This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [120]
“Well, okay, you can try,” I said at last. She wasn’t used to me letting her do things. Usually all she got was, Can’t come, can’t have, don’t follow, don’t take.
When Anner and young Gaboo showed up, stopping by on the way to visit Brett next door, Clara was on the ground behind the house, Mama crouching over her. Anner instinctually lifted Clara onto her lap and pressed her shirt into her chin to stop the bleeding.
“It’s a good cut,” she said. Mama shifted back and forth on her feet, back and forth.
“She cut it on the bucket,” I said. I looked at the rusty bucket. There was a little bit of blood on the sharp tab with the hole that held the handle. “She fell out the door in Mama’s boots.” My fault, of course.
“Has she had her tetanus?” Anner asked Mama.
“Oh . . . yes . . . no . . . yes . . . I think so,” Mama said.
“She probably needs stitches,” Anner said.
“Oh dear,” Mama said. “Oh dear, oh dear.”
“It’s okay,” Anner said. Her eyes went back and forth from Clara to Mama, wondering which one needed the most help.
Anner and Mama put Clara to rest in the bunk and talked over her in low voices.
“You should really get her a tetanus shot just in case. That bucket was rusty . . . just to be safe.”
“Oh. Oh,” Mama said.
“It’s all right.”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“Do you need help taking her in?”
“No, I mean, I can’t do this.”
“Oh, Sue, it will be fine.”
“No, I can’t bear it. It’s too much.”
Clara sat on my old tree-trunk high chair across the table from me watching Mama with round blue eyes that had dark circles under them. At two years old, she had hair that was still only a pale blond fuzz, making her forehead seem especially high and her eyes extraordinarily blue and bowl-size. They followed Mama’s movements from wood box to stove, from stove to counter, from counter to table with our oatmeal.
“Wait for it to cool,” Mama said, setting the wooden bowls in front of us, “or it will give you bad breath.” Clara began to eat, but her eyes stayed on Mama, even as I made slurping sounds with my oatmeal.
“No slurping, please,” Mama said. “It makes me crazy.”
By then, the times Mama had left took up almost all the fingers on one hand. That first spring with Heidi in the rental car, the next time with Clara when she ended up in Colorado, then last week when she left Clara and me with Anner while delivering a sailboat down the coast with Stan for some much-needed cash. Only my index and pinkie remained. When she left it didn’t hurt at first anymore, like when your hand brushes the hot stove and it takes a few minutes for the spot to sting.
Since Mama returned from the sailing trip, Clara cried about everything. After breakfast, she didn’t want to sit at the table, she didn’t want to get dressed, she just clung to Mama’s legs in the kitchen. Mama told her she was trying to clean up, she needed space. She put Clara on the couch and Clara sat there screaming, her hands reaching out. I went over and showed her my Gandalf staff, but Clara grabbed it and threw it on the floor, so I pinched her. She cried louder and ran to Mama, but Mama put her hands over her ears, her eyes were whirling in her face and her mouth was twisted like in the painting The Scream. She pulled her leg free from Clara’s grasp, slid the latch on the door, and jumped down the step and ran across the yard. Clara stumbled to the open door, her body shaking as she stepped back and forth at the edge like she had to pee. Standing in the middle of the room with my Gandalf staff, I pounded the staff on the floor and squeezed my eyes tight to whisper a spell.
“Mama Come Back.”
Clara dropped to her belly and slid out to the stone doorstep, her face red and crying looking back at me, snot clumped around her nose, eyes not seeing me. She backed off the porch, then started to run after