A Mismarked Grave by Abby Burns

A Mismarked Grave

            My mother named me and my sisters Cathy. She allowed for some variation, of course, starting with Catherine, and moving down the line to Katherine, Cathleen, and Catalina. When Catalina gives her full name in public, people wonder if she’s Spanish. With her dark hair and eyes, it seems almost plausible in spite of her unusually pale complexion, but she is the same German-Irish mix as the rest of us.
            I am the youngest. I can’t help but wonder if our mother had become a tad lazy by the time I arrived. My birth certificate reads simply Cathy Weber. During my sisters’ bouts of rebellion, they each had the option to retreat back to their given name, but I was always stuck. That is, unless I wanted to play a hand at shortening to Cat or even C. But I’ve always found something comforting in shared names, in knowing that whenever our mother called across the house for one of us, we would all appear at the top of the stairs, that we would step forward one at a time, like the von Trapp children at bedtime, until she lit upon the wanted child.
         Last year, I moved to a new city where no one knows that I am one of a collective.
       My boss calls me Carrie and his patients don’t call me anything at all as I take down their information and repeat with a bland, kind smile, “The doctor will be with you shortly.” I begin taking calls from my sisters in the office, addressing them loudly. “Well, Cathy,” I say while I hand my boss his coffee, “I did see a good movie this weekend. How good of you to ask.” But this just makes him more sure that I am Carrie and that she is strange, sometimes taking calls from Cathy three times in a day.
        One Monday, he calls Carrie into the human resources office and he asks where she sees herself in five years. He’s concerned that she’s not taking her job seriously. What with all the phone calls. “In an unmarked grave,” I joke. He doesn’t find this funny, so Carrie offers a correction: “In a mismarked grave?”
        He sends Carrie to the psychiatric ward for evaluation where a social worker asks if she ever thinks about suicide. I say no, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about the President’s we. She asks me to elaborate and I rattle on about how the President adopts this persona of the nation, purporting to speak on behalf of all its citizens. I can’t help but wonder who is excluded in this imaginary. Does belonging to a we always necessitate a them? The doctor looks relieved. She thought we meant his penis. Later when I relay this story, I get laughs from three Cathys and concern from the fourth.
              “Have you thought of killing yourself?” she asks.
              “No,” I say, “But Carrie has.”
              “I’m sorry,” Cathy says, “For everything. For Mom.”
       The social worker continues her line of questioning. She wants to know why we left home. Carrie answers when I can’t bring myself to say that we didn’t do much leave as we did get kicked out. But, really, that’s all in the past now. ​


---------------------------
Image - cinnamon girl

Bio: Abby Burns is a queer feminist currently residing in Indiana where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Entropy, (b)OINK zine, Microfiction Monday Magazine, and Longridge Review. 

---