Onions
Raven Fowlkes-Witten
I am five. It is Christmas Eve and we are decorating the tree. There are ornaments with my photo on them, ones that I have made, and ones chosen by mother. I follow her, hanging only the silver bulbs. The tree is covered in lights and is starting to fill with bulbs and I begin to whine, tears filling my eyes.
“Why are you crying?” She asks.
“You aren’t hanging pictures of me.” A camera records our conversation from across the room for memories.
“I’m saving them for last,” she says and kisses my head. Around us, in the living room, photos of my face hang in lines on the wall. “Just you, okay?”
****
It is the second quarter of my sophomore year of highschool. I am in the movie theater with someone I am not supposed to be in the movie theater with. Mom comes to pick me up from the movie theater, but my phone is dead. She calls the person I am supposed to be with at the movies. He picks up.
“Where are you two?” I assume she asks.
“What do you mean?” He is unaware that he is my alibi.
Mom comes into the theatre, pulls me out like a kernel in a tooth. I do not finish the movie. On the ride home, the car is silent.
At home she demands we talk, sits on the edge of my bed and asks why I was there with her. I am quiet until I am able to say what I’m afraid she already knows. “I like her like I like boys.”
Her face drops. She is looking me in the eye and I can tell her eyes want to cry. She doesn’t let them. No one I know has ever seen my mother cry and I am the first to come close to it.
****
I am seven. Mom and Aunt Brenda are going out. Bria and I are left in charge of each other. Bria kisses her mom goodbye and goes back to my room. I am inconsolable, begging my mother not to leave. She tells me she’ll be back in two hours.
In two hours, I call her from the corded phone in the kitchen. I am crying. She does not answer. I start to leave her a voicemail. “Mom it’s been more than two hours. Where are you?” I imagine her dead on the side of the road, murdered and covered in blood. I leave message after message until she calls back.
“Raven, I’m okay. I’m on my way home.” I start to breathe at a normal pace. Bria sits on the couch, watching tv.
“I told you,” she tells me.
****
My mom has a laugh that radiates. It is deep and loud and can lighten any situation. It has been three days since my great grandmother has died and I wake to my mother jumping on my bed. It is after 11pm. She falls on me, laughing, and I can’t help but smile.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going out,” she says sitting up to face me. “Get ready.”
In the car we drive around the city, looking for places that are open. “Do you want ice cream?”
“Where can we get ice cream at this time of night?” Sometimes I feel like I am the mother, anxious and rational.
“Don’t worry about that.”
This is the way she deals with pain. Thirty minute drives to 24 hour Sonics, no choice but to laugh.
****
It is my senior year of college. Mom calls and I take the call in the bathroom. “Hello,” her voice is harsh, I worry I have done something wrong. “I just want you to be happy.”
I can hear her breathing on the other end and I know she can hear me too, holding in tears. We are quiet for 32 seconds before she speaks again.
“I just want you to know that. Okay?”