Read Online Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro - Free Book Online

bedroom closet.
    Much of what he chose to draw was strange. Creatures that were half-fish, half-men. Devil faces with distorted tongues and foreheads. Arms floating in the sea. Fish with sharp, vicious teeth. Men with scars all over their bodies. Hearts, bleeding or struck by lightning. But sometimes what he drew was beautiful. A rainbow trout jumping out of calm waters. A fish swimming inside another fish. Or this marlin decorated with a hundred shimmering scales. But Jamie didn’t always like his drawings. He’d get mad and crumple them up or turn something nice into a screaming man with needles sticking out of his body.
    I was jealous of how well Jamie could draw. I could only manage to draw flowers and stick people. Eden couldn’t have cared less about Jamie’s drawings. He was more interested in building model rockets and dissecting old circuit boards and CB radios. I remember my dad telling Jamie he was going to flunk out of school if he didn’t shape up and stop goofing off with his doodling. But Jamie was so good with a pen that he could change his grades from Fs to Bs on his report card (at least until the parent-teacher conferences came up and my dad discovered the truth).
    Regardless of what my father believed, Jamie had a gift. Once I asked him if he ever wanted to go to art school. He shrugged and said, “I don’t want to go to any kind of stupid school. I just like to draw.”
    As bizarre as some of his drawings were, something pulled me toward them and made me want to touch them. I kept a collection of Jamie’s drawings hidden in my room. I’d find them crumpled up in the wastebasket and would smooth them flat and save them. I’d study them sometimes when I was alone because I was convinced there was a secret about Jamie hidden in his drawings. Between the dark ink lines and the scales of fish, there were stories he was trying to tell.
    I’m worried about my brother. Beneath all his tattoos, I see the lost little boy he became so early in his life. I see the self-doubt he faces every day and the demons he wrestles endlessly.
    Jamie is like me. Our early memories are as vivid and detailed as the lines on our palms. We both know how to don a beaming smile and say everything is okay, when we really mean “Everything is shit.”
    I called him before I flew here to Olympia. He said there was no way he could leave his family or afford a plane ticket from Hawaii, where he lives now painting houses. But clearly he also couldn’t handle seeing her so sick. As a kid, Jamie used to say that when Mom got old and gray, he was going to be the one to take care of her. I think he really wanted that. But he’s having a hard time taking care of himself right now. Halfway through our phone conversation, I heard an odd raspy noise that sounded like the deep inhalation someone makes when smoking marijuana.
    â€œAre you smoking a joint or something?” I asked him.
    Then I realized he’s not smoking, he’s sobbing.
    I felt foolish for asking such an insensitive question. I know exactly what he’s feeling as he attempts to hold it all in. All the grief and guilt over what is happening, and our utter lack of control over it. “I’m so sorry, Jamie.”
    â€œWhy does she have to die?” he asked. The simplicity and childlike quality of his question stunned me.
    â€œI don’t know, Jamie. But it’s all going to be okay,” I lied.
    Sitting here looking at my brother’s drawing for my mom, I begin to cry. Not for Mom, but for Jamie’s loss. He is the artist and the fisherman. He is my brother who could fall apart any day, my brother who always believed that he was the reason our mother left. There is no word, no bandage big enough for the size of his wound.
    â€¢ • •
    A photograph falls out of the second folder I’ve pulled from my mom’s filing cabinet. I’ve seen this picture before. It’s my mom