WATCHING HER DANCE
By: Gina Marla Lucia Angelone
Tags: Mothers, Afterlife, Mwc Death

I squeezed the dish washing liquid and a single perfect bubble appeared, floating, weightless, and rainbow-sheened. I said hello with exclamation points in my voice and it hovered back a greeting. It occurred to me that this bubble was my mother encased in soap, expanded by air, glinted with prisms and drifting above the kitchen sink. Where else would she be? Who else could it be? My attention flickered. I blew a gust of breath to keep her sailing, delight rippling across both of us. I followed her gaze up to the hanging pots and then saw her no more. That’s it, I thought. It’s over. This is what happens to bubble and mothers.

But then there she was, dancing eye-level with me again. Back for more hellos.

I admired her resilience, even in her fragile state. She explored the cookware, avoiding collisions with metal edges. She curved the slope of the wok and glided past the sauté pans like a skier down a slalom. I thought to intervene once or twice — to offer another gust of breath and extend her salvation. But I let her take her natural path. The way a favorite pen runs out of ink. The way a blue day turns black. And so she did, of her own accord, dance some more then vanish.

Other signs of my mother aren’t as cheerful. Like a broken bug with a big eye and twitchy wings splayed on the pavement that was clearly saying something to me. Take me out of my misery. You can’t leave me this way. I stopped and considered squishing it with my sneaker — giving it a final blessing and then BAM. But I kept moving and let life take its course. Stomping it might have been more merciful. But that eye, alert and frightened, was alive and watching me.

My sister wanted a doctor to come to the house and super-dose our mother with morphine. Extinguish her. BAM. Instead, we let her run out of breath on a cold slab of hospital bed. She kept looking at me through one open slit. I held her singular gaze. She and I were repeating the same silent words to each other. Take me out of my misery. You can’t leave me this way.

But it wasn’t just her gaze that agonized me. It was her mouth too— lips that were always pre-moistened for photographs and coated in colors like caramel kiss and peaches n’ cream. Her smile gave way to false teeth, but it was only when her body became riddled with cancer that they floated in her mouth like lies. Her beautiful lips became chapped and flayed. Skinned alive. I’d gently pry them open, whispering permission to stick my fingers inside to inject something soothing. Each dose came with an apology.

Even as her tongue turned black and parched to ash, as her cheeks caved in and her face dissolved to something skeletal, her left eye remained open to watch the end of the world, and to watch me.

I dabbed water on those scorched, sinkhole lips as my brother placed artifacts on her body: a rosary, a cross, a prayer in the pocket of her ugly hospital gown. He played Christian music that I turned to Soul. We held her until, of her own accord, she watched no more and vanished.

Now, red cardinals show up in my garden. Lights flicker in the house like furtive signs of an afterlife. Though she’s gone, I can still hear her. I can see her bubble and spark. These delicate sightings have returned the color to the sky and filled my pages with ink and memory. I stand at the sink, squeeze the soap bottle, and try to summon one more dance.