Turned Away

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. Jennifer put a lighter to one to see if she could tempt the maple out of it and torched the rest. It was out of a senseless principle but it was a principle that smelled like burnt maple. Lord knew she thought this was a way to craft maple syrup but you couldn't sway her another way. I was stunned but not shocked because she first bought the lighter to burn a straw dummy of her college ex-boyfriend. 

“I need maple syrup and Mother Nature won't tell the leaves to lend me some,” she hunched over and scraped a fresh pile of maple leaves to burn, “Mother Nature is selfish like I used to be.” 

Jennifer didn't share food, secrets, or recipes. She didn't offer a seat on the bus, a seat at the table, a seat on her lap to the one toddler cousin in the family. She didn't donate money, time, clothes, blood, her old razors. She didn't give a hand, advice, a shoulder to cry on, a damn. Jennifer didn't share anything with anyone until I didn't share an egg salad sandwich with her and there I was as she shared frustration. 

“You don't need maple syrup, Jennifer,” I stretched toward the clouds and tried to exhale whatever annoyance she rubbed on me. It worked as well as one could try to freeze hell with vanilla ice cream. 

“I need it for Mama,” she exclaimed and shoved me to the ground with an open palm. 

You know Jennifer means white fairy. Those were the words I had ready for her. They were holstered for that moment or a moment in that same vein. As close as her lighter was to my face, I could have been another straw dummy or maple leaf. I rose to my feet and brushed the feeling off because it wasn't my time to be either yet. 

“Mama” as Jennifer remembered her was an honest saint. She attended church each day, had us read the Bible every morning before the school bus showed, and sang hymns to birds or anyone who listened. Once, she sang to maple leaves she raked in a pile and always stocked maple syrup in a pantry but how the two connected in Jennifer's brain boggled mine. How I remembered Mama was as a woman who committed to that life and scared people and animals away from her yard with a loaded rifle. She hoarded maple syrup from a belief that a temporary recall of pancakes would end the world but a disease linked to some of that maple syrup cut hers short at 43 years old. 

Jennifer either didn't remember that or was focused on the maple syrup and leaves and refused to remember. Jennifer said she was told someone plotted on Mama in her mind and the day a squirrel hurried by, that rifle backfired and shot her brains to heaven. Her straw dummy ex-boyfriend told her that before he was a straw dummy or an ex-boyfriend. It was the only piece of him Jennifer clung to after the breakup. She didn't buy the rifle story or the thought that Mama had a rifle but she bought the idea that only a future ex-boyfriend could cook up such an outrageous story. 

I caught a squirrel scurry up a tree and thought of Mama with the rifle and a yell in her stomach. She wanted to trap a few with maple syrup and acorns one Sunday evening and set up a makeshift sandbox full of acorns. She poured maple syrup on leaves and scattered acorns around them. I noticed Mama outside my window perched on a distant stump with her rifle trained on the first squirrels around. I sprinted to the front yard and flailed my arms to scare them away and before dinner, Mama ripped my ass a new one with her belt. 

Jennifer shook a nearby maple tree until enough leaves dropped to craft a decent pile. I ran through the list of pointless words and phrases prepared for her but that lighter doesn't burn less than it did months ago. In fact, the way it flickered with the first batch of burnt leaves, I didn't bother to test her. Scented candles could take the heat but skin was meant to glow in a safe manner. Jennifer sniffed the leaves, fetched a large trash bag, stuffed it to the top, and tied it for her backseat. 

“I'm off to the graveyard to see Mama,” she stared at me as if it was a command to join her and not an invitation or a basic statement. 

I shoveled myself into the passenger seat as Jennifer’s car sputtered to life and hiccuped down the road. I watched the trash bag of leaves bounce like a child excited for a field trip while she watched a couple on a tandem bicycle who shared ice cream and laughter. She glared as if Mama loaned her jealous eyes as if the guy on the front of the bicycle was a future straw dummy and his girlfriend was the lighter. I understood once we reached the gravesite, I had to hush my judgment and support Jennifer's brainless mother worship. I understood some maple leaves would be offered to a rotted corpse while I poked around other graves for inspiration. 

Jennifer's car stalled in front of the graveyard and thrust me into the dashboard where the straw dummy slid off. I reached for it when she hissed and turned my head to the bag of leaves. I heard “Make yourself useful, little brother” in her voice before it spat out her mouth. I hoisted the bag onto my back and trudged toward Mama's grave. Based on the gifts, she was surrounded by ex-military, clergy members, and a horrible mother (the “go to hell, Mom” headstone was a pointed statement). 

I dumped the bag of leaves down and Jennifer edged me out the space to untie it, press the leaves out, and pore over Mama's grave in heavy tears. I wandered around the graveyard flanked by colorful wreaths, wisterias, and other heartfelt tokens of appreciation I would never receive when I died. It was a solemn thought, something I expressed to Mama once and she brushed it away with “You always have your older sister once I go”. Jennifer was present for dogs, friends, customers on cold calls, and of course Mama but I was not an option unless she needed muscle. Three autumns ago, I dislocated my shoulder when I lifted a toilet to Jennifer's bathroom and her response was “exercise and milk build strong men.”

My sulk session was accompanied by Jennifer's screams and tears. If I didn’t know her and there wasn't a day where I didn't wish that, she would sound hysterical for no reason. Mama was a person who was responsible enough to give us a roof and feed us but paranoid enough to believe animals and people conspired against her and needed to be shot. The rifle was a present from Jennifer's boyfriend who purchased it to ridicule her and didn't teach her how to shoot aside from a brief lesson on tin cans in the backyard. What Jennifer saw in her or her boyfriend evaded me but undeserving people received flowers and I was left with a headache. 

“We have to leave now if I want my pumpkin spice tea in time for the Thanksgiving Day Parade,” she called to me, “I'd like to wash my pumpkin sweater sometime this year. You can fantasize about your death later because I sure do.” 

As I said before, her car stalled at the graveyard, and without jumper cables, there was no way to help. I didn't want to for her sake but for mine. The last thing I wanted was to be stranded anywhere with her. She dialed her ex-boyfriend who arrived in half the time we did with jumper cables and “Jennifer, I missed you” conversation. She turned away from him and wrestled when he gripped her for a kiss. 

I leaped to my feet and swung the straw dummy at him as Jennifer set his shirt on fire with the lighter. He flailed around and shouted “you crazy bitch” until he stamped out the flame and bolted away. He yelled “you crazy godforsaken bitch” as his voice gave out in the distance and Jennifer jumped the car herself. When I scooped myself in, she pulled a sharp U-turn and ruffled my hair. It was the single strangest moment between us before she opened her mouth. 

“Why do you hate Mama?”

It wasn’t untrue and it didn’t spill out of her mouth with doe-eyed bias. This was a question from a woman who loved our mother out of rose-colored ritual for 27 years. She was concerned I held a grudge or bias against her and there was a grudge. Through 19 years of dirty glances, unfair punishments, and overlooked circumstances, I had a right to a grudge. No one in life stirred more hatred in me than her and it’s been obvious. For someone like Jennifer, that hatred could be unfounded or unreasonable but at that moment, it was confusing. 

“Because she hated me,” I said with a full stop that shattered against my throat. 

Jennifer parked two cars away from the coffee shop and frowned at me. She frowned as though I said “I hate you too” and I may as well have. They were inseparable from the womb to Mama’s sudden death. “Go get your pumpkin spice tea” sat on the back of my tongue but when it didn’t leave, I did. I jerked out of the car as her ex-boyfriend arrived with an aluminum bat and cracked me across the face with it. Jennifer yelled over me as redness swallowed my eyes and the final sight I had was a struggle between her and her ex-boyfriend. 

“Lucas, you are out of your shit. You murdered my brother in cold blood.” 

“That’s what you get for burning my favorite shirt, Jen.” 

I was transported to Mama’s house and she was at the table with a rifle in one hand and a bible in the other. 

“You look weathered, Roland. Come take a load off with Mama and speak with me.” 

My hands were face down and unclenched. I fought to clench them but they didn’t budge. Face-to-face, I witnessed my eyes stare back at me. These were the eyes that burned Mama alive in my mind, burned all of her to the ground. These were sullen eyes that twisted out of her grip on my 19th birthday and returned to whack me with the truth. 

“I was not born yesterday or later on that evening, Roland. I know that you hate me. I know that I have been an awful mother to you. I cannot change that and you cannot change how you feel about that because we are dead together,” she sighed and folded the rifle in my tight fingers, “but death does not end your cycle of hatred.” 

Mama pressed the rifle against her forehead, exhaled, and smiled. My hands shivered under the gun’s weight, under the moment’s pressure, and nothing would steady. Mist peered out of my eyes and the trigger was thousands of miles away in an instant. The rifle collapsed out of my worn arms and I cried for Jennifer, for Mama, for myself. She shuffled to the pantry to cook pancakes and I watched the maple syrup lined up on each shelf, ashamed I hadn’t turned away from her.