Nan's Story Read Free

shell that served as her ashtray. As she lit her cigarette, Nan caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Extinguishing the sputtering flame on the head of the match, she watched her reflection inhale.
    Her hair was a tangle of dark brown curls that if pulled straight would reach the middle of her back, but wound as they were just brushed her shoulders. They framed her heart-shaped face, and the reddish highlights (though not nearly the deep russet hue of CJ’s) brought out the green of her eyes. Holding the cigarette between her lips, she used her hands to scoop it all up into a ponytail, deftly winding the elastic around the thickness of it.
    “Nancy Elaine Bower, you put that cigarette out immediately!” Nan’s mother shouted from downstairs.
    She winked at herself in the mirror.
    “Oh yes mama, I’ll do that right now ,” she mused, cigarette bouncing as she spoke.
    Taking another long drag, she exhaled a series of lopsided smoke rings. She never could get the damn things right. Not like her brother Buddy. He tried to teach her a few times when they were younger, but Nan never mastered it. It didn’t stop her from trying though, just from succeeding. Now wasn’t that the story of her life.
    “Nan? Nancy? Did you hear me? So help me God, don’t make me come up these stairs!”
    Nan smiled ruefully. At one time her mother’s threat would have caused her to cease whatever censored activity she was doing immediately, but now she knows Elsie won’t actually come up to her room. It was the fight she really wanted, not the conquest. Besides, every day started this way. Not with the chaotic events in the yard, but with Nan’s mother establishing her rule of law. Sometimes it was about smoking, but other times, most other times, it had to with CJ and Nan’s ability to parent him. Or lack thereof if Elsie was to be believed.
    “You could always move,” Nan said out loud to her reflection. “Get a job, take CJ and just go.”
    The image in the mirror laughed in her face.
    “Really?” Nan replied to herself with more than a note of derision. “Just get a job. And what exactly are you going to do ?”
    Despite the question emerging from Nan’s own mouth, it sounded suspiciously like her mother’s voice. Maybe not the timbre exactly, but the patronizing tone for sure.
    The only job she’d ever held was cashiering down at JJ Newberry and that was a lifetime ago. Even if she could find something that would pay her enough to scrape by, did CJ deserve a life of just scraping by? After everything she’d done to him, Nan didn’t think she’d be able to live with herself if she uprooted her son from the only home he’d ever known and dragged him into a life of poverty and uncertainty. And to be honest, something she generally didn’t like being with herself, she wasn’t sure she could. Even after nearly three years gone by, she was still afraid. Afraid of leaving. Afraid of living.
    So there it was. If she wanted to have a life with CJ, she was stuck. Stuck here and stuck with her mother. Nan shook her head and sighed as she stubbed out her cigarette. Oh well, no sense wasting time wishing the sky wasn’t blue, her father would have said.
    On her way out of the room, Nan grabbed her red flannel robe from the foot of the bed. Elsie had bought several new ones over the years, pleading with Nan repeatedly to throw away the one she held in her hand. Sure, it was a bit threadbare in places, but there were no holes in it, and so whether this act of defiance had underlying motives, there was no good reason she could think of to get rid of it. This was a concept her mother would never understand.
    Walking down the hallway to the stairs, Nan barely glanced at the framed snapshots that lined the walls. She knew by heart the pictures of her and her brothers, and dozens of CJ, of course. There were a few of Elsie and Joe, and none of Nan’s father. Nan wasn’t sure if any of the latter still existed or not, but if they