Immediate Family by Ashley Nelson Levy

Author:Ashley Nelson Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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YOU WERE ALWAYS BRINGING SOMETHING into the house: some disaster, metaphoric or literal, tragic or comic. Once, on a comprehensive search through the suitcases in the garage, a task that served no concrete purpose, you brought one small piece of luggage into the kitchen to show our mother. No, no, she began to scold, because the suitcases brought in cat hair from the outdoor male stray you and I called Peaches. We’d crack the garage door at night so Peaches could sleep in the suitcases next to the cat bed. As our mother began to wheel the suitcase back to the garage you said you’d brought it in because you had something to tell her. There was something soft inside, you said, and then our mother followed your lead and opened it.

You didn’t begin screaming until she did; it wasn’t until her shrill cries registered in your ears that you realized something was terribly wrong. Out ran the baby opossum, blinded by the cruel light of the afternoon, clearly in a place he didn’t belong, so far from the dark cover of the luggage. The opossum waddled its way through the kitchen, the den, hanging a left into the laundry room, and then our mother collected herself enough that she was able to follow its horrible rodent tail through the house. How could you have screwed up so badly by showing off what you had found? You cried. And our mother did her best to soothe you, picked you up, and ran outside to find the man who had been hired that afternoon to paint the porch.

Help, our mother cried. She cried the words for both of you. And the porch painter became an unexpected hero that afternoon while our father was away on business, as he pushed the washing machine from the wall so our mother could gently whack the tush of the little creature with the broom, spanking it out the back door, where it scuttled, gratefully, into the cool cloak of the bushes.

Then, of course, there was the crow, but you’ll argue that one wasn’t your fault. You simply heard scratching in the chimney and opened the flue. And coming down for breakfast, I discovered our mother running through the house, broom raised high over her head, as she tried to spank that creature out, too. This time, rather than crying, you sat on the couch, mouth open, eyes fixed on the crazed black bird. It was either trying to free itself or find its place against the walls of the living room, though which we couldn’t seem to say.

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