A Simple Distance Read Free

screamed. Screeching at the top of her lungs as Linda drove away. Threw herself against the window, slapping palm to pane.
    What could I say? I said nothing.
    Jean?
    Yes, Cynthia?
    What are we doing to my daughter?

CHAPTER 3
    My mother called me again the morning she was supposed to leave Baobique, but I didn’t pick up. I cursed the three-hour time difference—her ring waking me before my coffeemaker could ease me into morning the way I preferred. Just before the opening, closing, slamming doors of my next-door neighbor readying and leaving, Procter & Gamble usually anticipated my most basic of needs, had something ready for me like a silent, supportive partner. Programmable, twenty-five dollars secondhand off the Internet: unconditional love. The touch of the spoon against the inside of my mug, the reassuring clink as I stirred in too much sugar, too much cream.
    I ignored her ring, lay in bed on the verge of getting up, pulling on shorts, starting the day with a jog and some music on my Walkman, but her second call caught me off guard—changed my plans.
    I picked up to her raspy Hello.
    She spoke in that low voice of hers, the one that says, I’m weak, take care of me , the one that makes me want to scream, the one she used all those years she lay in bed without actually being sick, with her Reader’s Digest condensed classics and jug, always a jug, of cheap white wine, stretching the telephone cord long beyond its intended curl. I know because all those years I sat at the top of the front stairs just outside her door, and watched.
    She whispered, I’ve packed my bags and had Fatima put them in the Jeep. I was waiting for your call about England. Were you able to change the tickets?
    I hated her for needing me; hated her double for choosing me second, over Auntie Lil in London; hated myself most for feeling this way.
    Never having called the airline, I continued to lie. No, Mom. The airline wouldn’t let me change them. You can’t visit Aunt Lillian. I’m sorry. She’ll have to fend for herself this time.
    Hollow, like a ghost giving in, she agreed. Okay, Jean. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll call Lillian when I reach you.
    * * *
    My mom told me once how kids used to tease her, call her wide hips the spreading baobab tree, pretend to take their shelter there. Yet those hips never sheltered me, and when it came my turn to do the blocking, to break the wind, call the airline, to soften the violence of its impact before it reached her small body; when it came my turn, I stood as thin as possible beside her, closed my eyes, held my breath, hoped it would just blow through.
    That morning I lay in bed longer than planned, remembered a time when I was five and sick to my stomach. I had called for my mom to come help, not even help really, but just to come and maybe hold my hand. I remembered she called back from her bedroom and she said: Oh, just do it yourself, child.
    That morning I did not rise. Stared across the room at unanswered letters.
    * * *
    I picked her up at the gate. American Airlines, flight 2330. Baobique to Puerto Rico; Puerto Rico to Houston; Houston to San Francisco. Three legs to my mother’s journey away from her home, to mine, to rest after a year of caring for her dying brother.
    As always, she had too many bags: an overnight case; two large paper shopping bags, handles tied together with twine; her purse, overstuffed. The steward helped her off the plane only to hurry her along.
    Her eyes were red like the blood in those oranges whose name she used to write on the grocery lists I could never completely purchase. She was shorter, her neck more rounded, than the last time I’d seen her. It took me aback.
    Oh my God! What’s the matter with your eyes?
    Here, take my bags from that man and give him a dollar.
    We hugged, leaned in with just our shoulders, embraced with just our forearms; pressed our cheeks together, left as much space as possible in between.
    I took her luggage from the steward.