The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm

Author:Robin Romm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The next day, someone straightens up the counter and finds the ballot. It’s time to vote. Oregon has shifted to mail-in ballots and this year it’s the presidential election: George Bush versus John Kerry. My mother has always been political, cajoling me to speak at rallies, to be on stu dent government, to make myself heard. Because of her, I’ve worked in sex education, the prison system, a camp for children affected by HIV. I’ve investigated civil rights complaints in sweatshops in Saipan. I’ve written letters to senators, read case law just for fun. In September, when I came here, I didn’t think to arrange for a California absentee ballot and now I feel panicky, like a bad citizen, someone my mother would shake her head at. A lazy, selfish person that God might refuse to help. I call and have an absentee ballot FedExed to me. It costs a fortune and I have to turn around and FedEx it back.

“It’s voting time,” my father says. My mother leans to one side in her wheelchair at the kitchen table. Her collection of folk dolls from all the countries she’s been to hovers on a shelf above her head. I’m struck by the creepiness of a doll from Budapest—a doll with a dried apple for a head. When we bought the doll, the face had been whitish, but it wasn’t preserved properly and now, though the doll has peach-colored hands, her face has turned a purple-black. My mother’s head slumps and her eyes are flat. I watch her try to gather her wits. She’s still far away, in the land where wool is garlic.

“Do you want to check the ballot?” my father asks, dangling the pen in front of her. She sits still. She blinks. He waits, and when she doesn’t move, he checks the boxes he knows she’d want marked. “It’s the presidential election, Jackie,” he says. My mother hates George Bush’s policies on the war, social services, the arts. She also hates people who fail to vote and then complain about the way the world works. She has never missed a chance to vote. “Here, sign it,” he says. Her arm shakes so hard that when she takes the pen from him, she can’t hold on to it. She lets it drop to the floor as if it burned her fingers. My father picks it up, puts it into her hand. She presses it to the ballot and draws a wild-looking zigzag for a signature. Gone is the slanted, sensual penmanship of her many years on earth. This is the scrawling of a toddler. My mom gestures to the bedroom.

My father carries the ballot to the counter, then back to the kitchen table, then over the sofa under the light. He studies the scrawl, changing the angle of the ballot to see if it makes a difference. “If they have anything to compare this to, it’ll be tossed out as a fraud,” my father says. He cannot put the ballot down.

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