Mammother

by Zachary Schomburg

  “Thank you, thank you. Please, sit down. Have a seat.” Mothers was relishing his moment. “As many of you may know, my father passed last week. He was taken too soon.” Mothers lowered his head and paused for dramatic effect, hoping his silence wouldn’t be broken with shouts of “God’s Finger” from the congregation. But everyone else followed suit and lowered their own heads.

  Then Mothers raised his head with a burst, and continued. “We are trying to raise enough money to build a bigger cross for the top of Lady Blood. It was my father’s dying wish. As you know, there can be no cross built without enough money with which to build it upon. On your way out, as my father lay there in front of you, please be so kind as to put any coins you can spare into my father’s death hole. Our goal is to fill it all the way up to his nipples.”

  And fill it all the way up they did.

  12.

  On the last morning Mano would ever deliver a cold beer to his mother, he was in bed when his bed began to float. He didn’t notice right away because he was thinking too many thoughts. He was thinking about love, and then money, cutting hair, and love again. His thoughts would pile up so high inside of his head that a new thought became how he could climb them, like stairs, up and back down. A lamp shade floated into his bed. The black poodle was paddling.

  “Ma’am?”

  Sisi Medium died in the bathtub before the sun came up, sometime between turning the faucet on and turning it back off. Mano got up from his bed, and walked through the water into the kitchen with the lamp shade in his hand. Splish, splish. He set the lamp shade on the counter there. He rescued the poodle onto his shoulder. “Mom!” he called with urgency, thinking that if he just yelled loud enough she’d be sure to yell something back.

  He splished across the kitchen into the living room. A floating lamp without its shade, and a floating chair. The green couch was floating around like a toy boat. The photograph of his mother holding him as a newborn baby now hung on the wall centered above nothing. He thought to move it to safety, but he didn’t. The water was high enough to make walking difficult, but not quite high enough for him to lower his body in and swim. He pushed the couch back to its place on the wall.

  Mano leaned his forehead against the closed bathroom door. “Do you need another cigarette? Are you out? If you’re out, I can go get more.” Mano heard the faucet still splashing on the other side of the door. “Just tell me you’re ok.” He knew his life would change if he opened the door, and he didn’t want his life to change.

  “You need to turn the water off.” Mano waited a few seconds for a response. “Ok?”

  Mano knocked. Nothing. Then he took a breath and turned the knob. The knob was white and felt like the moon in his hands. He pushed the door against the weight of the water that held it closed.

  Sisi Medium’s body was floating just below the tub’s lip. Her head was leaning back, long black hair matted across the red porcelain. One of her arms floated like a log stuck in the brush in a flood. The bathwater nearest her body was more pinkish.

  “Mom.” This time when Mano said it, it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a word. It felt like more of a punch to his throat than a word.

  Instead of wading over to the tub to turn off the water, Mano turned his head and made a tiny sound that he didn’t recognize. A new kind of mammal was trying to yell inside him. He pushed his face into the bathroom’s red wallpaper, just like he did earlier with the black square. He pushed his face all the way inside it, inside the field of the red ranunculus. Mano was gigantic in the field, crushing all the flowers, pushing over the trees. His face was the whole sky in that field.

  Sisi’s faucet was trying to say something, and Mano left the field to re-enter the bathroom begrudgingly to hear it. The curtains in the bathroom window were drawn open, and the cold white light cast shadows of the empty trees onto the walls and the back of Mano’s head. Everything was incredibly red. How did everything get so red? Was his mother’s bathroom this red before? Was it ever red at all? Maybe it was yellow. For some reason, now he remembered her bathroom being yellow. Or blue. Light blue. But the towels, the tiles, all red. The red ranunculus. He felt the sudden need to count every red flower on the wallpaper, and he gave in to it. This counting became his new duty. It would have to be done. He counted the ranunculus closest to the base of the doorway, and moved upward. When he got to halfway up the wall, he had already counted to 14, which he then remembered was his new age on that very day. He hadn’t remembered that it was his birthday. A son’s birthday, he thought, was a mother’s job. After doing some quick math, he imagined there must be 500 red flowers in the bathroom. It seemed unimaginable to Mano that his mother could have ever bathed all those years in the center of 500 red flowers. Was it all that red that crushed her, or was it all that red that held her together as she slowly dissolved?

  He counted his way around the room, toward the tub, making certain that he didn’t miss any of the flowers, until he counted his way to his mother. 109. His eyes hurt, and they rested on her clean black hair. He couldn’t look directly at her eyes, but he could see that they were open, and that they were looking back at him. He couldn’t look at her naked body, but he could stare at her hair. From the corner of his eye, he could see the hole in her chest. He could tell it went all the way through to the bottom of the tub. His eyes still on her hair, he swept it to the side across her forehead how she liked it. He could see, just then, how lonely she must have been. “I’m sorry I wasn’t in here more.” He touched her hair.

  Mano kneeled at the tub in front of his mother, half of his body dipped in the flood from the tub. He decided not to turn off the faucet just yet. Turning it off would bring silence, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. The faucet was like a hush, and it felt good. He just listened for her to breathe, and there was a second when he thought he did hear her breathe, but he listened closer and it was just him breathing.

  “What’s it feel like, Mom? Does it feel good?” He picked up a cigarette and thought to light one for her, but the matches were floating. His mother’s cloud of cigarette smoke and steam still hung like a giant paper lantern from the ceiling. Except now it was no longer a white cloud, but a black cloud. “Did it feel ok? Did you feel ready?”

  He left her in the bathtub, softening. It was private and quiet, safe from the gawkers and the panic-mongers.

  The black poodle was stranded on a chair in the living room—a little green upholstered island. The lamp out in the hallway flickered, and sparked. Then it was off. Mano didn’t remember turning it on. He unplugged the refrigerator in the bathroom before the water level rose to the socket. He opened the refrigerator door and let the water rush inside. A few cold cans of Pie Time floated around inside the refrigerator. He fished one out and cracked it open for her, set it on the windowsill. He lit a Pie Time cigarette, and placed it carefully between her lips so it would stick for a few seconds. He thought he saw it puff smoke, but it didn’t. When it fell into the water, it sizzled out.

  He opened up all the windows, something he had heard you were supposed to do when someone died, even though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He stood on the tub and screamed. He screamed as loudly, and for as long as he could. It made him feel like an animal.

  Outside of the house it was a Sunday. He could hear his scream bounce off of the church. Almost everyone was inside of the church. He could see the church breathing. It looked alive. To Mano, the prayers of the people inside of it sounded like clapping.

  13.

  Pepe was standing at the door of Sisi Medium’s bathroom. His church trousers and the black poodle he was holding were soaked.

  Mano glanced at him from the toilet, then turned back to his mother’s dead face. He let go of Sisi’s hand. His hand was shaking in the cold water of the tub. His body was nearly frozen. Her hand dropped back down into the flood.

  “Everyone in church could hear your scream! Inez dropped...”

  “I screamed? I don’t remember screaming.”

/>   “Yeah, you sounded like...” Pepe stopped talking when he saw a woman floating above the bathtub behind Mano. “Who’s that?”

  “Pepe, this is my mom, Sisi.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Sisi.” Pepe pushed the door open a little further. A wave pushed toward Mano’s slouched body.

  “She’s dead.”

  Pepe turned off the faucet. The room felt remarkably silent, like everyone in it was dead. Pepe stood next to the toilet where Mano sat. They both looked at Sisi’s dead body for a while. “What happened?”

  “She got a hole in her chest,” Mano explained. “It was that finger thing, I guess. I don’t know. She’s been dead all day. She’s not coming back, Pepe.”

  Pepe put his strong warm hand on the back of Mano’s neck.

  Mano picked up his mother’s arm and moved it around in the air a little to show Pepe. “I don’t want anyone to see her like this. Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “They’ll talk about her hole in the newspaper. Just like they did for The Postman and The Barber. They’ll say she’s been bad even though they don’t know the first thing about her.”

  “And Father Mothers, now, too,” added Pepe.

  “They’ll want to just talk about her hole. Nothing else,” said Mano. “They won’t know anything else to say. It’s not what she’d want. I just can’t.”

  “It’s ok, I’ll help.”

  “Will you help me take her...”

  “I’ll do anything.” Pepe tried to study the hole in Sisi’s chest without Mano seeing him do it.

  “Let’s wait until it gets dark.”

  “Ok. But she looks too soft, like wet paper.”

  “She’s been in the bathtub for a long time.”

  Pepe and Mano agreed to move her body from her bathtub to The Cure at night, to bury her in the currents of the river when everyone else in town would be asleep. Sending the dead down The Cure tied to a raft made of driftwood was a common ritual for the people of Pie Time. Typically, Father Mothers would say a few words, and then the grievers would put a few flowers on the body. One griever would untie the rope, and they’d all watch the body float away to the sea. Most people wanted their grief on display, held like a baby by the people around them. They wanted their pain to be reflected. But Mano couldn’t stomach the idea of any priest saying things about his mother. No priest knew his mother. Death, Mano thought, was no time for introductions.

  Mano pulled the plug of his mother’s bathtub and let the water drain. Sisi’s body knew its own gravity for the first time in the bottom of its empty bathtub.

  “She needs a moment to herself,” Mano explained. “Death is very new for her.”

  In the living room, where the water had already slowly drained through the cracks of the floor, Pepe helped Mano out of his wet clothes. Pepe kneeled in front of him and took off his heavy wet shoes one at a time. His soggy left sock. His soggy right sock.

  “You need to take off your pants. You’re freezing.”

  Mano unbuckled his belt slowly. He was shivering. Pepe helped him slide his cold wet trousers down his trembling legs. Once past the knees, Pepe rolled them down, like a potato sack. The marks The Foreman had left on the back of Mano’s legs were a different color than Pepe expected.

  “Do they still hurt?” Pepe touched the darkest and deepest mark.

  “No, I forget they’re there.”

  Pepe stood up and unbuckled his own wet trousers. He pushed them down past his thighs, and Mano helped him roll them down to his ankles. Pepe’s marks were much deeper, fresher, redder.

  “What’s this?” Mano touched the marks as if they would speak to him.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s just a few times. Just little things. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  Mano could see that Pepe’s marks led all the way up his back, too. “Let me see all the way.”

  Pepe loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt. He was standing now only in his underwear, wet trousers balled up around his shoes. Mano was tracing the lines on his back with his fingers.

  The Butcher knocked on the bedroom window. “Pepe?! Are you in there?”

  Both boys quickly slid their wet trousers back up to their waists, and buckled their belts.

  “Pepe?”

  “Yes, sir!” Pepe yelled while buttoning his shirt. Mano held his breath.

  The Butcher knocked on the kitchen window. “Pepe? What’s the matter with you?”

  Both boys looked at each other with wide-eyed agreement. Pepe carefully opened the front door which entered into the living room, and stuck his head out into the world. “We’re in here.”

  “I see.” The Butcher removed his hat and stepped inside. “What’s going on in here? Why did you run away from church so quickly?”

  Pepe looked at Mano for help. He didn’t know what he could say, and what he couldn’t.

  “I had a little problem with the water, that’s all, sir,” Mano explained.

  The Butcher examined the room. Everything was wet. The walls were wet. The rug was wet. The poodle shook itself violently on the chair, sprinkling water on The Butcher’s hand. The lamp lay on its side without its shade. The couch was a few feet from the wall.

  “I see. Was it you who screamed?”

  “Yes,” Pepe answered for Mano. “I ran to help.” Pepe was as tall as his father, but seemed half the size in this moment.

  The Butcher looked back at Mano. “Didn’t you used to be a girl?”

  “I got a haircut, sir. I’m a man now. Well, I’ve always been one. Well, not a man, but a boy, but...”

  “Mano’s The Barber now.” Pepe saved Mano’s stumbling.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” The Butcher’s face changed to one of recognition. “It’s a damn shame about The Barber.”

  “A real shame, yes, sir.”

  “Poor Inez. Poor poor Baby Zuzu.”

  “It’s a scary world,” added Mano. “We can never know who’ll be next.” Mano just remembered his mother was dead.

  “We just have to keep going to church. Right, Pepe?” The Butcher gripped the back of Pepe’s neck and shook it semi-lovingly, as Pepe’s face did everything it could to disguise his fright. “I can’t afford...” The Butcher stopped what he was saying to redirect his attention back to Mano. “You go to church, don’t you, Mano?”

  “Of course, of course. I can’t afford not to.”

  “That’s right. You can’t.” The Butcher seemed satisfied for a moment. “I don’t see you there.”

  “I sit in the back. It was probably the long hair. Anyway, how’s business?”

  “People will always need to eat their meat.” The Butcher was pleased with his answer. “You?”

  “Haircuts all day long. One after the other. Hair only knows to grow. Haircuts, haircuts, haircuts.”

  The Butcher looked at the photograph on the wall. “Do you have a mother?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh? Is she dead?”

  Mano’s heart became heavy. His mother was dead, and she would be dead forever. “She lives with the birds.”

  “Oh! What are birds?”

  “I mean, she lives with nuns.”

  “She sounds lovely.”

  “I wouldn’t know, because she lives with nuns.”

  “Is she a nun?”

  “No, she just does their dishes.” Mano knew his mother would want to live with nuns, but also that she would never want to be one.

  Mano could see in the way The Butcher was standing, facing the bathroom door, that he now had many more questions. He was going to ask more about his mother, about the kitchen at the convent perhaps, or maybe if he had a father, and if so, he’d want to know what his father did for a living. Unfortunately, what Mano knew the least about was the very basic origins of his own existence, and about the kitchens in convents. Mano quickly changed the subject. “Do you have a mother, sir?”

  The Butcher was so
surprised by the question that it appeared he had to think about it. He looked at Pepe while he answered it. “Yes, I suppose I do. But she’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. When did she die?”

  “Same as everyone else, I suppose. At the end.” The Butcher took one last look around the room, and then put on his hat. “Pepe.” Pepe knew to do the same. As they walked out together, The Butcher turned around in the doorway.

  “Your clock is broken.” He pointed to Sisi’s bathroom clock as it rested in a new place in the center of the living room floor. “It’s not midnight anymore.”

  “Oh, you’re right. Look at that.” Mano wondered if his mother died at midnight last night. “Mitzi fixes clocks.” The Butcher reached out his hand. “May I?”

  Mano put the clock in The Butcher’s hand.

  As they said their goodbyes, Pepe closed the door behind them. His eyebrows moved in such a way that they made a kind of promise.

  Newly alone in the house for the first time in his life, Mano stood in the living room and looked at the bathroom door. Before today, he could always be sure where his mother was, and now he wasn’t so sure. The thing that made her face move, and her mouth speak, had finally dissolved completely into the air. He was all alone in the world. He felt all alone inside his own hollow body. If he felt like anything, he felt like a ball. A ball filled with cold air. So he collapsed into the tiniest ball that he could become, to look inside his own body, which was now just a tiny empty ball. But he couldn’t find anything inside of there. He couldn’t find his mother there. He couldn’t find himself there. All he could find was an even smaller core, the core that had once made the ball around it. And the core looked like a tiny black seed.

  He tucked his face between his knees, looked at the seed, and sobbed.

  14.

  The black cloud still hung above Sisi’s dead body when Pepe returned to Mano’s house later that night. It wasn’t made of steam from the hot water, or smoke from her cigarettes, as Mano had assumed, but of pure sadness. Even after Mano and Pepe wrapped what was left of Sisi’s body in her old bed sheets, the black cloud still hung there. They gripped the sheets to lift her up and out of the tub, and the black cloud followed. Mano held a knot of bed sheet at her head, while Pepe held a knot of bed sheet at her feet. Mano wanted to bring her back through time, through all the rooms of the house they shared, so she could see her own home one last time before being delivered down The Cure to float out to the sea.