my other mommy
My sister always tells this story, she’s quite a bit older than me, I was an accident, she had been on purpose, though her dad was long gone, and I didn’t know mine either, she was left to care for me a lot when I was little, when mom had overnight shifts at the hospital, mom would leave for work at four in the afternoon, would portion out saran-wrapped plates of whatever big meal she had prepared for us on her day off, we’d eat the same thing all week, at exactly 6:30 PM Shelly would unwrap the plates and put them in the microwave as instructed, she was really very responsible, then the next week we would eat something else, there were maybe four meals mom rotated between, that night it might have been fish sticks and potatoes, or a casserole, anyways, one night after dinner Shelly gave me a bath then was tucking me into bed, and I said something like, I’m trying to remember even though I have heard her retell this story more times than I can count, if I tried to tell the story like I am to you now and I messed something up she would correct me even if it was the teensiest detail, she’s like that, even now, anyways I was lying there, closing my eyes, then I opened them suddenly and said something like, “I miss my sons,” and Shelly said, what, and I said, “I miss my sons they were so good to me,” and she didn’t know what to say so she said, okay well goodnight, and kissed me on the forehead, this really spooked her apparently, and then I started saying more things after that, each night while lying down getting ready to sleep mentioning something about my sons, their names were Ricky short for Richard and Jeff short for Jeffrey, I would talk about them, and about the house I had lived in by the ocean, and about my mother, not Shelly and I’s but a different mother, “my other mommy,” I would say and Shelly would quietly ask me more and I would tell her: about my childhood spent running up and down the steep streets of San Francisco, about the small black shoes and stiff black dresses my mother would wear, how she’d always pull her hair back low and tight into a bun, about how she would sweeten her tea with a spoonful of raspberry jelly, about how when she was forty she seemed ancient to me, “can you imagine?” I’d laugh, my small body gyrating on the bed. I liked to tell the same stories again and again, like an old lady does, they would always start the same, and I’d light up each time at the same parts. “And what about your husband?” Shelly would ask. (At this point her unease had faded away and she had taken to egging me on.) “Believe it or not, I met him in my very own house!” I would start, my five-year-old vocal chords whistling out the story of our first encounter, how we fell in love and then he got drafted into the army, how he was saved from going into combat because he was a fast typist, how we rushed to marry before he got sent to Korea, how he was supposed to be away for six months, how six months turned into two years, about the letters we wrote back and forth to each other, and about how I pined for him, oh how I pined, until at last I took the train up to Seattle to meet his returning ship, then burned all of his letters because I never wanted to think about that awful time we were apart ever again, but here I was, telling the story. It went on like this for a while, Shelly never told mom anything cause there was no reason to worry her, she had enough on her plate, Shelly was always saying that about mom’s plate, I would scrape my knee and Shelly would say, “shhh, shhh, you’re okay, as she rubbed my little back and applied an antiseptic then a Band Aid, “no reason to worry mom about this, she has enough on her plate,” there was a lot that went on that was just between us, then one day it was the summer, I think July, and mom had a few days off for the holiday, she didn’t always but the nurses rotated so that each one would get every other holiday off or so, and mom was taking us to the beach out near San Francisco for a few days as a treat, we loved it there. On the beach Shelly and I spent all morning constructing an elaborate system of interconnecting tunnels, but by afternoon the tide came up too high and we had to surrender the project, “nothing lasts forever,” mom said over her magazine and sunglasses, as I watched our days work get repossessed, eaten by waves. The beach was very busy that day, a Saturday, people were coming and going. Just then a family, a husband and wife and three young children arrived and began setting up next to us, pulling out towels, off t-shirts, pushing an umbrella into the sand. I waded into the water, feeling the salty foam against my sunned skin, “last one in’s a rotten egg!” shouted the newly arrived man, running in from behind me, children at his heels. In the water I glanced over at him, and he at me. “Ricky?” I asked, I was maybe six by then, “mom?” asked Ricky, and we stood there gazing at each other for a moment, cool green and white swirling around our pulsing legs and beating chests, and then came mom's voice shouting, “Benny! It’s time to go!” and I ran back towards her and Shelly, and we packed up and went home, and Shelly swears to this day she saw all this happen from where she stood on the shore.