Call Your Daughter Home

by Deb Spera

“If you die first, just wait for me there, I won’t be but a minute behind.”

But what sin is worse, the sin of living in squalor with no hope as a prisoner in the place that’s supposed to be your haven or the sin of murdering your husband? You got to be responsible for your house. That’s your job as the woman. That’s what Mama said.

Appearances are so bothersome. There was a time I didn’t have to work so hard to maintain them; youth has its own simple value that we never fully appreciate until it’s gone.

Hearing her stirred me. It’s a strange thing to hear your daughter’s voice for the first time after so many years.

We live over and over in the happening only to be left with what’s already done.

These are satisfied women. They got good jobs, they got strong purpose, and now I am among them. It don’t seem real.

Misery, like illness, is insidious, and my daughters have the virus. Some people need to blame others for their unhappiness. Parents are always easy targets.

Children are such a wave, the birthing and caring and rearing. When you’re in the throes it all seems interminable. Then, whoosh, it’s over. I don’t know why I was surprised when the children grew up, but I was. I thought, in their youth, it would last forever. Now I see that it was my youth, not theirs that was speaking. The past is now and now and now.

Even with her dying breath I told her she was going to be fine. I didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. As mothers, don’t we owe our children the truth? I ought to have had more strength, but I didn’t. My girl looked at me with such fright. Maybe I could have calmed her with the idea of heaven, but I couldn’t let go. In the end it was her that let go of me, and I never found her

“You live in a fantasy, Annie. Don’t be fooled by appearances. A quiet place can still hold chaos.”