Without My Mother by Melissa Cistaro

Author:Melissa Cistaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2019-03-21T04:00:00+00:00

Then

Rabbit-Rabbit

Last night my father crept into my room and told me he was going to die. I didn’t believe him. It’s hard these days to know what is true. But I am wiser now about the comings and goings of people from our big yellow house, since I started seventh grade. I have my own AM-FM alarm clock radio. My clock radio has bright red neon numbers that you can see in the dark, a turn dial for both AM and FM radio, and an eleven-minute snooze button. It stays next to my bed and helps me keep track of everyone. Last night when my dad came in and sat on the end of my bed, it was exactly 2:14.

I heard his truck coming down the gravel road first, and then saw the quick flash of headlights through my bedroom window. My dad’s truck bumps the loudest over the potholes and always pulls up to the same spot underneath the bay laurel tree. The engine lulls for a moment, then lets out a series of sputters like the coughing sounds my brother makes when he wants to stay home from school. Even from the way the heavy door slams shut, I know it is my dad’s white Ford truck.

I looked over at my clock radio, saw the lined binder paper lying on top of it, and remembered that it was a Rabbit-Rabbit night. Before falling asleep, I made a sign with big red-ink letters to remind myself to say the words “Rabbit-Rabbit” before I say anything else when I wake up. If I say “Rabbit-Rabbit” as soon as I wake up in the morning on the first day of the new month, I will have good luck all month.

I forgot to say “Rabbit-Rabbit” the last two months, and that’s when the raccoons got back into the barn and killed two more chickens, and Tracy Dunn shoved me into the oleander bushes for no reason at all. Now my mom’s canceled her trip to come visit us, and I am sure it had something to do with my forgetting two months in a row.

As I listen to my dad’s footsteps coming up the stairs, it’s clear that I need to stick to the Rabbit-Rabbit plan, that I really need to go back to sleep—that I need some good luck.

When the hall light clicks on, my dad is standing in my bedroom doorway. A bright yellow halo backlights him.

“Melissa. Wake up,” he says.

I don’t say anything. I pretend to be asleep. He comes to my bed and sits down heavily, as if to bounce me awake.

“You have to get up,” he says more urgently.

I peek at the red numbers of my clock radio. Two fourteen.

His voice is muffled and he says, “You’ve got to help me.”

I open one eye: he is holding a white rag over his mouth and nose. For a moment, I think that he is crying.

“What are you doing, Dad?” I finally say.

“I’m going to die,” he says.

It’s quiet

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