The Mailbox
by Phyllis Reilly
My mother spends her days stitched to a chair and stares out the kitchen window looking for my father, who has been on a drunk for two weeks. She is worried he will come home — and even though he lost the front door key, will figure out a way to break down the door and steal what little money is left. Every few minutes, my mother opens her pocketbook to count the coins in her change purse, as though the act of counting and recounting will somehow increase the amount. At night, she tucks the change purse inside my pillowcase to be on the safe side. Just in case he decides to climb the fire escape and come through the living room window.
We live on the top floor and he often would come from the roof down the fire escape. So, she hammers a piece of wood over the window and tells me to go to sleep. I lie in bed, covers over my head, but I don't sleep. I can hear my mother as she goes to the front door. Even though she has locked the door, she turns the knob and locks it again.
We are on "Home Relief", a strange term since I haven't seen any relief in our house. The "Home Relief" shows itself in a brown envelope with a black eagle stamp. It usually arrives on the first of the month, but today is the fifth and still there is no check. So, my mother sits and waits, counts the coins and looks out the kitchen window for my father. In the morning, she tells me that I don't have to go to school. "Maybe the check will come."
I don't care. I have missed three days already, and today I am suppose to turn in the money I collected for the starving children in Africa. When I shake the mite box, it is silent. The coins are gone. I don't know if my father took them, or they are part of the change that gets counted and recounted by my mother. So when my mother tells me to stay home, I'm relieved and like my mother, I look out the window and wait for the mailman.
I run down the four flights of stairs and check the mailbox. I do this most of the morning, up and down the marble stairs. A rhythm of patterns played out in magical thinking. If I skip the second step on each landing everything will be fine. If I jump from the top step and touch the wall with my left hand I will be safe.
On the tenth trip, I notice that in Mrs. Ryan's box there is a white envelope. I put the key into the lock it doesn't work. The box falls open and at the bottom are burnt wooden matches that my father, in his drunken state, has used to see if the check has arrived. The mailbox is empty. It reeks of Sulfur and there is no check. I climb up the four flights without missing a step. Slow and deliberately, I touch each one with my feet, count twelve on the first landing, then seven and eight. When I reach the top floor, I turn around four times and stare at the 5D on our door. I use the secret ring--three long and two short to let my mother know it's me. She unlocks the door, and when I enter the apartment, I tell her "the lock was broken, there were matches in the mailbox, it reeks of Sulphur and there was no check."
She says nothing, just goes back in the kitchen, stares out the window and counts and recounts the coins in her change purse.
Phyllis Reilly lives along the Croton River with her husband and her cat Zoey. She recently discovered flash fiction and, as a poet, loves the compression of language and the creative challenge of writing very short fiction. She recently won the Distinguished writer award for 2006 from La Belle Lettre and has published poetry in the Croton Review and The Connecticut River Review.