Sunday, February 22, 2009
That Night
My mother rarely cries. That night I am playing with cars at the bottom of the stairway. The phone rings, and I ignore it, and seconds later my mom is at the top of the stairway. My mother rarely has her hair down. That night, the wavy, graying hair covers half her face, and her eyes are red. She mentions a relative, his name I can't remember. Her cousin. He passed away, she explains. I bite my lip. She says that he was drinking, and that people do strange things when they drink. My fingernail picks at the dark green carpet, and I try to half listen. He killed himself, she says. She pauses, I look up. Her hand tries to hide her shaking chin. I stare at the toy trucks. She and dad will have to go to the funeral, she says. I'll be staying with grandma.
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You do a great job with scene here, Tyler. You help your reader zoom in on small actions that tell us a lot about the people involved: your disembodied fingernail picking the carpet, your mom's hair and shaking chin. I like that you don't romanticize either yourself or your mom. I can feel the awkward silences between you, and the move from suicide to mundanity combines with those silences to give me a sense of layers of stifled emotion.
ReplyDeleteI really like your piece. You do a really good job by presenting us your main point with concise and brief information.
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