from six to ninety-six,
who lost their mothers
far, far too soon.Collector of Tears and Mommy Make The Feather Dance!
Is a story within a story.
Cyncy’s mother was flying to New Orleans to visit her own grandmother. They were actually supposed to have taken Mommy to the airport sooner, but Mommy had changed her flight to a later one so she could finish sewing the lovely wool suit she wanted to wear on the airplane. "Mommy, make the feather dance?", Cyncy had pleaded again. Her mother, with her cornflower blue eyes, and dark auburn hair, had laughed softly. Obligingly nodding her head, she made the partridge feather on her chic, wide-brimmed hat, dance lightly against the ceiling of the automobile for her little girl. Evelyn is as beautiful on the inside, as she is on the outside, said Mommy's friends. They had stood on the observation deck of the airport, Cyncy and her brother and her grandparents, all of them waving goodbye. "Look!" Her grandmother had cried, "There she is! She’s waving her handkerchief in the window!". Cyncy had dutifully waved, even though she couldn’t quite figure out which window, or for that matter, which airplane they were supposed to be waving goodbye towards. Cyncy knew how many days her mother was supposed to be gone because Mommy had told her. Mommy said that when she got back they would all go downtown shopping and then they would have lunch in Burdines Tea Room. Cyncy and her brother would probably order a grilled cheese sandwich, and afterwards they would each be allowed to have one of the tearoom’s beautiful ice-cream desserts. Six year old Cyncy would order Cinderella. That was a scoop of pink ice-cream with half of a little wax figure of Cinderella sitting on top. The pink ice cream would be decorated with whipped cream ruffles and round silver sprinkles. It looked for all the world like a real Cinderella doll wearing a beautiful pink ballgown. Just like the Cinderella in the story Mommy read to her at bedtime. Her 3 year old brother Prentice would order the clown. His dessert was a scoop of ice cream with gumdrop eyes and a licorice smile. A sugarcone hat, capped with a red gumdrop would be perched jauntily on top of the scoop. Thick waves of whipped cream, drenched in multi-color candy sprinkles would form the clown’s ruffled polkadot collar. Cyncy and her brother loved these outings. There had been a lot of people coming to the house since late yesterday afternoon. They'd started arriving just a few hours after Mommy left on her trip. Some of them brought food, which Cyncy thought was a nice thing for them to have done. She caught only bits and pieces of their conversation, because whenever she came close everybody would get very quiet. She didn’t understand exactly what was going on, all these people filling the house . The snatches of conversation she heard were just words, never full sentences. She heard ….storm… ..Gulf of Mexico…. down……searching….debris…..no survivors The days were finally up. She had been counting. When Daddy came to tuck her in bed that night she smiled happily. "Mommy’s coming back home tomorrow isn’t she?", she had asked. Her father looked dazed for a moment and then, as if filled with more hurt than he could bear, he briefly closed his eyes. He drew a deep breath, as if to steady himself, and then he had said, as gently as he could, "No, Cyncy. Mommy’s not coming back ever again". Cyncy was very quiet. Her father kissed her on top of her head and then turned to go. As he began to close her door she called after him "Daddy, leave it open just a little bit please. Just let me see the light." He nodded, and went back to sit with the people gathered in their living room. Cyncy had an unusual dream that night. By morning, however, it was no more than a vague memory. There had been a pretty lady in the dream, she remembered that much, and something about tears, but she couldn’t quite remember. During the first days, Cyncy had crawled into the back of her mother's closet, where she sat quietly for hours, holding the velvet hem of a claret colored gown to her cheek, inhaling the faint scent of Arpege that still lingered among her mother's things. Her grandmother promptly supervised the removal of everything but feelings. The people finally stopped coming, and after a while everybody stopped looking for her Mommy. Daddy’s friends told her that her Mommy was gone forever. Cyncy knew everybody was wrong though. They would see. It was going to be OK. Her Mommy had told her that she coming back. Once, afterwards, Tiny, the lady who had always come to help Mommy clean the house, had put Cyncy in for her bath. Kneeling next to the tub and washing Cyncy’s hair, she had suddenly begun to cry. "Po’ lil’ muthaless ‘chile", she had murmered, "Po’ ‘lil muthaless 'chile..….ain’t nobody never even found yo Mamma, baby". Cyncy had felt strangely disquieted. I do too have a mother, she thought. She’s just not back yet. When Mother’s Day came at school, each of the children were given a red rose to take home. The teacher gave Cyncy a red one but after a moment she came back and took it away from her, replacing it with a white.one. All the other children had looked at Cyncy strangely, and she was left with a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach that she didn’t like very much. White roses would leave her feeling vaguely uncomfortable for the rest of her life. The hardest part about Mommy being gone for such a long time was that there was nobody to hug Cyncy and her little brother. Daddy was always saying things like "I do NOT believe in a public display of affection" whenever she had tried to hug him, so she was beginning to feel pretty lonely. Little Prentice was lonely too. For some reason Cyncy’s grandparents and her Daddy had become upset with each other, so they never came to visit anymore, and the housekeeper Daddy hired didn’t seem to like children very much at all. When Easter rolled around, the housekeeper said she and her brother could color eggs all right, but they would have to use old coffee grounds to color them, because it was a waste of money to buy egg coloring. Cyncy and her brother remembered the rainbow of colored eggs Mommy had made with them the Easter before she went away. This year they colored all the eggs brown. One day Cyncy had walked past Prentices’ bedroom door and seen a tiny lump sitting quietly in the middle of his bed. He had pulled a sheet over his head to muffle any sound and his tiny shoulders shook with silent sobs. Cyncy had run to find her father, but by the time he came Prentice had come out from beneath the sheet and dried his eyes. Outside of an occasional hiccup, he never made a sound. Her father had looked stricken. Cyncy never cried. There was no need. Mommy would be coming back. She was just taking a very long time to be found. Once Daddy took them to see a movie about a family whose Mom was on an airplane that crashed in the ocean. In the movie they found the Mom safe and sound on a tropical island, and she came home and everybody lived happily ever after. Daddy had gotten out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and told the two of them to stay right there, because he had to go get a drink of water. They didn’t go to movies much after that. Daddy eventually remarried, but their new stepmother, almost as soon as she married Daddy, promptly decided she didn't like either of the children, so little Prentice had to be sent away to school. A big old wingback chair sat in Cyncy’s room. It had once belonged to her great grandmother. Cyncy found that if she sat sideways in the chair, nestled against the friendly cushions, a stuffed toy clasped in her arms, it almost felt like somebody was hugging her. And so every day, when she came home from school, she would quietly close the door, sit in the hugging chair and read a book. The books became her friends, the hugging chair became her family. "She never cries", she heard her stepmother mutter to herself once, right after grabbing Cyncy by her hair and throwing her against a wall during one of those terrifying explosions that Cyncy learned, only years later, had always been fueled by alcohol. "She never cries". Her Mommy never came back, of course. After a while, Cyncy grew up and had children of her own. Before she knew it, she even had grandchildren. But wherever she went, wherever she moved, for the rest of her life, Cyncy always took the hugging chair with her. One day, Cyncy looked in the mail and found that a friend, who lived a long ways away, had sent her a story to read. Cyncy loved stories, so she gathered her mail and sat down in the hugging chair to read this new tale. Across the room, a television documentary solemnly recounted the tale of a storybook princess, whose two young sons had been awakened one shining August morning, with the news that their beautiful and vibrant mother was never coming home again. For probably the hundredth time since that special had run, Cyncy sighed and shook her head. She wondered if anyone who trulyunderstood had been on hand to hug and comfort those boys, during the onset of that terrible hollow silence, which would now echo through their years. Cyncy picked up the remote control and lowered the volume on the television. Flicking on the reading lamp next to her, she slipped the story from it's envelope. The story turned out to be about a little girl, whose Mommy was never going to come home, ever again, and as she read, goosebumps began to rise on Cyncy’s arms. The tale described a pretty lady who had come to the child in the middle of the night. The lady had called herself The Tear Collector.
Cyncy sat lost in thought for a very long time after she finished reading the story.Then suddenly, she buried her face in her hands, and began to weep. "Allright", she whispered softly to The Tear Collector. "Take these to my Mommy.Tell her I miss her." |
Mommy Make The Feather Dance - by Cynthia Loomis Gurin - Copyright 1997
Dedicated to the memory of the passengers and crew of National Airlines Flight 470.
0 comments:
Post a Comment