FICTION
My Reality
by Cathie Byers Hamilton
My ma says that a watched pot never boils, so it's surprising the way she hovers over her computer, clicking the "get mail" button forty times a day. She's waiting for a letter from Sam, maybe an e-card or even a forward. He gets fifteen minutes on the computer three times a week, sometimes more, if he can negotiate it. My ma would like Sam to trade his cigarettes for extra online time. Sam says he prefers to send letters in the regular mail, but my ma has never gotten them. She doesn't call him a liar; she doesn't say anything. When she visits the prison every other Saturday, she and the other wives smash their palms against the glass divider, fingers spread, leaving sweaty, swirly hieroglyphics for the guards or the janitors or someone else to Windex clean.
As if a hand against glass is as good as a kiss.
Sam was my ma's last chance. Last chance at romance, she used to laugh as she got dressed for their dates at The Station. Nothing fancy, but she'd match her bra to her blouse and rub circles of blush over her cheeks. She told me that she was lucky to have me to help her get ready. I'd curl her hair while she sat on the toilet seat lid. She wasn't nervous, but I'd see her cigarette shake. She'd blow smoke rings and say, "Voulez vous coucher avec moi?" She didn't know what it meant, but remembered it from a song and thought it sounded romantic, just like something Michael Bolton would sing. I told her that nobody listened to Michael Bolton anymore, and she thanked me for keeping her updated.
My ma stopped going to work at the same time Sam went to jail. She stopped opening the curtains and curling her hair and smoothing the afghans on her recliner chair and the couch. She stopped crocheting the afghans, too. She never said why she quit her job, but I knew. It's not hard to figure out that it's tough to get yourself up and moving in the morning when there's no one to come home to at night, no one to care whether or not your boss thought that your rendition of Moons Over My Hammy was better than the night cook's. No one except your teenage daughter, and how good is that?
I call her my ma because she's mine. Maybe I never tell her that, but know it to be true, just as much as I know how I hate the way the other girls call their parents "Mom" and "Daddy" without the "my," just "Mom" and "Daddy," like they're on par with "Jesus" or "Liberace." Knowing that she's "my" ma makes me feel safe, the way I do when I'm under one of her afghans during a bad storm. Or maybe it's how I keep her wrapped up; if I forget the "my," she might become somebody else's.
For a long time, I thought about breaking her computer. Walking past the TV tray where it sits, tripping and spilling Coke over the keyboard or into the grooves in the back. I thought about taking the broom handle and smashing the monitor, but I figured that she'd take the grocery money to buy a new one.
Most weeknights, I sit on the couch with the tired cushions and the buttons that hang by long threads and watch "Fear Factor" and "The Bachelor." I've made up my own show, where my ma would win a million dollars if she could convince the Smiths to forgive Sam for shooting their son over a fifty dollar scratch ticket. Sam would get out of jail, too, and maybe the Smiths would finally feel the peace that comes with forgiving someone who wrecks a family and shrugs apology away. Forgiving the unforgivable, who don't give a damn about being forgiven. If the Smiths forgave Sam, my ma would stop having to write him letters to convince him to be sorry.
My ma types while I watch TV, but sometimes, she stops to crack her knuckles and take a sip of soda. She'll stare at the shows, but she never starts laughing or moves from her recliner to the couch. She doesn't sit beside me or play with my hair. She doesn't ask me if I've got a best friend or a nasty English teacher or a date for the prom. After her fingers are rested, she starts typing again, a new letter to the Smiths, a note to Sam reminding him to "stay out of trouble." And when she's done, after she clicks "send," she hits that "get mail" button again. And again. Even though I'm here, full of news, like a letter already waiting in our living room, if she were just willing to dig her thumb into the envelope and peek inside.
And if she did that, I'd go into my room, rummage between the mattress and the box springs, and pull out all of the letters and cards that Sam has been sending from jail, the ones that are usually waiting in the mailbox when I check it after school.
I might even tell her about the flowers he sent, too.
Cathie Byers Hamilton's work has appeared in flashquake, The Summerset Review, VerbSap, The Dogwood Journal, and Michael Wilson's book, Flash Writing. Links to her published work are available at users.adelphia.net/~hammie. She lives in Maryland with her husband and sons.