by JA Ellis
Memories
Paper thin skin stretched over bulging blue veins. Twisted tendons, and knotted fingers. That’s how she remembered her mother’s hands.
If she thought really hard – really wracked her brain – maybe she could come up with an image of younger hands: smooth white skin, firm; hardly showing the tendons and bones underneath. The veins were still there, but only as a delicate blue filigree under the skin. These hands may have stroked her hair or wiped stray crumbs away from her lips. Those hands may have smacked the backs of her own hands when she misbehaved.
But the images were faint and fleeting, any associated emotions were vague, and there was no feeling of nostalgia attached to them. What she always thought of was the old hands as they grasped and scratched at the sheet pulled over the thin, heaving chest. She remembered the way they were raised to ward off the blows, and when she closed her eyes she could clearly see them weakly pulling on the pillow pressed over the old woman’s face.
This is what she remembered, and the memory she savored: the twitching and final relaxation of those old hands.