I didn’t remember that part. Couldn’t remember their faces either. All I remembered was seeing the light that had come before.
It’s as if I had switched off, not able to process this latest blow to my soul, my body, my spirit.
I nod, smooth my crusted lips together, look toward the door, then the empty chairs on both sides of the bed.
“Let me guess…” I pause to swallow. “She’s too high?” I ask, voice cold.
And Nan knew I was talking about my mother because she drops her head, shakes it.
Fat globs of tears begin to fall down her velvety cheeks, and something shifts in my stomach as I watch her tremble, as I watch her battle words and sounds that don’t come.
I stare at her, brow furrowing, a film of gray shivering at the surface of my eyes.
I don’t blink.
I don’t set them free.
Not yet.
But when time stretches and Nan whimpers, my tears turn into needles at the back of my eyes, and my throat thickens with swallowed cries. And even though I’d thought about this day many times—almost prepared for it—I could still feel it coming toward me at the same speed of a freight train.
Not today, please not today.
Today, I was a daughter who really needed her mother.
My teeth chatter so hard I can barely get my question out, “She really did it this time, huh?”
Nan dissolves into tears, and it’s all the confirmation I need.
I stare at the wall, eyes unmoving, voice cold. “Before or after?”
She knew what I was asking, and she couldn’t answer me, but whether it was because she didn’t know, I wasn’t sure.
I grind my molars to alleviate the news of my mother’s overdose from severing me in half, then I settle on my own conclusion, because the truth was, before or after, it didn’t matter. It didn’t change a thing.
“I needed her to live with me, Nan.” My voice cracks. “I just…I needed her to live with me.”
Nan nods, then whimpers, pressing her fingers to her lips, crying harder, holding me as tight to her as her frail arms will allow. And tears become a stream down my own cheeks. They roll over my lips, dropping off the ledge of my chin, splattering to the crusty sheets.
My mother was dead.
Jade was dead.
Same day.
Same night.
And the only thought I had now was,why wasn’t I dead, too?
Rain patters melodically against the windowpane beside me.
My knees are pressed to my chest, arms draped around my aching limbs as I study each droplet. They tumble and roll over each other, eagerly chasing the ones before them.
The orange and pink sunset I had let myself sit among after finding out about my mother’s passing had long gone, darkness had fallen into its place.
“Laikey, I made you a sandwich, sweetie,” Nan’s soft voice stretches. Turning over my shoulder, I find my grandmother’s red-rimmed eyes. She places a brown paper bag on top of the plastic table beside her. Her knobby knuckles shake as her pale fingers make work tearing it down the center.
The spongy homemade white bread that she knows is my favorite, is cut into four squares, a thick layer of Nutella smeared between both slices.
