mother scythe
Rachel Orta
Grace’s mother ghosted about with an aura of self-consciousness that oozed down like sap to her offshoots. They would inherit her barely-there gray eyes that screamed out to the sky, begging to borrow bits of its blue hue and brightness. At the very least they should have been green - green eyes would’ve matched her spirit, envious of all she was not. Now Grace’s eyes were hazel, the only one of five children whose eyes could not be mistaken for her mother’s. They saw in all shades and through all manipulative ways. Hazel eyes dark, angry like her father’s, brown soiled irises as deep as the grave she had been digging herself for 20 years, stains and specks of grass - torn up, still fresh bits of life thrown about the solemn scene. In addition, Grace’s mind contrasted her mother’s as boldly as a cricket’s chirping did a wasp’s sting. She, an insolent hollow voice against the background scene while her mother offered protection only to herself, barely a hint of hesitation before she were to sting.
And on a yellow spring afternoon as eggs hatched new life, a corpse’s stench rose from the foundation that upon this house was built. Grace’s teeth twinged with cold as she drank from the spite of these words. Her mother put tongue to teeth, cutting tension with cruel casualty stating, “When you were young, you were so angry and depressed that we never wanted to be around you and you were so difficult to talk to”. Shooting blame at Grace was a paintball pellet to the gums, painting her lips fiery red. During those years of shutting herself in her childhood bedroom, one wall painted deep purple because she read it was the chosen color for insomniacs, it was there Grace imagined herself as an island. A guillotine wavered above the bed frame each night as she lay awake longing for rest, counting sheep like they were the wicked things that kept her from sleeping. They baaa-ed at night and boo-ed her every day, echoing the sentiments of her mother, whose words of revelation came on as an airbag upon impact. She could see Grace as an island too. She kept life rafts for herself even though Grace was the one at risk of falling into the sea, abandoning her and the flock and thereby deeming them too unpleasant for rescue. Her mother could hear the slice of the guillotine but would never be roused to rescue, inciting Grace for putting her own head on the chopping station.
At 22, Grace was halfway around the world and in her hands held the heart of her mother. The question of how tight to squeeze plastered across the window’s screen. There are these games at the zoo in the monkey exhibit with a handle you squeeze to compare yourself to the imprisoned primates - a test of brute strength, a test of will. And in this moment even the orangutans taunted Grace to try out her grip, but instead she puffed on a joint to locate semblance of herself then whispered out into the night breeze, “I will not become my mother”. She was now a puff of smoke, clearing up the air between them her mother desperately needed to breathe. As Grace lofts herself towards the heavens in a smoky array, her hazel eyes dilate in the indigo sky; she is part of the night.
A mother is a dangerous thing. A scythe that’s grown legs and a head, with mind set on slicing wheat long before harvest. She takes aim at stalks heartier than she, all to ease pains of dashed expectation and jealousy. And Grace’s mother indeed cut her to pieces, ‘til she was thinner than blades of grass. Only now sharp shards of glass lay in her place, refracting rainbow light where Grace once had stood, all for sake of self and having the final word.
Rachel Orta is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she lives with her spouse and dog, Mumford. She has a BA in Theology and views the world through a lens of religiosity and spirituality while leaving space to appreciate the traditions and views of fellow humans.