, wipe away the stains on my cheeks and clear my throat.

"Why don't we split up? You stay down here and go through what we have on the floor. I'm going to go upstairs."

"To her room?" my sister asked me, not looking up from the box she has started mindlessly rummaging through.

"Yeah."

Charlotte just nodded her head, the go ahead. We were going onto week three of trying to get Mom's house cleaned out. The one room she could not bring herself to go into was Mom's room. I don't even think we'd opened the door since she was taken out. I knew that I would have to be the one to go in. I grab an empty box from the floor. I can see the dust being awakened by the breeze of the motion of the box.

"I'll put whatever I think you might want to look through and keep in here," I hold up the empty box. "And I'll bring it back down here for you. If you want to, you can come up and help." That was my pathetic attempt at saying You really should be doing this. Mom liked you more.

She didn't move, so I start the trek up the stairs. They ache with every step I land. It was almost like the house was letting me know that even it felt more sad than me that she was gone. It was an old house. Way too big for her alone. As I hit the landing, I can hear Charlotte let out a sob. I wasn't sure what she had found, but she needed to cry it out. I follow the planked wooden boards to the last bedroom straight ahead. All the other rooms were opened, letting a little bit of sunshine, of life, into the hallway. But as I near the closed door, it seems like all of that was just sucked out of the air like a vacuum. I grab the bronzed, round handle and push. The door creaks as the door knob finds it's place against the wall.

We were never allowed in here by ourselves, so it always felt like unexplored territory. Even as we got older, I'd still catch myself saying Don't go in there as I passed to get to the bathroom. The room had been left exactly as it was. The king size bed was made with crisp corners, and a small blanket was thrown across as if she had tossed it to jump out of bed. Which wasn't possible at her stage of the disease. The closet doors were pursed open, just enough to whisper There's are so many belongings to go through in here! She kept her house clean at all times. There wasn't ever too much that was out of place. It was like therapy to her to clean. I walked around her room in an oblong circle. My hands run across the knick knacks, picture frames, clothes, books. I wanted her books. There were few things we shared in common. But we would talk about books for hours. I am into the fantasy, macabre, "ooky spooky" as she'd call it. She was into true crime and romance. But we loved to let each other into our worlds through these novels.

After my lap around the room, the real test came into light. The closet. I had to start. I walk over to the doors and stand for a second. I take the small wooden knobs into my hands and slowly pull them open to reveal a perfectly organized space. Clothes are organized by the ROY G BIV standard, the few boxes are placed perfectly into two-foot towers. There are a few model cars sitting on the floor, back in their boxes, that her husband had put together before his untimely death. She would never get rid of those. I was never into cars. I place them delicately into the box to give Charlotte a chance to claim them. The closet is mostly full of what you'd expect a mom to hang onto: her clothes, pictures, trinkets we made in elementary school. As I push through these items, it becomes more and more clear that she had a special love for Charlotte. She hung onto her school report cards, tests marked with A's and stickers, pictures of them together. I can feel the burning knot in my chest growing with every item that passes my fingers.

Where the hell is all of my stuff?! Did she not hang onto anything of mine?! Oh, here's a vocab test that I got an eight of ten on. Great! Picture of just me, not with her? That's cool.

Steaming tears start running down my cheeks. My face feels like it is hot enough to melt the skin away. At this point, I'd cleared enough junk away from the back to create a clearing against the wall. It is framed, but we always assumed it was just where there was some important pipes or a water heater or something. This was also framed out perfectly for me to thrash my backside into, like a toddler would do after being told they cannot, in fact, eat a crayon for lunch because it's green like peas. But as my body connects with that spot, it breaks away. I tumble through this new doorway into what I come to realize was more of a crawl space or extra storage. I lay on the floor for what seems like fifteen minutes before my breathe finally decides it is time to re-enter my body and lungs. How did Charlotte not hear that commotion?! I open my eyes to a dimly lit space. Sunlight is creeping through the two-foot by two-foot window that was on the opposite side of the room. This space isn't tall enough to stand-up in, even for my five foot tall self, so I hunker down on all fours to look around. There isn't really anything in here. Spiders have claimed the low-hanging beams with their tethered webs, still swaying in the breeze my temper tantrum had created. Bug carcasses are strewn about in the dust that has accumulated on the floor. Places like this make me feel itchy. So I turn around to exit back through the busted hole my body created.

As I shift all of my weight to my left arm and leg, my right knee bumps into something. I twist my head around to find one lone box in this empty wasteland. While my years of horror movie participation screams Don't look in the box!, my curiosity is already peaked. I pull the box across the floor with a deep, scraping noise. It isn't heavy, but there are belongings inside. I peel the flaps open, almost expecting a weasel or clown to pop out at me. There isn't enough light to see the contents without pulling them out. I stick my hand in and feel around. The first item my fingers connect with is a pile of photos. As I start leafing through them, I see myself as a baby, as a kid. We didn't have many pictures of us after we hit our teens. While mom isn't in them, I know she was the photographer. I don't remember doing any of these things with Dad. I decide to explore deeper. The next item is a manila folder. I unpin the tongs and spill the contents onto the floor. Old report cards, teachers' notes, arts and crafts spew out. At this point, my previously burning knot has turned into more of a gag. It waivers up and down in my throat. I ... I'm not sure why I'm getting so emotional. We didn't have a relationship! She and Charlotte had the relationship!

There is one more item inside the box. A hardcover, black book. I open the cover and the first page is lousing with my mom's curvy handwriting. A journal. I start reading through. It chronicles her early adult years, her marriage to my dad. Her marriage to her second husband. I push through the pages, until something caught my eye.

"I'm pregnant."

The year dated in her impeccable script indicates that it was my birth announcement. As I read through the next few months worth of entries, she expresses her excitement, her dreams for me, her worries about being a good mom. I come to my birthday. Glued into the page is my birth announcement, my first photo and a lock of hair, which she said was a backup to the actual baby album. The next few years of entries are her expressing how much she loved me and couldn't wait until I was old enough to do certain milestone activities. I can feel tears reaching their maximum capacity in my eyes. I blink. A tear takes a kamikaze dive and leaves a perfect splatter over mom's handwriting. I couldn't believe what I was reading. It never felt like this in real life. I leaf through the entire journal hoping to find an answer as to why she kept this all hidden. It didn't make sense.

Outside the hole in the wall, I hear Char. She has soft, light footsteps. But she is clumsy, which is a lot coming from the person who just fell through a wall in her dead mother's house.

"Elle? Where are you?" she inquires in her smooth, high pitched voice.

"I'm ... I'm in here. I ..." I struggle to get to my feet. As I reach the hole, she pops her head in.

"What did you do?! What is this?"

"Nothing, I just ... I just fell. I'm going to keep this stuff if that's okay," I hold the box up for her to see. "Just some stuff I made her in elementary school. Pictures."

I hand her the box through the hole and contort myself to fit back through, too. As we finish up and head for the door, Charlotte looks at me. Her shoulders seem like they can't support what she is going through right now. She has bags under her eyes. I know she hasn't slept well over the last few months. But her eyes meet mine and the severity of the situation behind them makes me freeze.

"Mom loved you, Elle."

"I know," was all I could muster.

Charlotte grabs for the front door, but lets her hand rest on the handle. "She always wanted me to be more like you. She always said that you were on the right track. You were an example."

"I know."