Staples, Dennis E. - This Town Sleeps by Staples Dennis E

Author:Staples, Dennis E. [Staples, Dennis E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640092853
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2019-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIRST THINGS SHE saw when she came to were water and porcelain as hunks of whole hominy and chalky pink slime covered her toilet bowl. As her mind slowly came into focus, she remembered every awful thing and person that had led her to this place. Not just her cousin Henrietta or Kayden Kelliher’s daughter.

Who she remembered first was Eunice Lafournier. The woman her parents abandoned her with for a few months. Her Good Mother. Good in the way her own mother should have been: loving, gentle, warm.

Brenda did not hate Eunice for not fighting her birth parents when they came back and took her away, but she had a hard time remembering the love she used to feel for the Lafourniers. She knew it was there, a first memory of laughs and just enough food to not go hungry, a cabin made of faded red pine. Eunice was a mother and Hazel a sister. Now Eunice was a memory underneath reservation soil and Hazel just another cousin who never bothered to check in.

The sharp taste of the mouthwash hit her tongue and almost made her spew again, but instead she began to laugh. The mouthwash was not as sharp as it could have been since she had switched to the alcohol-free variety years ago. It was her first step toward sobriety after realizing how low and desperate she had sunk, buying Listerine at the Geshig convenience because the liquor store was closed.

Just like now, she had ended up painting the toilet, only then with a minty-fresh twist. At her first AA meeting, her group leader told her she was lucky she had expelled it because she could have died.

“What if I want to?” was her response, one she recalled in shame now, even though she felt like roadkill just standing in her bathroom.

“Is that what you really feel, Brenda?” the leader said. “Tell us about it.”

Quickly she had apologized but refused to elaborate on what made her say that.

Brenda stumbled from room to room in her house, switching on every light and looking for any clues. If she had found Henrietta or some other cousin on her couch—or god forbid some barfly in her bed like she might have done years ago—things might have cleared up. How she got home. When she left the Classic Shack. Where her cell phone was.

She sat on the empty couch in the living room, sipped a mug of water, and tried to clear her head. This was nothing new to her, just a few years too late and unwelcome. After a minute or an hour, she could stand up again and pace the room. On the walls were pictures of both her girls. Natalie and Tasha, and their own children.

It was the faces of her three grandchildren that had pushed her into sobriety. Natalie had one gorgeous son, Adrian, ten years old and wild. Tasha had five-year-old twin girls, Mariposa and Memengwaa. Brenda had been to each of their births, but afterward her daughters did not trust her around their children.

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