My mother died birthing me and she never revealed who my sperm-donor father was. If he didn’t want to know me then I sure as heck don’t want to know him. My heart mother was my grandmother and I called her Ma Maw. She rarely understood any of my emotional outbursts but she loved me through them. She even loved me through the chaos when I nearly duplicated my mother’s path to having me. I left that good fer nothin’ scum far behind me in the dust of my life, with my only scar being my pride.
My Ma Maw loved me through it all and mentored me into becoming this semi-self respectable woman that I now am. Her frizzy white hair jutted out at crazy angles and it matched her wild care-free personality. Her arthritic knuckles bulged from years of serving Pa Paw and me. My Pa Paw left us when I was entering puberty. Death never comes at a convenient time but the timing for his heart attack was pretty lousy. My various boyfriends at the time claim I was actin’ way too “clingy”.
I sometimes wonder if, at the very least, I am cursed or, at the very worst, maybe I am really the spectre of death, inadvertently using my powers on those around me.
After a long day of work at the hair salon I crumpled into the couch with chips and spicy salsa to watch “The Voice.” I’m gonna give Taylor Swift a run for her money someday. My Ma Maw came home with dark half-moons under her wrinkled eyes.
Ma Maw put her hands on her hips and cleared her voice to get my full attention, “Oh honey, is that your dinner?”
I looked down at the salsa covering a nacho and smiled. The empty carbs brought me so much joy. I looked into eyes full of fear that I’d never get married. The weight of thirty pounds of excess fat shamed the chip back into the sauce. I shrugged my shoulders and grinned sheepishly.
She winked and said, “I’ll get us a rotisserie at Winn-Dixie.”
I snorted and said, “Yes please!” I turned back to the television. I barely flinched at the closing door. During the commercial break I walked into the kitchen. The fluorescent lights started strobing. A hard breeze snapped the shutters wide open. A glow appeared before me. Now, I’m kind of a horror movie buff and if I saw this in a flick, I’d mock it as cheesy. In real life, though, I’d never felt more terror. My legs shook and nearly buckled. The glowing form began to take the shape of a person.
Thunk!
The shutters smacked my fear into full panic and I wanted to run but my legs wouldn’t move. My Ma Maw walked right through the glow towards me. I relaxed my muscles and exhaled. But wait, something wasn’t quite right. I looked at her more closely and she was shimmering.
Loving-kind eyes glistened over a wry smile. “Honey, everything’s gonna be alright.”
The wooden shutters thunked again.
I started crying. My worst fear had finally arrived. My Ma Maw was dead and it was all my fault. People close to me die. I should have run away from home long ago.
She came closer and I looked back at her face. Up close, her form was a lot more blurry but her penetrating eyes shone with love.
Thunk!
She reached towards my trembling form. “I am happy here with your Pa Paw and you are going to be fine. I believe in you.” Her hand dissolved first, then her body. She evaporated until her Cheshire grin morphed into our hall light.
Rrriiiiinnng!
The phone ringing jolted me into motion. The caller was a police captain asking if my Ma Maw, a Mrs. Elizabeth Real, lived at this residence and if I could come down to the morgue to verify a body that had been flung from a multi-car collision on the interstate.
Thunk!
I collapsed to the floor and wept.