Sonata

            The vanity is a cherry veneer monstrosity, the kind of antique dealers laugh at. Attached to the back are three oval mirrors; the middle one, the longest, is crowned with a carved bouquet of rosebuds that, when the light is right, blinks with gargoyle eyes in the sun. The blind is up and the sun pours in steadily, but the woman sees only herself in the glass. Her freshly scrubbed mouth has been painted a dusky rose color; her hair is twisted atop her head without pins or clips in a way only she knows. Scattered before her are jars of creams, bottles of nail polish, lots of tissues smudged with shadow. The sun makes a dazzle of her gold mascara wand.

            A child, just past eight, stands at the door, watching. Her face is flushed; she has been running through the tangle of pear trees in the side yard. The girl’s attention is divided between the woman and the window, where she can see a dilapidated weather vane atop a detached garage. The husky, humming sounds from the woman’s throat seem to turn it. The vane’s arrow swings north, then south, then in the direction of Glorious Life Pentecostal, where they are having a big revival.

            The woman leans forward until her nose presses against the middle mirror, then jerks back, causing her hair to fall. It’s light brown and falls in waves to her shoulders. The woman rises from the bench before the mirror. She is wearing an aqua housecoat and her breasts point out. She sighs and picks up the silver bottle. At the sight of it, the girl squats on the hardwood floor, her toes edging an oval braided rug. The woman unbuttons her housecoat, stumbles, straightens, then shrugs off the coat altogether and stands naked. She sprinkles talcum onto her body like salt from a shaker. She rubs in circles, smoothing it deep into her skin. She raises an arm, sways, straightens, then proceeds to put lots of talcum under each arm. The child squeezes her legs together as if she might like to go to the bathroom, but it isn’t that kind of pressure. It’s that panicky feeling she gets way down deep when she knows she’s being left behind.

Silver Bottle

The woman in my mind just now? That was my mother. Resurrection driven, gliding in and out of my mind as easily as a paschal moon, hungry for a feast. 

We don’t celebrate Easter at my house. No church, no new patent leathers, no three- piece suit for the boy. Just two dozen eggs I’ll color and leave in the backyard while Royce drives down the road and gets three pre-stocked Easter baskets from Walmart. I always remind him to get pink, yellow and blue because those were the colors of cellophane I used when I made them.

I made them until the nightmare. 

I was stuffing Easter baskets late on a Saturday night when I fell asleep on the ear of a giant bunny. The sleep was light. I knew I was drifting but was sure I could rouse myself. I had stuff to do. Then exhaustion overcame me, and I plunged—I don’t know how long or far—until I met Mother, more real than she had a right to be, and wearing that old soiled nightgown that smelled to high heaven. She was holding the silver bottle. “Take it, Lorraine,” she said. “I’ll stay if you do.” 

I woke, cursing, for I knew what I was being offered. A slurred promise. A silver Judas. A betrayal of trust. Sure, she left it behind the day she left us, but that was because she was drunk and forgot. Somewhere amongst another set of pear trees, I buried that silver bottle, and I know that somewhere my mother bought another just like it.

The front door slams and Nathan, my youngest, runs into the kitchen. His face is white beneath his tan, and he’s shaking like a hound hosed with cold water. His shoulders are hunched, the blades sticking out so prominently that I suddenly wonder if he’s eating enough. My girls are sturdy with matching dispositions. They would fight buzz saws.

“Mom,” he says, “I ran from the bad bus.”

            “Nathan, today is Tuesday.” My voice is kind, even, but I step back and start putting things in the kitchen cabinets that don’t belong there; the salt and pepper shakers, the apple-shaped timer, the cobalt napkin rings that belong in the napkin drawer. I’m remembering another small boy, my brother Jarrell. He was born a clinger, but after Mother left, he became a leech. I don’t think it would have happened if people, especially women, hadn’t kept reaching for him. He’s over the worst of it, but for years he had a problem with the bottle, trying not to grasp again.

            Now, I look at my son, proud of his skill but defeated by circumstance. Doubtless, he’s run from a UPS truck.

            “The bad bus doesn’t come until Sunday,” I tell him.

            “Mom, I ran fast.”

            “I know you did.”

            The girls aren’t afraid of buses, but Nathan’s just turned five and still gets confused. I hammered bus facts into my children’s heads before they could walk. There are three buses that go through Harshbarger Mills: the yellow school bus, which you will never ride because you live in town; the Greyhound that stops twice a day on West Main; and the blue bus that says Glorious Life Pentecostal in letters two feet high painted state road yellow. Avoid the blue one, and if the driver gets out and tries to give you a pamphlet, run straight indoors. Run for your lives! Run as if the devil were on your heels! The girls laughed, delighted by my exaggeration, but Nathan took it to heart. I have to watch what I say around him. 

            My husband isn’t a Christian, but he used to be alarmed by the way I treated religion.

            “Why does it matter so much that they don’t believe?” Royce complained one night. ‘It’s a good, clean way to live. Let them go to Sunday School with the rest of the kids. Nothing will happen.”

            I propped myself on my elbows and told him it wasn’t a matter of not believing. I hadn’t been inside Glorious Life Pentecostal since we were married, and there wasn’t one of those hypocrites who was a better Christian than I might have been. The point is, you can’t just be around Pentecostals. You can fight them, you can hate them, but once inside those double doors, you’ll start acting like them. The kids won’t know a day’s peace until they’re baptized, and after that it’s all about abstaining from alcohol and sniffing out sin. 

            “But if that’s what you want,” I told him, “I’ll put them on the bus come Sunday. I’ll take them to the corner and show them where to stand. But let me warn you,” I straightened, taking the pressure off my elbows, “you’ll get more than you bargained for. Religion isn’t like cleaning a chicken; you can’t take the messy parts out.”

            ‘You’ve been thinking about your mother,” Royce said flatly.

to be con’t.

@joanspilman. All right reserved.

Silver Bottle is a novel I wrote in 2019 and published with Jody Mabry of Moon Valley Press. It is available on Amazon and Kindle, or you can read it right here, as I intend to blog “Silver Bottle” in its entirety. It is told in four voices, women’s voices — Lorraine, Carmen, Jenna, and Lizzie, the matriarch of them all whose roots stretch back to the early nineteenth century.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy! Joan.