I write and write and write but also sometimes I can’t anymore.
When I reach that point (and Jess still isn’t responding, which: Maybe they don’t even have cell service in Saipan?), my gaze falls on the shoeboxes still sitting where Papi left them on my desk.
Nor has sent a few irritated texts wondering when I’m going to get the photos to her, since she’s in charge of scrapbook layout. Sucks when your sister doesn’t respond to your messages, I guess.
I pull a dusty lid off the first box and settle on the floor, since my bed and desk are full of Marguerite. These pictures go way back—Mom as a toddler, in the house she still lives in. Mom around four years old, in an astonishingly poufy dress and hat, clutching a stuffed bunny, while her brothers wrestle over an Easter basket. Mom on skates, Mom eating birthday cake, Mom winning some sort of academic award.
I pull out a few photos from each age range. They’re thick and glossy, from the time before photos on phones, or even digital cameras, I think. My grandparents had to care enough to have film developed, then hold on to the tangible objects over the years, surviving the purges of stuff from my grandparents’ house to college to grad school to newlywed apartment and on and on. Stuffed in a shoebox somewhere I couldn’t even find them, but still.
The second shoebox has more photos, from high school, I think. Girls in overalls and flannel with arms slung around each other. Photos that follow the extended arm of the subject from hand holding the old-school camera backward toward their face—prehistoric selfies. Cheesy school-dance photos, Mom in a shiny coral dress with a pimply boy encircling her waist from behind, and another in a black strapless mini-dress with a group of girlfriends, all striking Charlie’s Angels poses.
Mixed in with the high school photos are some report cards and essays with red As scrawled across the top. One essay has a B-, and the teacher’s note says, “Beautifully written, but not the assignment. Follow the rubric next time, Kath.”
Beneath that, in a loopier version of the handwriting I recognize, my mom has written, “NO ONE MADE AUSTEN WRITE TO A RUBRIC, MISS FOSKET!!!”
I pull that out for the scrapbook, for sure.
I’m about to move on to the third shoebox when a folded piece of paper at the bottom catches my eye. I tug it from a corner where it’s caught and when it comes free, I unfold it to find an unfamiliar handwriting at the bottom—it’s signed Marla, which isn’t a name I recognize.
The handwriting is urgent, and the first words are “PLEASE READ THIS, K.” I’m expecting a glimpse into my mom’s high school drama—dates for a dance, gossip gone awry, accusations of lying or cheating or stealing. But as I read on, my stomach churns.
I know you just want this to be over, but you HAVE to tell someone. Think about the other girls he’s hurt. The other girls he’ll hurt after we graduate. When I took you to the clinic, you promised you’d tell. Please, K.
K is Kath. My mom.