Mitch says it’s time for mom to finally see a doctor on then account of she’s taken a shade of neon green and I shake my head; a doctor would just take her away and let a bunch of other doctors study her until she dissipates.
When I search “neon green gas mom” on the Internet, the first search result involves what foods give babies a stomach ache. I scroll down and see things about babies having gas after breastfeeding, babies having green poop. I close my laptop and walk out to the glass shed mom’s living in.
What’s wrong, I ask her. She wills herself into the mom shape she was before she lost it. She’s gotten most of the details down (the crow’s feet, the paunch, the squint she gives you when irritated) but still has moments where she loses concentration and you can see through parts of her. I don’t know, she says, before her left arm collapses. She scrunches her face, tries to will her left arm to come back; the part of her floating away refuses.
The next morning, we hear a wail come from the glass shed. Mitch and me both run out, our bathrobes barely tied closed. We see mom cradling something small, her index finger stroking its face. She shows it to us. This was supposed to be your sister, she says. A miracle has brought her back to me.
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author bio:
J. Bradley is the author of Greetings from America: Letters from the Trade War (Whiskey Tit Books, 2019). He lives at jbradleywrites.com.