Read Online Open Me by SUNSHINE O'DONNELL - Free Book Online Page B

mothers—a sniffle, a sob, a blown nose—but all she hears are the birds chirping, cars passing, the sound of people’s shoes shifting on the grass.
    “Now?”
Mem asks Derasha, who is staring straight ahead.
    “No, not now,” she says.
    Across the street is a billboard that reads:
If You Lived Here, You’d Already Be Home
. Mem knows what is waiting for her at home. Empty bagswaiting to be packed full. A big house where her mother won’t be living anymore. How will Mem feed herself if she can’t even reach the cupboards in the kitchen? How will she do the laundry, pay the bills, run a bath?
    She won’t have to. Once her mother is gone, first Mem’s bones will become flimsy, then her whole self will turn sheer, then transparent, then shadow, then vapor. She will become foggy air and then disperse, there will be no stopping it. She can already feel herself becoming less substantial, less thing-like, every second. She looks at her hand, expecting it to be partly translucent as a pair of dark stockings. But it isn’t. It’s just a hand, three-dimensional and opaque.
    Then it comes, the sound they have been waiting for—a trio of sighs. Little puffs, snorts, and gasps begin to grow, like music at the beginning of a song when the voices haven’t started. Mem looks down at the grass, the legs, the black shoes. She knows it is there, she can feel it.
    Little lazy whore
.
    The skin under her skin grows thick, her eyes prickle around the edges.
    No wonder your father left
.
    Her nose fills and swells. The wet in her mouth turns viscous. A tornado-shaped hunger pang burns behind her ribs. She doesn’t notice that Derasha is watching her. She can’t see anything beyond the luminous blur of almost-shed tears. She feels it coming, a symphony cresting—
    Then the voices start. First Mem’s mother.
    Aunt Ayin.
    Aunt Binah.
    And then Derasha, who suddenly has the skin of Mem’s upper arm twisted like taffy between her fingers. The pain jolts Mem out of her reverie. She turns to face Derasha who gracefully holds a black handkerchief to her mouth and begins, decorously, to sob.
    Sofie’s eyes look at Mem and say
Oh, no
.
    Then there are mutters, moans, whimpers, wails. Achy, wet sounds kneaded from throats. Animal sounds. The real mourners are silent. Mem pulls her arm out of Derasha’s grip but it is too late now, the pangs are gone, the tears receding. She squints her eyes tight, hoping she can squeezethe tears back out of them like juice from a lemon. She digs her thumbnail into her fingers. She has suddenly forgotten almost all of her Lessons and everything she has been told except
If you can’t do it I will have to leave you behind
.
    Just then a huge sound erupts through the weeping chorus, the sound of someone choking, or falling. The sound of things breaking. It takes a second for Mem to realize what it is, and then she knows.
    This is the sound of her mother.
    Oh lord!
she chokes.
Oh Jesus why?
    This isn’t fake crying. It is real, something is wrong. Someone is hurting her mother. The sobs are enormous, not even sobs but shapes of pain, magnificent, lush, bursting red bubbles. Mem wants to turn around to look but knows she can’t. She watches, instead, as teardrops drip from the end of Derasha’s elegant nose. The sounds behind the girls are coming to a crescendo, howls and sobs and quivering noises, but none as strong as Mem’s mother’s. Mem understands that eventually it is going to come to an end, if she doesn’t start crying soon her mother will have to leave her. She shuts her eyes so tight she sees sparks flash against the red curtain of her eyelids.
Come on, come on!
She bites her lip so hard she tastes blood but that’s all there is, just blood, no tears. No tears at all. Even her mouth is a waterless rubber. And suddenly it is too late.
    The sounds around Mem are receding, dropping their moist notes, sliding away into sniffling noises.
    There is some slight hyperventilation.
    A throat