1.

Your mother’s not coming. Jesus Christ, my child just died and I can’t be entertaining your mother. The weight and warmth of my blissful motherhood blood turned ice cold with the thought of her saying it’ll be fine, dear…with prayer and time. With prayer and time. She was always saying that, her eyes full of hope and sparkle. Good for her replacing a husband in less than a year. I can’t get a new child. I’m glad she’s happy.

2.

I pull an afghan over my shoulders and sink down into the couch. A slam of wind and another rush of rain rummages through the metal gutters like trapped animals. Kyra liked the rain. She used to sit on the front porch and watch lightning storms. She caught all things quick:  an arching shooting star, a coyote trace across a darkened roadbed, a fleeting facial expression she couldn’t name. Mom, did you see that girl’s hair, she’d say as the object of her desire melted into the crowd. 

3.

Prayer never brought me closer to the divine. Kyra and me were already part of the divine, just living every day. We participated. From birth to 10 years, 26 days we were divine. There was holy, sweet smelling divine when her fisted little hands took hold of my hair as I diapered her. There was dopey sugar coated divine when I left her birthday cake in the oven too long. Geez, mom, how could you burn it. I appeased her by picking up a frozen concoction at the Stop-N-Go. After her party, we stayed up half the night eating popcorn and drawing pictures of hearts and horses.

4.        

All things divine. There was the dirty hollowed out divine when I threw a glass of wine at her father after he confessed that his massage “therapy” had turned into sex. He said female client, I said another woman. He said touched her inappropriately, I said brought her to orgasm. Good ol’ semantics. I was never good at hurling gracefully veiled insults, but inanimate objects do me just fine.

5.

We’re divine by nature, aren’t we? When I forgot to set the alarm and she grew tired of being late for school, Kyra saved her allowance and bought her own alarm. One divine moment after another. One night after infinite begging, I let her cut my hair, just like at the beauty salon. I like to think I trusted her, but hell, it’s only hair. It’ll grow back. After the cut, she pranced around the house like she was queen for a day, like she could do anything. I want to be a hairdresser when I grow up, she said. I said teacher or nurse and she said, no mom, I can do this.  God, she was brilliant.

6.        

And now he’s calling me about his mother coming. She wants to be here for us. But I can’t take her rosy-cheeked cheer…not now. Whatever she touches turns to gold, she wills it. When rain beats in slants on the windows, she finds a hidden rainbow. Make lemonade out of lemons and don’t waste a single moment otherwise. She was always saying that. As if cherished sons don’t die every day in a worthless war half way around the world (we don’t talk about it).  As if one third of the world’s children aren’t dying of preventable malnutrition (what we don’t see doesn’t exist). Keep the cotton candy spinning and look the other way. To mention is to dwell. To acknowledge is to dwell. To empathize is to dwell. Smile instead. Have a nice day!

7.

Where is the divine right now? Is it in this hard skull barely containing my milky mind? Is it in my heaving gut, my chipped nails and unshaven legs? Is my skin divine if only he touches it, without the stain of another woman’s scent? Losing him was nothing. He’s one of many possibilities. But Kyra was the shard that completed me, a wedge of love that penetrated my core, made me whole. It ran that deep, and infinitely more. 

8.

With all this rain we’re having, clods of dirt drop loose and my bones are shaking. Little by little I’m eroding. I can’t attune myself to others right now. Tell your mother to stay home.