Spring melts quickly toward summer, and days lengthen and stretch in the desert, even as the buds on the trees in Illinois would still be just hints of nubs. I am still in bed on Saturday, after a late night at the bar. I wake to the sound of a scuffle up above, feet moving from one room to another at a trot. I hear Cotton calling out, although I can’t make out the words. I don’t know what time it is in my cavernous, dark room, but it feels early. My eyes are crusted with last night’s mascara. I lay under my blankets in a warm cocoon, breaking the small flakes of mascara from around my eyes until my lashes no longer feel thick.
What is happening? Cotton is legitimately screeching now, and the front door may have just opened. I’ve been lying here listening, but not really registering the chaos above. Something is wrong—the thought finally breaks through the sleepy fog in my brain. I can tell by Cotton’s calling, and I push myself up and out of my bed and head down the hall. It is dusky outside, still very early. I pull a sweatshirt over my t-shirt and tug on a baggy pair of sweats. I step out into the yard and walk around to the front of the house.
An ambulance is in the drive, and two paramedics are rushing toward the house. I scuttle back to my space, not wanting them to see me watching, not wanting to pry into their lives. They have welcomed me into their home and have treated me like family, but during anything that requires an ambulance, I feel I need to give them space. I am almost back to my sliding door when I hear footsteps on the deck, then down the steps.
“Is everything okay?” I call out, and Cotton calls out, “I love you.” I don’t know if it is possible for a bird to be panicked, but Cotton’s frantic call sounds like distress.
“Yes,” then “no.” Ron sounds every bit as frantic as the bird. “Can you manage the bird for a few minutes?” He passes Cotton to me and turns to scurry back up the stairs.
“Ron,” I say and stop, not sure how to go on.
“We’re taking Ina to the hospital. It’ll be okay.”
I want to ask what happened. I want to follow him up the stairs and see if I can help, but I don’t. I just nod, which he doesn’t see. I tuck Cotton along my stomach and can feel the small trembles passing through his body.
“It’s okay, Cotton,” I say in the quiet, soft voice I always use with him, my “Cotton voice,” slow and enunciated. “Ina will be okay. She’ll come home. I love Cotton.” I stroke his back as I take a seat on the plastic patio chair, listening to the muffled sounds above. Then the back door slides open again, and Vicki calls out for me.
“I’m here.” I stand up, and Cotton shifts on my arms and heads up to my shoulder. “What can I do?” I meet her on the steps, and I see the sorrow etched in her face.
“She went in her sleep,” she says, and her face crumples, but there are no tears.
“Oh,” I barely whisper. I don’t know what to say to her. “Went” is so final, but Ron said they were taking her to the hospital, so surely she is not gone. I let my eyes move up the stairs, feeling numb and disconnected. I take her hand.
“She had a good life,” she says, trying to convince herself.
I nod, unable to speak, but I feel a tear sliding down my cheek, sudden and unexpected.
“I have to go,” she says, almost shaking herself. “You can bring him back in whenever you want.” She turns and heads back up the stairs, but stops midway. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I call out, feeling upside down. She heads inside. I should be the one asking her if she is okay. Her mother just died, and she’s still making sure everybody else is okay. She is an amazing woman.
I sit with Cotton for a long time, watching the morning rise, watching the water in the pool sparkle as the sun comes into the valley of the back yard. The beautiful white bird has stopped trembling and has lifted his wings for me to rub the fragile bones of his back, leaning his head forward on my knee. The sun is warming the air around me, and I feel the heat beginning to radiate from the concrete. Time moves in a wave over me, and I am swept away by it, my mind traveling over the conversations I have shared with Ina, the church services I have sat through with her knobby hand on my knee. All those lessons she gave me, about character and hard choices . . . those were gifts.
I had always felt cheated by not having a mother who was capable of mothering, but I now realize I have had an abundance of mothers. Leslie, with her warm eyes and huge heart, who took me in when nobody else knew what to do with me. Lola, when I was in Greenville, who cared for me like a mother. Janice at Life House, who was a mother to all of us girls. Even Vaude, Dylan’s mother, who was maybe my first other mother—all the way back to when she was my teacher in junior high. My grandmother, Barb, who welcomed me in her home like the daughter she lost. Petra, Trey’s mom, who cared about me and wanted to help, even after I did what I did. Ina, with all of her lessons and wisdom. Vicki, sheltering me from the world in her fairy home. All of those women, those mothers, taught me the things my own mother never could.
Life is confusing. That’s what my mother spent the last several years of our life together teaching me. After she taught me I was special, and smart, and that I could do anything I put my mind to, she spent the rest of her life teaching me that you can never count on anybody. She taught me that life is full of chaos and deceit. My mother wore the same coat that Shirley wears, even if Shirley’s coat is cut from a finer cloth. I don’t want any of that in my life. I don’t want a revolving door of men. I don’t want to always be falling in and out of love. I don’t want drama. That’s what my mother taught me, but all these other mothers of mine have been teaching me there is another way to live.
My mother was Icarus, flying too close to the sun. I am no different. I have not wanted to return to Illinois for two years because I didn’t want anyone to know that I am not golden, that just like Cotton, my wings are clipped. I didn’t want them to know that all my big dreams, my big life, all my plans went awry. I am my mother’s shattered ghost. My feathers and the wax that held them together are melted and lay scattered around me.
It’s time for me to listen to my other mothers for a change.
“I have to go home,” I say to Cotton.
“I love you,” Cotton says.
It’s time for me to stop being a stream and start building a canyon.
“I love Cotton.” I say it again and again and again, and Cotton tilts his head close to my chest, as if he is listening to the rhythm of my heartbeat.