Burning for You (Blackwater) Read Free Page A

money” applies to us.  My memories of the house are
twisted up in my brain into something that the house no longer is.  I remember
it being warm, with dark hardwood floors and large leather sofas.  I remember a
place where Heidi and I would climb on my dad and he would tickle us and give
us bear hugs.  Persian rugs covered the floors everywhere, heaped upon each
other in no logical fashion or pattern, but it made the décor all the more
unique and cozy.  Our live in housekeeper, Isabel, took care of Heidi and me as
children and well into our teenage years.  She was always baking something from
scratch, from fresh bread made in a Dutch oven, to cakes, brownies and
cookies.  It’s a wonder I’m not four hundred pounds, but thankfully my height
and frame prevent me from gaining weight too visibly.
    Since Dad left almost fifteen years
ago things have changed.  The dark hardwood floors have been bleached to
“California Blonde”.  The masculine leather furniture is now white microfiber and
looks like it shouldn’t be used.  The Persian rugs are gone, the bleached
hardwood bare and gleaming, refinished in the places where the rugs wore down
the wood.  The entire freezer is packed full of Lean Cuisines and the fridge
and garage have at least a month’s supply of Diet Coke, since my mother no
longer needs Isabel to cook for a family of four and my mother never learned
how to do it herself.  Everything has been painted over in white.  Family
pictures with my dad have been removed and replaced with forced family photos
of my mother and Heidi and me, all taken from when I was fifteen to seventeen. 
In them, Heidi and my mother’s smiles are forced and look almost plastic and
painful.  I don’t smile at all.  I’m a horrible liar.
    I am here unannounced and my mother
is sipping a glass of white wine across the counter from me in the kitchen. 
Her unlined face says it all.  “Why are you back?”  Besides the occasional phone
call home on my part for holidays and birthdays, contact with my mother has
been practically nonexistent for over ten years.  She looks the same as the
last time I saw her, with platinum hair pulled back in a waved upsweep that any
1950’s housewife would have envied.  She never changes.  She even wears an
apron over her beige silk dress as her Lean Cuisine spins in the microwave. 
Her eyes are the same ice blue as Heidi’s, and I tower over my mother and
sister by a half a foot.  All of my height and looks are purely my father’s
side of the family.  My mother refers to our looks as “Black Dutch”, which is
her politically incorrect way of saying we’re dark.  My dad and I always tanned
easily, have dark brown hair and the same coffee-with-cream-brown eyes.  Heidi
and my mother are Barbie doll blonde, except the Barbie height and boobs are
all mine.
    The microwave beeps and my mother
pulls out a container with butternut squash ravioli and broccoli that smells
like burned plastic.  She carefully peels off the plastic that covers the
steaming processed food and obtains a plastic fork from a drawer.  She has
perfected the art of housekeeping by making everything in the kitchen
disposable.  “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” she asks me. 
    “I’m fine,” I tell her.  “I ate not
too long ago on the road.”
    “Hopefully not fast food,” she says,
as though her Lean Cuisine is so much better.  “Do you know the other day I was
watching the ten o’clock news and they were talking about how a woman found a
beak inside of her chicken sandwich?  Can you imagine?”
    “I stay away from fast food,” I
tell her.  “Remember it makes me sick?”
    “Well it’s not obvious to me,” she
says, stabbing into some ravioli with her plastic fork.  She eats standing up. 
“It looks as though you’ve let yourself go a bit.  You’re so tall, it’s amazing
I can see any weight gain at all on you.”
    I glare at her.  “Mother, I’m
currently at a