My Mother’s Shame By Elizabeth Rosen

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My Mother’s Shame

   When my father starts storming, the only thing to do is to take shelter, so my mother gathers me to her and conceals me inside her shame. She urges me through the concertina fence of her should haves, and once inside, I turn and turn like a dog flattening a bed. I make myself small and insubstantial, knowing I must become something less than nothing to avoid my father’s lashing winds. I curl myself tight and slot myself into the impression I’ve made, burrowing into my mother’s shame at how she’s failed me, and herself. 
    But even from my hiding place, I can hear my father’s unpredictable gusts upending furniture and sweeping glass from the shelves. I dig my fingers into the compost of my mother’s shame, rich with what ifs and I wishs, and mainly sorrysorrysorrys. Her decomposing regret gives off heat and keeps me warm, but the darkness of her mortification is so complete I can see nothing but pinpricks of light my brain creates. They provide no clarity, but they are the way I know I am alive.
    My mother makes a windbreak of herself to keep the storm outside, but I feel the jolts as she bears the battering of the squall. I want to cry out, but instead I stop my mouth with palmfuls of her bitter-tasting shoots. I would spit them out if I were not so afraid to leave a sign of myself. I claw handfuls of her shame into the hole to bury myself deeper. I cover my head, leaving only my nose above ground. I count seconds between breaths, adding one second each time, my burrow expanding and collapsing, expanding and collapsing as I wait, without light, without air, a creature who knows the world only by vibration.
    Then a tremor runs through the ground, and a sound comes from my mother that I have never heard. The snap of limbs echoes inside my buried skull, and my mother’s grip on me loosens. Her crying waters my hiding place. The ground grows muddy and water-logged around me, threatens to close over my head and drag me under like quicksand. 
    I flail. I thrash. I shake my head to clear my ears and eyes, and sinking, I see that things besides fear might flourish here where the soil is wet and fecund, that the rise and fall of my cocoon might be the waking breath of some leviathan, rather than the trembling of a cur. 
    So I turn my thoughts inward to focus on becoming the thing that grows after a long, fallow period, that rises from its dark season in new form. I am in utero. Who knows what sort of Cerberean beast this rich ground can foster? A creature that bites hands that hit, yes, but one that tramples down the razor wire of shame and bears the weak on its back. 

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Elizabeth Rosen mourns the loss of Tab and KoKo the Gorilla. She still wants her MTV and has the T-shirts to prove it. She once thought about hating winter, but then realized it gave her the opportunity to wear colorful scarves, so she took it back. Dominoes give her the willies. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fiction awards. Read more of her writing at www.thewritelifeliz.com.
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