Zipper Mouth by Laurie Weeks

Author:Laurie Weeks [Weeks, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2011-09-19T22:00:00+00:00

There are multiple copies of my mother, and every time I turn my head one of them flits past the edge of my vision. For my wedding in the Future, she prepared a Hope Chest, some kind of old-school tradition. She purchased a cedar box upholstered on the outside with fake leopard skin and put secret things inside. The Hope Chest has a lock, and I’m not supposed to know what’s inside until I open it, I guess on my wedding day. Except I know that in reality the Hope Chest contains the body of my father’s secretary. I know this because there are drops of blood in the hall and I can hear Mom and Dad whispering about something in their room down the hall. Plus I have a brain tumor, I’m pretty sure. At midnight I glide expertly through the sleeping house and out the front door in utter silence before sprinting down the block to my friend Doreen’s.

“Sit down, honey,” Doreen’s mother says before disappearing into the kitchen. The dad wanders around while she makes the call, her low voice behind the wall demanding, “What’s going on over there? This child’s staying here until we straighten things out.” Or so I imagine. Five minutes later she returns to communicate silently, via Adult Eye Contact, with her husband, and within minutes we’re floating in their car down the dark street toward my house. Riding to school the next day in this same vehicle Doreen and I make Yikes! faces at one another in the backseat while her mother, after barely acknowledging me, stares rigidly ahead in silence. Does Doreen know? My corpuscles flash-frozen into crystals of ice, I can barely move my jaw when it comes time to say, “Thanks for the ride, Mrs. Rossman!”

When I opened the Hope Chest I actually felt kind of excited. I was probably twenty or so when I finally turned the key in my chest. My mother was either teary with sentimentality or peculiarly indifferent, I seem to recall both. Though maybe she was just embarrassed and sad. Possibly I’d openly ridiculed it as a teenager, unwittingly humiliated her into abandoning the project; another dream dies. Two dreams, actually, for fundamentally I was in love with the idea of my mother having a dream, any fantasy that had thrilled her as a child when she thought of it coming true in the future. Lining the inner floor of the chest about a half inch deep were a few embroidered pillowcases. Otherwise it was empty.

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