Blood Relative Her name was Susan, and I recall she wore the look men wear after going to war and returning. My father had it— like he had seen more than one thing worth turning away from. Not to mention, his mother staring at nothing in a sanitarium where they took her after she shot at a man she did her best to kill but somehow didn’t. To be animated and sentient is sometimes a matter of sitting for hours in a rocker and thumbing the low hills of flesh of one hand. That was what she was doing when I asked her. Spat out the name of my grandfather Bob Beach, my father’s DNA-donor-only father, a blood relative. Why she was where she was and had been for many years. “Who?” she shot back through her hard mouth, the first sound, the only sound, she had made since we’d entered the room. I reached for the water near her. Handed her the glass. A blue tumbler that beaded droplets of a darker blue. She took it, the glass. Sat it back down where it had been. They had brought me to see her. Had no idea I might speak. And I’m sure they were afraid of what she might say back. Some lives are irretrievably ruined. Hers was one of those. Mostly she sat in her rocker. All day, every day. The boy I was reached for her hands. To stop her hurting herself. She brushed me aside with the gesture they translated to say we could leave and not be missed. And then my father called her “Mother”. He leaned down— to stop the incessant rubbing. I can’t say why she didn’t knock his hands away, only that she didn’t. If there is a God and justice, it’s for those like her. I was five. I wasn’t thinking about God or justice. And when she did look up, it was into a shadow on an opposite wall. The blue-on-blue eternity she may have imagined answered to a name. Copyright (c) 2013 Roy Bentley. All rights reserved.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 11:54:18 +0000
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