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Nicole Provencher-Natale is a current UAM MFA students. This piece was originally published in San Pedro Review, November 2014.
Mama Said
Mama said on the day I was born Aunt Lucy was in the church basement making stock for the Sunday chicken dinner with Father Thomas. Mama was at home with Uncle Lenny who was burning trash in the grass lot behind our house. That was back in the days before the city took over our side of town and made the law about paying to have trash picked up.
Mama says she was inside at the kitchen table and she stood up real fast to stomp a spider when she felt like she peed on herself a little. But it didn’t stop and mama called Uncle Lenny from the kitchen and he didn’t hear her. She said her belly hurt like waves. She says she called Uncle Lenny so much her throat went dry like when you stand next to a fire and breathe in the smoke too many times.
So she lay down like a dog on the rooster mat in front of the kitchen sink until Uncle Lenny came in and saw her. She told me he held her knees open while he talked on the phone and they let him know what to do. Mama said that the fire kept burning outside even when Uncle Lenny wasn’t watching.
But that’s not my favorite part of the story – this is. Before, when Mama looked out the sliding door she could see Uncle Lenny throwing pieces of trash into the fire. She said he picked his feet up funny, sometimes waved his hands in the air. When he circled sometimes she could see him through the other side of the fire, waving in and out like a ghost.
It’s my job to burn the trash now. The city says were we’re breaking the law, but Uncle Lenny and I do it anyway. Sometimes when I circle the fire I think about the day I was born. I think about what we might look like to someone inside the house curled on the floor with her head rested on a kitchen mat. I move behind the fire and cross paths with Uncle Lenny to make our bodies wave. I imagine Mama watching me.
Nicole Provencher-Natale is a current UAM MFA students. This piece was originally published in San Pedro Review, November 2014.
Mama Said
Mama said on the day I was born Aunt Lucy was in the church basement making stock for the Sunday chicken dinner with Father Thomas. Mama was at home with Uncle Lenny who was burning trash in the grass lot behind our house. That was back in the days before the city took over our side of town and made the law about paying to have trash picked up.
Mama says she was inside at the kitchen table and she stood up real fast to stomp a spider when she felt like she peed on herself a little. But it didn’t stop and mama called Uncle Lenny from the kitchen and he didn’t hear her. She said her belly hurt like waves. She says she called Uncle Lenny so much her throat went dry like when you stand next to a fire and breathe in the smoke too many times.
So she lay down like a dog on the rooster mat in front of the kitchen sink until Uncle Lenny came in and saw her. She told me he held her knees open while he talked on the phone and they let him know what to do. Mama said that the fire kept burning outside even when Uncle Lenny wasn’t watching.
But that’s not my favorite part of the story – this is. Before, when Mama looked out the sliding door she could see Uncle Lenny throwing pieces of trash into the fire. She said he picked his feet up funny, sometimes waved his hands in the air. When he circled sometimes she could see him through the other side of the fire, waving in and out like a ghost.
It’s my job to burn the trash now. The city says were we’re breaking the law, but Uncle Lenny and I do it anyway. Sometimes when I circle the fire I think about the day I was born. I think about what we might look like to someone inside the house curled on the floor with her head rested on a kitchen mat. I move behind the fire and cross paths with Uncle Lenny to make our bodies wave. I imagine Mama watching me.