Phaedra Weldon - 03 Phantasm by Phaedra Weldon

Author:Phaedra Weldon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

MY mom’s room isn’t like what many people expect. Rhonda said it best once, that when she finally got to see Nona’s room, she was shocked at how normal it was. Most people think it would be more like some room full of velvet, peacock feathers, beads, and crystal balls on the dresser. The walls would be draped in fabric and the floor covered in Indian rugs.

Nope. Not Mom.

Mom had the most normal room in the house I say most normal because I still thought the headless lamp in my room was a Halloween decoration. Mom had always been careful at what she spent her sparse money on over the years. And her bedroom was indeed her pride and joy.

But it wasn’t full of gitchie goomies or velvet, and not even a crystal ball. Her bed was an antique sleigh-style bed she’d found in McDonough, Georgia, at the antique market. She’d fixed it up herself and restained it. And her sheets and duvet were a matching set with a high thread count, all handpicked in a burgundy print.

The dresser was another period piece and don’t ask me what period ’cause I don’t know. I buy Rooms-to-Go, prefabricated and easy to just set up from a big, square box. Doll furniture.

The dresser was always clean, with a single jewelry box on top of it that my dad made when they first got married. She said he was good with wood like that, and she loved the box. Kept it with her all the time.

Pictures in carefully chosen frames from cheap to expensive flanked that box. Images of me at different stages of my life from toddler to tweener.

Happy times with my mom. Always happy pictures of Mom, and me.

In the corner of the room stood an armoire, another piece she’d taken a long time to pick out. My memories centered around being dragged from antique store to antique store, being bored, as Mom looked at countless pieces. This one was made of sassafras wood with a pearl grain finish. It was big, and boxy, and so Nona.

The walls were painted a soft, warm olive, and the floors were covered in rugs, but they were Oriental ones, not Indian.

That’s how I remembered the room, but that wasn’t what we walked into.

The floor was completely covered in stuff. I could make out papers, handwritten, as well as all her jewelry strewn from one end of the room to the other. The armoire was open and the clothes piled on the floor. One of the doors was leaning from one hinge, the others ripped out at the nails.

The bed was a disheveled mess with pillows torn apart and stuffing polyester not feathers, Mom was allergic to feathers decorating everything like beige snow. The mattress was askew, as if someone had looked between it and the box spring.

The drawers were all pulled out and her things piled here and there.

And in the center of the mess was the shell, cracked and broken, of the jewelry box.

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