Read Damsel in the Red Dress :: Lullaby

When I first met Mrs. Moon, she was already showing signs of age.

It was so subtle that you almost wouldn’t notice it, or know what exactly you were noticing.

It was just a line here, hardly deep enough to be called a wrinkle, a way she wore her clothes, a lightening in the almost pitch black of her hair that showed she was a mother.

So very different from my own mother who always seemed more like a crazy child than a real adult.

Hush hush, Licia.

It’s too late or it’s too early.

My earliest memories are of the way she would panic when I cried, like she would have had a meltdown herself, begging me to stop until I learned it was better to just be silent. Better than causing anyone to worry-

Why am I remembering all this?

But she was almost a baby, Tia Maria always said, barely 18, when she married my daddy - on the faith that it would get her out of her own household - and conceived me.

For the life of me I don’t know if she loved him or if she just hated her own mother as much as she taught me to hate mine.

There are ghosts in the room.

One is a curtain and one is a long shadow that moves as the hours leak out of the day-

I think my eyes are open but I know they can’t be. It’s-

Late.

Nearly midnight or early morning I’m sure and for the first time in not nearly long enough I find myself dreaming about my mother.

The shadow waterboards me.

Not how she looked the last time or-

At the funeral, but way back in the recesses of the days, I thought I’d burned to ashes-

That’s another one of those…

Bad signs.

But I don’t have the energy to rage against that dark night.

I stare at the painted sunrise I see clear as the end of day on the inside of my eyelids as Mami kisses my forehead and prays over me-

Is it okay to admit I’m scared of the dark?

Andrew is snuggled up under my chin because he’s convinced there are monsters under his own bed - not under mine, apparently. But he has his own prayer. This one's for me.

“Peace, my love, my daughter, my heart. God watch over you now and every moment. Guide your steps as you walk…”

But where did her steps lead her?

“...and your dreams as you rest.”

I remember the nightmares.

If I admit…I’m afraid-

Of her.

They started first, a few months before the divorce. I would see shadows in the room that looked like goblins. Crouched and crooked bodies under the beds and in every corner that couldn’t be touched by the streetlight outside the window. I would hug Andrew tight as I watched helplessly - my baby brother becoming one with the darkness - being yanked through the curtains and the glass to evaporate in the moonlight amongst shrieks and pleas - and wake to hear him sobbing-

“‘-Licia. Alicia.”

He’d had a nightmare.

And I'd tell him it was just a dream.

I remember when she used to dress us up in matching outfits for our birthday parties and Andrew would complain about having to wear a suit.

Daddy would complain-

It was ludicrous. We faithfully stained a sleeve or a skirt every time, and she would scold:

“Tsk tsk, cochinito! Why so dirty?!”

And scold me:

“Do I put you in pretty clothes for you to be such a bad little girl? You should be a good example for your little brother.”

And we wasted daddy’s money like nobody’s business. Because we WOULD outgrow the clothes - we were only children. A new three-piece suit and party dress for every birthday, every Easter, every Christmas event?

I remember hearing them in the kitchen, while I tried to distract Andrew out in the garden, looking to see what leaves had started changing colors-

“-I’m not made of money, Rosa! Can't you do without even one of these extraneous expenses?!”

“Extraneous expenses? So you don’t care about your own babies’ birthdays anymore? Your own children’s birthdays aren’t worth a little bit of your ‘oh so precious’ money?”

Showing their true colors…maybe.

I try to raise my head but the-

“I never said that!”

Shadow.

“No! You're showing it!”

“You are putting words in my mouth again! Por favor! If you could stop talking for five seconds-!”

And I remember Andrew falling into the rose bushes-

How just like that - like the eye of the storm - the argument became silence, as Daddy and I tried to pull him unharmed from the mass of needles scratching away at his thin skin.

In the end, only one thorn punctured him through - in his right arm.

He didn’t even cry, but when daddy carried him inside to clean him up, Mommy rushed over and took the matter out of our hands, patching him up with bandaids, cooing over him-

“Oh, mi pobresito. Que pasa? Que pasa? Mi hijo, mi corazón. Mami’s got you now. It’ll be okay. You love mami, yes? You know mami loves you so so much?”

And seeing that look on Daddy’s face as she did.

All of a sudden I find myself standing in that plot of roses, in front of Mom’s - Daddy’s house, the way I saw it last, the day after her funeral when I turned my back on that memory for what I hoped would be the last time-

I reach out toward one of the blooms and watch it burst into flame at the first touch of my trembling fingertips.

To think-

Papi only lived two years after Mom passed away. And as far as anyone could tell, there was no reason at all that he should have declined so suddenly the way he did-

I guess…

He really loved her.

And for his sake, I wish he hadn’t.

I wake up drenched with sweat that feels like ice - coursing down my spine in tortured torrents-

And something in me is so shattered-

So fed up with the torment that I lose my mind- like fire through my blood and the bed-

I tear my sheets off the mattress and throw them to the floor, hearing threads fracture and fabric tear - I throw the pillows at the wall and my words after them, shrieking at the tops of my lungs.

“I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE! I DON’T MISS YOU! I DON'T WANT TO!”

And it’s not the first time I’m glad the house is empty! Glad everyone who cares about me is millions of miles away! That I have no one close enough to hold me after the nightmares and I’m completely and entirely alone! So I can scream like a demoniac until the howling on the inside of my head calms to that mellow, roaring melancholy I’m so used to that it’s almost comforting - almost mothering - and I can lay down on the bare mattress, weeping like a raving maniac with anger and agony-!

Not because I miss her.

I don’t miss her.

Sometime in the early, wee hours when I realize there will be no falling back asleep I drag myself from the bed and to the living room - to the easel. Not even bothering to turn the lights on I draw the curtains and let the street light spill into the room, pushing back my demons like I used to beg it to do back-

Back when Daddy was too tired to hear me crying in my sleep and Mommy-

-Back when Mom was anywhere and everywhere but home and I was the woman of the house-

The woman of the house at 14! With Daddy gone and Andrew still trying to make sense of the fact that he wasn’t coming back-

How could I miss that?!

How could I miss her?!

I put my brush to the white and make a livid stroke, watching the cinnamon moon of a face bleed from under the bristles like an angry lake.

Curls paint themselves onto the canvas, black - black as cuervas and vultures and the old bloody puddle I found her in the last time-

-And that short, cute figure bedecked with fake pearls gathered in that same crow-ish energy - tendency for everything - everything beautiful-

She threads herself into the canvas- into the tears and the watercolor running down my neck and dribbling between my fingers- the little woman standing under the shade of a big, wide-brimmed Sunday hat - lavender dress - and I don’t know - who I’m painting-

I DON’T WANT TO!!!

But when I go to paint her face, I realize I can’t remember it.

I realize that all I remember is the nightmares and that ghost staring up from the kitchen floor next to my own body in a state of absolute collapse-

And that’s not-

That’s not how I want it to end-

If I have to forget-

I want to forget-

Completely-

Not just the times when I could call her 'mommy' without seeing the corpse-

The zombie-

I try to rack my mind, bring back up the memory - like I’m conjuring what’s left of my peace and sanity - it’s at the edge of memory, and yet-

It slips through my fingers at the tail end of every dream.