The Last of What I Am by Abigail Cutter

Author:Abigail Cutter [Cutter, Abigail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Union Square & Co.

When his footsteps on the porch stairs faded, Phoebe leans against the heavy wooden door and sighs. She lingers there a few minutes and then steps into the center of the front hall.

She takes the stairs two at a time. In the bedroom she and the man share, she searches for a rusty coat hanger. After twisting the hanger wire open, she heads to the back bedroom where she used the wire and some unladylike oaths to pry open the swollen closet door. Inside are crooked stacks of my daughter Cara’s Reader’s Digest magazines from the 1930s and ’40s, boxes of mouse-gnawed handkerchiefs and dresser scarves, wads of rotted jet-beaded black lace, and a set of thigh-length, one-piece man’s linen underwear with buttons to the neck. She pulls out and examines each item, then places it on the nearby dresser top. Now that the closet is almost empty, a wooden box is visible in the back of a lower shelf.

She tugs it out and lowers it to the floor. Mouse droppings skitter off the top onto the bedroom rug. This box was my first try at fine carpentry. I made it for my mother’s February birthday from planed walnut boards from trees along the fence line. It was two years before the war, and I surprised her with it at breakfast. When she brought the steaming bowls of porridge from the kitchen, there it was on her dining chair. “Where in the world did this come from?” she asked. She clapped her hands in delight.

“Tom made it, Ma,” Tish broke in.

“I’m so proud of you, Tom. This is the best gift I’ve ever received,” she said. She planted a kiss on my cheek. “William, come see what our son has made for me!” she called to my father in the parlor. The splinters and my hammer-pounded fingers were nothing compared to this moment; my heart was near to bursting with pride.

Now the box is crammed with a jumble of notebooks, tattered yellow papers, envelopes, and broken bits of two porcelain cat and dog figurines. The woman squats and paws through it all—including 1930s tax forms and a rolled-up plan for rail lines to transport cavalry horses during World War I. These and several French postcards of naked women came home with my son William after his service in France.

At the bottom of the box are some crinkled vellum pages. She spreads them on the dresser and flattens the creases with the heel of her hand. The first is a letter from Aunt Ellen to Reverend Brown, the new substitute minister, who was traveling to Richmond to comfort our wounded soldiers in the hospital. He must have saved the letter for Ma and given it to her afterward.

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