Clothed, Female Figure by Kirstin Allio

Author:Kirstin Allio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Clothed, Female Figure
ISBN: 9781941088715
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2015-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

2

When the phone rings I hear myself playing it back already, the phone rang, as if I’m playing house, or writing a novel.

I hear myself saying, she ran to get it, and I find I really am running.

Ten thirty. The day is still cool and tender.

Here I go again, phone cords weren’t made like umbilical cords by accident.

Although when was the last time anyone used a phone that was attached to anything? Just air, evidently. Crowded with feelings.

I know it’s her. She calls at the same time every morning.

I can hear the baby banging in the background.

“How’s the baby?”

No answer.

Still no answer.

“Sara?”

“I didn’t even mean to call you,” she snarls.

She’s taken to blaming me for every grievance.

I’m a sorrow sponge, she squeezes me out then holds me up for the overcharge on her phone bill.

She blames me for the cars that splash mud puddles into the stroller. For the walks I take with friends when I could be volunteering in a soup kitchen. When I could be drinking her thin soup of sadness. She calls me when she’s bored with the baby. She calls me later, when she’s drinking.

Motherhood is how it looks on other people. It doesn’t become us, me and my Sara.

She hangs up on me, and I imagine the baby with the only pot they have, the pot I brought over, it’s not even a kitchen but a sticky little closet. I brought over a toaster oven that had been in the garage since the last time an elementary school had a tag sale, and a mini fridge she unplugs when she’s out of milk, to save on electric.

Of course I bought a crib for Christopher. I would have bought a thousand.

The phone rings again and I throw myself upon it. “Sara!” Silence.

“It’s Carolyn.” Beads slide together. Like an abacus, counting against me. One of the old moms. The moms from the old days, when we were moms all day every day, like actors in a living history museum.

“It’s been too long again, sweetie!”

Carolyn’s voice is all tosses.

I go upstairs to change. Carolyn always dresses for walks, and I’m as susceptible as any woman over fifty to exercise outfits. The one time we get to wear the same clothing as our daughters.

There’s a window seat in my bedroom with cushions I made on my sewing machine, years and years ago, when I used to glow late into the night in the nook I set up for myself in the basement. I still like the fabric, even though I don’t know what it means anymore. Cabbage roses. You never know what’s on the other side of the lovely cabbage rose garden.

You never know if that sound you hear in the middle of the night is the onset of an ax murder or just the old radiator popping. You don’t believe in destiny or hocus-pocus but you still have to admit you don’t know much of anything about your children.

It comforts me to say it.

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