The Name She Carries.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the sleeping child in her lap, a tear falling silently down her cheek as the tiny blankets rose and fell. It would be another hour until the inky sky behind the shaded window showed its first hints of purple and then orange. Another sixty minutes of peaceful slumber for Charlotte, the daughter who represented all that was right with the world. One final hour. How she treasured it. Caleb lay soundly across the room in his small bed, his feet nearly touching the bottom of the mattress. Carlota’s mind was alert despite the godless hour. Time flies. Coffee can wait. She wept again for the life she wanted her children to have. The one she should have had, the one that was stolen from her. The best moments in her days were the ones before they had begun. Soon, she would have to put her baby back into the cradle. In an hour, it would be time to make a meticulous breakfast for the man who’d promised her liberation from her bastard father’s violent grasp. She didn’t know, couldn’t have known, that liberation was only for wars and cheap fiction.

The kids were eight and five, finally both in school for most of the day as the first leaves exchanged verdure for auburn. Charlotte had finally begun kindergarten—Caleb, the third grade. The little girl’s first weekend break hadn’t yet arrived when the American Lumber Workers’ Union president personally traveled to Anthony’s facility on the outskirts of Austin. The portly, fidgety figure asked the site foreman for a stepstool before announcing that that “certain technological breakthroughs” had led to “redundancies in the workforce” which necessitated…the man’s voice grew distant. Was that metal he tasted? Dissociating, Anthony stood as his crew threw up their arms and let out muffled, reverberating cries of indignation. He knew one thing: the new conveyor system didn’t have mouths to feed. Helpless. He felt utterly helpless as the floor manager, a neighbor and family friend, approached him with a pink slip and a cashier’s check for fifteen hundred dollars—six weeks’ pay. 

“You’ll be alright, Tony” didn’t register. An overqualified and underemployed carpenter in central Texas two months into a recession. A homeless wife and beggar children. Three stomachs aching for food he couldn’t provide. And what the little ones didn’t know yet: a mass on Carlota’s breast, troubling enough that the doctor had scheduled a follow-up. No insurance. No savings. No safety net. No economy. Fifteen hundred fucking dollars. He left the mill without giving back his hardhat or identification card. My souvenirs. He made it halfway to his red Silverado K10 before doubling over and vomiting into the grass, flecks of blood from his ulcer mixing with cement-like remnants of biscuits and gravy.

The red Chevrolet sputtered past Harvey’s Roadhouse at 9 in the morning. At 9:15, it pulled in from the opposite direction. He couldn’t go home. Not yet. The family had enough to worry about without losing its only source of provision. “I promise if you marry me, you will never work a day in your life, Carlota Marie.” What a damn foolish vow to have made. Inside, Beau Wilkins—son of the motel-attached restaurant’s namesake—greeted Anthony with two parts congeniality and one part puzzlement; it was a Thursday. Anthony responded with a waving hand no higher than his bottom rib before sliding into one of the burgundy booths with a thud. He threw his keys and emptied his stained Levi’s pockets onto the table before propping his head up with a thumb at each temple. Beau approached with a smile that contorted at the sight of the pink slip beneath the keys. “Flapjacks and bacon on me this morning, old friend,” Beau said before Anthony responded, “Rye and water. Double. And chocolate chips in the pancakes.” He stayed at the restaurant until the end of the workday, hardly coherent by the time he decided to return home. 

Little voices cried out with excitement at the sound of Anthony’s keys scratching every part of the door but the keyhole. He walked into a scene of domestic bliss. His wife wore a gravy-splattered apron that flew open at the fringes when she spun around to greet her husband. Caleb enthusiastically latched onto his left leg while Charlotte took her presumptive spot on the right. He had a hardhat with him. Both children looked forward to six o’clock—with Anthony’s schedule, his shift started before either of them awoke. Carlota spoke first, gravely and gracefully assessing the picture unfolding before her. Carefully softening her tone: “Children, go set the table. I need to speak with your father.” Owen King, the woman’s late—mercifully late—father, had stumbled into her childhood living room too many times for her to remain oblivious to the urgency of the situation. The children ate well that evening. They had to. 

Anthony’s vices squeezed tighter as his severance ran dryer. Winter had arrived a month too early. “I could work. Lots of women work now. I have  perfect penmanship and a knack for organizing,” Carlota blurted on the family’s way to Christmas Eve church. Anthony said nothing, his sunken eyes locked on to the yellow lines racing by the truck. After a few moments, she returned her gaze to the incandescent glow above her vanity mirror, head held high. By the time they arrived, flurries were descending gracefully upon the old church house’s green copper roof. Inside, there were few friendly faces. But the widow from two streets over smiled at the children. Anthony walked rigidly between the pews, feeling blisters form on his back from the eyes that knew he didn’t belong there. “We come for the big ones: the day He was born and the one He died,” Anthony had once said to the reverend, leaving him unamused. Charlotte wore the pine green dress her mother had made for her with black patent leather slip-ons, her mahogany hair tied into a crimson bow. Caleb drew adoring eyes from the congregation’s matronly stalwarts, his sienna corduroys striking a beautiful contrast with his one collared shirt, a size too small for a boy who would surely outgrow his father. 

Carlota sang that night like the world had stopped collapsing. Anthony’s lips perambulated mutely. The drive home was as silent as the one there except for Carlota’s quiet whimpers. Gentler than an apparition, Irene had accosted the couple in the church parking lot. “I could not ignore what God was telling me,” she had said—exasperating Anthony who wished only for the warmth of his truck and the bottle he had inside it. He was shuffling his feet in the gravel, kicking small stones toward Caleb who stood enamored of the falling snow. His wife gasped and let out a sharp cry, bringing him back to life. He looked for the source of danger and found none. Carlota stood trembling with a bag of presents in each hand as Irene retreated to her ochre Dodge Caravan.

A late-summer breeze made the treetops sound like distant applause on the August afternoon that Carlota died. Mom’s “head-held-high” mantra perennially preceded long strolls through the windowless backroom that smelt of mothballs. Caleb, who had once gleefully pulled right-fitting slacks down from their racks, grew more and more gawkish in the back of the church basement. She herself had dexterously enjoyed a childhood ignorant of store-bought luxuries. Caleb had learned to sew for her sake, mending skirts and blouses that his father’s cirrhotic hands couldn’t navigate. These were the things Charlotte remembered, each recollection a stitch holding together the fabric of a childhood she hadn’t fully understood until her mother’s only true friend stood before the church and eulogized her.Their souls had heard and understood the sound of the noncorporeal gear that ticked for each person once in their life. 

As the final mourners drove away, she and her brother stood alone by the muddy plot where their mother rested. With his free arm, Caleb rested a hand on his little sister’s shoulder, saying nothing, his eyes locked to the same pair of engraved granite slabs as hers. To the left of hers, Anthony’s headstone stood as unfinished as it would always be. The last time any of them saw his red Chevrolet was the night Carlota had been declared in full remission from her cancer. 

A roll of thunder broke the peace, urging the siblings to return home. The drive was short and silent but for the squeaking wiper blades. Parked in front of their parents’ house, the two stared through the windshield for a good long while. Caleb went inside first, soberly absorbing the living room which now felt foreign and dim. Irene from two streets over descended from Charlie’s room with reports of a successful lunchtime feeding and an easy start to the afternoon nap. Caleb thanked her with a hug and a hundred, refusing to accept change. “I am praying for you both,” the babysitter said before sliding on her raincoat and stepping out into the deluge. 

Caleb walked to the kitchen, saying, “I’ll make us some tomato soup and—” “Grilled cheese,” his sister interrupted, a childlike smile cracking her lips before she turned toward the staircase. She stepped quietly into her daughter’s room, peering through the half-closed curtains behind the bassinet, estimating that it would be dark within an hour. She’d named her after mom, not herself. The distinction had once felt important. She picked her tightly swaddled child up from the small mattress and realized that she was already almost ready to graduate to a real crib. She estimated an hour until the sky turned from gray to orange, then purple. She sat in the rocking chair that her father had built—a final gift to his granddaughter. She drew several long, deep breaths before looking downward. She couldn’t take her eyes off the sleeping child in her lap, a tear falling silently down her cheek as the tiny blankets rose and fell.