36

 

 

 

 

36

 

 

“It’s cold outside.”

My mother said this, too. Zipping my jacket. Flipping the collar. Covering my feet. That last night in Carris. The night we left.

She was shaking, but not from the chill. Something shooting through her in liquid pulses, stinging her from the inside.

Momma’s scared.

I don’t know where I was when this came back, but a voice is asking: Can she take those off?

Who asks what? What ‘those’ are. I don’t know. I don’t know.

“We have to get out of here, honey.”

She was in her sheepskin jacket. Her mouth was very red.

“Where’s Clem?” I said.

And she started crying like she didn’t care I could see.

When this memory came back to me, I was sitting cross-legged on Susie’s bed. My mother was fanning fresh Polaroids and I was imagining her and Susie having sex in the space where I sat. My mother’s thighs, the curve of his shoulders when they hunch. The lube my mother secrets up herself leaking past the sheets. She’d u