a creative nonfiction essay from spring of 2006
by jennifer hetrick
by jennifer hetrick
once the boys are back from the car with a set of clothing in a plastic grocery bag, tammy pulls the tiger t-shirt out, holding it up by the shoulders of the fabric. she lays it neatly over our mother’s body, which is already in the costume of hospital bed sheets. shifting the cotton sleeves around to get the right look, tammy works her last adjustment, the tiger’s paws resting on our mother’s belly. a fleece hat is next, and we do not lift her head, so it sits atop her scalp as if she were a doll stuck in a box—all of us anxious for her to be dressed in clothes we might recognize. we want to see her stepping out of her car, waddling over to us at our family owned & established garden center, smiling, shaking her fist and chanting that she is a survivor and that she has brought us some fudgesicles. extra short stretch pants follow to fit her extra short legs puffed with fat, her five foot stature hiding from us in this place that never was her home.
“she looks like a snowman,” i say once the outfit is finalized.
tammy peers as at me wide-eyed and yells, “mom heard that ! you better watch what you do now; she’s going to be able to watch you all the time now.”
everyone in the room laughs, “ohhhhh, jenny !”
my voice is weak and wet with tears that have been pushing out for the past few hours. i curl my face towards its middle, crying out the words, “well, she does !” as everyone continues laughing at my half-joke, offering arms to my trembling shoulders, i notice something my siblings do not want me to notice. i am almost twenty-one years old, but i will always be the baby of the family in the eyes of this room, and even if i should somehow grow up, visions of my mother will always up, visions of my mother will always be stained a heavy purple. setting her clothing over her body has lifted up the blankets warming her icy hands—each finger turning from creamy lavender to a hot and lifeless plum hue. she will not use these tips and prints to test fruits for their ripeness in freed’s produce aisle, wrapping a twisty-tie around a blurry and crinkling plastic bag, locking in each bit of tree-made flavor. if she taught me how to check for fruit that is soon ready to eat, i do not remember the rules she gave me. i will feel helpless in grocery stores as summer approaches, as i crave a centerpiece basket of nectarines, grapes, grapefruits, but mostly plums.
“she looks like a snowman,” i say once the outfit is finalized.
tammy peers as at me wide-eyed and yells, “mom heard that ! you better watch what you do now; she’s going to be able to watch you all the time now.”
everyone in the room laughs, “ohhhhh, jenny !”
my voice is weak and wet with tears that have been pushing out for the past few hours. i curl my face towards its middle, crying out the words, “well, she does !” as everyone continues laughing at my half-joke, offering arms to my trembling shoulders, i notice something my siblings do not want me to notice. i am almost twenty-one years old, but i will always be the baby of the family in the eyes of this room, and even if i should somehow grow up, visions of my mother will always up, visions of my mother will always be stained a heavy purple. setting her clothing over her body has lifted up the blankets warming her icy hands—each finger turning from creamy lavender to a hot and lifeless plum hue. she will not use these tips and prints to test fruits for their ripeness in freed’s produce aisle, wrapping a twisty-tie around a blurry and crinkling plastic bag, locking in each bit of tree-made flavor. if she taught me how to check for fruit that is soon ready to eat, i do not remember the rules she gave me. i will feel helpless in grocery stores as summer approaches, as i crave a centerpiece basket of nectarines, grapes, grapefruits, but mostly plums.
*
in the most unlikely of worlds, fire is not quintessentially of reds, oranges, and yellows trailing down to some fierce blinking of blue melting to white, but a color scheme of thick-stretching purples and baby-bottom soft lavenders. each stem of heat is a billowing blanket of warmth and comfort moving through late april blooms of the eastern redbud. we will rip twigs and branches off for ourselves and keep to the road of life that is shoving us forward still in quilted sadness, even though soon our actions will make every tiny flower fall away from us, the season itself repeating the pattern we’ve perpetuated—a death we’ll want to call premature. but that will be what it is despite our selfish craving to control the meaning built behind our lives, and in spring, the bursting color so contradicting to the rest of the green-set brown landscape around us starts out in the name cercis canadensis. we will be reminded of rebirth. we will better know that all we love eventually returns to the humble ground of earth to sprout again, whether or not we are familiar with its newest forms, and the gentle push of palest purple is always spelling this out—if we could just move our eyes upward to its many mapped resting places.
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