Page 30 of The Story of You

“Oliver’s a baby.”

“I don’t mean now. I mean later when he’s of spankable age.”

I didn’t know what that was. “When he’s old enough,” I said to shut him up, but I truly had no idea how I would discipline Oliver. Would I have to?

In any case, I was concerned. Father had been making comments about Darius that disturbed me. “He’s been a nuisance since the first time your mother got sick. Maybe I should ship him off for a little while, till things are back on track.”

I didn’t point out there was no “back on track”. Mother’s death loomed ever closer. Soon it would be the three of us and him. “I’ll talk to him,” I would promise.

“Maybe Uncle Pax would take him for a bit, he’d like that.”

I knew he wouldn’t. That wasn’t Darry’s wish.

Darius spent more time with Mother. She eventually became bedridden again and he would lie with her until I made him go to school. When he was out of school, he seldom left her side. Father didn’t like that, claiming it exhausted her, but I think it was jealousy. He didn’t get to spend that kind of time with her. He worked.

Palliative care came to the house to look after her in her final days.

Mama wanted to die at home. I’d never seen anyone die other than in the movies and it’s far less romantic in real life.

She’d been given so much pain medication she hadn’t been conscious for days. Darius’s panicked call sounded across the house. Father wasn’t home. I had no choice but to bring Oliver with me.

“Silas. Something’s happening.” He’d been crying. Fat droplets ran over his cheeks.

Mama’s breathing had changed. Her rib cage rattled. Her lips fluttered.

The nurse on shift for Mama ran in behind me. Darius’s instinct had been to call for me, not her, which said a lot. He knew what was happening, he needed me there for him. He didn’t want her to die alone. Mama’s body roiled forth, expelling mucous.

When the nurse had Mama stable again, she excused herself to call our father. She didn’t tell us to leave.

Darius held her hand. “Mama, if you can hear me, I understand. You can go. Just fucking go.”

He collapsed over her, sobbing.

“How dare you?” he said into her belly, his voice broken. “She was my beautiful mother, and you allowed her to wilt like a fucking daffodil.”

I assumed he was talking to “God”, but I didn’t know for sure. We’d gone to church once upon a time, but we stopped somewhere along the way.

Father came home from work early. “Death’s rattle,” he said when he saw her. We hadn’t left. I had to take care of Oliver, but we kept him busy in the room, ducking out for food—only for him, we weren’t hungry—and supplies so I could change his diapers.

Her body came to an abrupt halt that night, but not before I got to say my own words. I told her it was okay. That I’d take care of my brothers. That I’d see her again, but not too soon. That Oliver would know her.

The last one was a stupid promise and I never held myself to it. How could Oliver know her? She was too sick to love him.

She was gone and part of us went with her. Darius hardened forever. Father shut down.

I lost the will to smile.

* * *

Watching Mama wither should have been the worst of it, but what came after shadowed her death like a cold mountainside.

ChapterTen

Silas – July 1985

Mama’s funeral was on a hot day in July. Oliver was fussy as fuck. He wouldn’t sit still, and Father wasn’t having any of it. He shouted his frustrations with the world onto an unsuspecting fourteen-month-old. Uncle Pax swooped in to take Father away from us. I removed Oliver’s uncomfortable clothing—the main reason for his fussing—and dressed him in something cooler.

Darius could light fires with his eyes, and he was awfully petulant, which was more indicative of his age than the boy who had been speaking the words of an old soul to his dying mother. I let him sulk. He’d earned it.