Leslie Pietrzyk by A Year & a Day

Author:A Year & a Day [Year, A & Day, a]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-15T18:30:30+00:00

A FEW days later, I was in my room staring at the pages about frog dissection: “Dorsal View of the Superficial Muscles,” “Ventral Views of the Viscera.” I didn’t know the word “viscera,” but judging by the drawing, it meant guts in the most guttish way, like the junk that oozed out of a squished bug. Soon I’d actually be looking inside a dead frog, touching A Y E A R A N D A D A Y

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the bile duct and spleen, drawing pictures with colored pencils, getting a grade.

I had touched dead things: fried-up moths in the light fixtures, a garter snake Will accidentally ran over with his bike, leathery baby birds, doves Mrs. Felper’s cat left in our yard, squirrels on the road in front of the house, scaly fish before Will cleaned them, frogs from the creek, mice, a baby rabbit. Mama.

Aunt Aggy’s red-rimmed eyes had filled with another round of tears when she told us it was our last chance to touch Mama. We were at Moore’s Funeral Home, everyone talking hushed and whispery, as if we were in a library, but with sniffling and nose blowing and the whoosh of Kleenex being tugged out of the box. Aunt Aggy was crying, the way you were supposed to at a wake, so people patted her shoulder and said,

“There, there,” or they clicked their tongues and pulled her in close, murmuring, “A shame, a tragedy, an awful thing.” Those words were easy to say. But I felt those same people looking at me and Will, thinking, A mother who died and left behind her children. What mother does that? What kind of children are those? Will and I barely said anything to anybody, not like Aunt Aggy, who thanked everyone over and over for coming, who announced, “What a tragedy,” in every conversational lull.

Perfect, strong Will didn’t cry. Who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral?

When Mrs. Lisk or Becky’s mom or Kathy Clark or anyone started mumbling to me about being sorry, I closed my eyes the way little kids do when they want to be invisible. I imagined I was invisible. I imagined I was somewhere else. I imagined Aunt Aggy was the dead one. Opening my eyes was like feeling my skin getting peeled away.

“Your last chance,” Aunt Aggy repeated. Who’s afraid to look at their dead mother’s body? Will stalked off, clusters of people stepping apart as he pushed through them; the front door opened and closed. Would this feel less real if I walked away? I shut my eyes, imagined I could be the one who left. But where could I go to escape this—all of it, her body, that echoing question, What kind of mother? Will should understand that. I half-thought about going after him, bringing him back, but Aunt Aggy touched my shoulder, said, “Don’t be afraid. She looks just like you remember. Mr. Moore did a nice job.” Aunt Aggy had taken a photo and 2 6 8

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