How to tell it so it’s not misunderstood: the hatchet was in her hand and we’d been jumping on beds.
Again.
My mother had told us time and time again not to, but we couldn’t resist the cushioned bouncing, the way our hair splashed in the air as we fell. Carol and her kids were visiting and we were bored, so we took to the bed and started bouncing. Then there she was, tight-eyed and in front of us with a hatchet fished out of the camping box.
“In a line,” she said, and we made ourselves into a line along the kitchen floor and did what she said because she had a hatchet, and a hardness to her eyes.
“In a line,” she said, “jumping.”
So we jumped, feeling silly even at our young ages, knowing it was wrong somehow to be forced by hatchet into jumping. But it was no time for joking. My mother’s face was red, and though she was looking right at us, she did not seem to see.
She pounded the linoleum with her hatchet, dull side down—jump, jump, jump, she said, and the blade was sharp and her eyes had never been colder and even good old Carol could not calm her and so pretended it was all a joke and told her children to keep jumping in my mother’s line.
“Jump, you kids!” my mother said, eyes empty where there was usually blue.
And we jumped. We kept our bodies in flight, feet slapping the floor, faces wet as we sobbed and called out to her to please stop.
Who knows how it ended.
So often, only the beginning of the story remains, like the base of a bridge long gone. We’re left with the things we notice as the adrenaline builds—the hairline crack in the floor, the orange and yellow flowered cover on the toaster. So often, the ending does not really matter.
“Jump! Jump! Jump!” she said. And we did.
Until she tired, or our legs gave out, and we fell, ragged, into a pile on the floor.