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.
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my other mommy
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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.