Mother’ s Story
near apocalyptic: black rainclouds illuminated in the far distance by a deep crimson sunset. She knew the simple truth: they were driving into Mordor.
Water droplet snakes wriggled across the windowpane. Abby liked to trace them with her eyes and occasionally with her fingers. The window was like a movie screen: water snakes entered on one side and tried to slink across to the other side. Some made it straight across from one side of the windowpane to another; these went to Purgatory, she thought. Others collided with each other and grew fatter and fatter until they got too heavy and dropped to the bottom of the windowpane; these went to Hell. Still others managed to curve their way to the top of the window and disappear out of view. These, of course, went to Heaven.“ Mom, we need more light bulbs. My night light isn’ t working.”“ Okay, we’ ll get some at Target. Need anything else?”“ Uh, we’ re running out of Band-Aids. And chocolate. We need lots of chocolate.” The driver grinned as she cast her mind forward to the probable events of that evening. In her mind’ s eye she saw herself and her daughter, sitting on the couch after dinner, watching Willie Wonka, surrounded by silver candy wrappers. In a few minutes, Abby would be crying because of the sugar, and her father would come home and see the mess, and the boys would walk in and want a share of the saccharine booty.“ Mom, how do you spell carry?”“ C-A-R-R-I-E,” she spelled out.“ You mean cousin Carrie, right?” They passed a car pulled off to the side of the road with emergency lights on. She crossed herself and tightened her grip on the wheel.“ No. Like I’ m carrying something.”“ C-A-R-R-Y.”“ Thanks.” Lightning struck in the distance as the van pulled into the Target parking lot. Inside, they would chase each other’ s tails for forty-five minutes: Abby trying not to pass out from boredom, her mother trying to get her constantly changing nine-year-old opinion on whether or not this or that purple top was‘ bleh’ and would therefore be shoved to the back of the drawer and never worn. The rain suddenly let up and the windshield wipers squeaked. They sat together in the car, the
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