Mama

Laughing, there was laughing around me, in the room, even within me. Why was there laughter? There shouldn’t have been.

                I was smiling, dressed in head to toe black without a notice, my little hands flailing out on my little arms excitedly as I talked of nothing with my friends, simply happy to see them. Happy to be out of the house, happy to be away from reality.

                “Come here,” I heard a voice calling behind me, shouting my name. I turned my head, frowning as I stomped my way over to my father, standing in line with other members of my family. He smoothed my hair, made me stand straight next to him. I fidgeted, looking around, confused why I had to stand there. There was no reason for me to become a statue like the rest of the people around me, so solemn. I sighed as someone I barely recognized reached out and shook my hand. Me? A little girl? Who shakes the hand of a little girl!

                I stepped from foot to foot, saw my father look at me from the corner of his tired, sad eyes.

                “Stop that,” he said, and I frowned. The insolent child. “Behave.”

                Another hand, more spoken words I didn’t register. I was smiling; I wanted to run away from this line, back to my friends. I wanted to get out of this building, with its crisp carpet and stoic mood. The outside was calling, the world.

                Just get me away from here.

                Hours droned on, people thinned and left, until only those few close to me remained. Tired, I sat down in one of the metal folding chairs in the front row and looked ahead, eyes landing on a casket, now closed, now locked. Inside rested someone I no longer knew, someone foreign to me. Inside rested a memory, someone who wasn’t real anymore.

                I wrung the hem of my shirt in my hands, thought back to how badly I wanted to hug her. To reach inside the box and wrap my arms around her, and have her sparkling blue eyes open and smile at me. Have her stroke my hair and say, “Buttercup, it’s all gonna be okay.” But I’d been afraid, seeing her lying there, so motionless, lacking her natural glow, I was afraid to touch her.

                And now, shut up in a box, the chance was gone. Trembling softly, I felt hot tears spill from my eyes, and I pitched forward, clutching my waist and closing my eyes.

                Mama was gone, and she wouldn’t be coming home.

Author's Note

More flash.