| Chimes He saw a figure sitting in the Lazyboy in the dark when he entered the room. She was smoking and he could tell by the way she held the cigarette close to her mouth between drags that it was his mother. �Mom?� he said. She said nothing. �Mom?� She continued to smoke. Ernest walked out of the room and into the kitchen to get a glass of water. He sat at the kitchen table in the dim of the back porch light coming through the window and could feel his mother�s presence from the next room. He imagined the cool water as it went down his throat coating his insides, calming the nervousness. He picked up a pack of smokes on the table and packed them like he had seen his mother do, opened them and put one to his lips. He pulled on it, then pretended to exhale. It was quiet. He could make out the squeaking of the lazyboy his mother sat in. The chimes on the back porch rang gently in the breeze. Ernest thought about his mother standing on an upside down trashcan, when they were moving into the place, hanging the chimes from a hook on the porch. He thought about how happy she looked in her dress with yellow flowers and how she made him hold the dress down while she was hanging the chimes so it wouldn�t fly up in the wind, both of them laughing when Ernest lifted it a bit and his mom screamed at him and they both laughed some more. If only he could get that moment back. If only his mother could always be that fun and relaxed and effortless. The chimes were the first thing his mother brought to their new house. She told him that they would never come down as long as they lived in the house and that when ever he heard them that that was Jesus� way of saying he loves him. Ernest got up from the kitchen table, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips and went out onto the back porch. He left the door open and the breeze coming through rustled some papers on the table. The cement porch was cold on his bare feet but he didn�t mind. It was an unusual sensation to him as he stood still under the yellow glow of the light, listening to the chimes tap. He thought about what his mother had said to him and why Jesus� couldn�t come over tonight and cheer his mother up. He tried to feel his love but this was not enough. Jesus� love for him meant nothing as long as his mother was feeling bad. �Ernest...what are you doing with that cigarette?� his mother said as she heavily walked into the kitchen. Ernest pulled it out of his mouth. �I didn�t light it mom I promise.� �Come back in and shut the door.� �Okay.� His mom picked up the pack of cigarettes on the table on table and took one out. �Ernest you shouldn�t smoke.� She put the cigarette to her mouth. �Don�t smoke okay honey?� She lit her smoke and pulled, exhaling two long streams of smoke through her nostrils. Ernest leaned against the fridge watching his mom. She was wearing her night gown with a dingy maroon robe untied around her waist. Dark puffy skin surrounded her eyes and Ernest stared into them looking for a sign that his mom was returning to her normal self. There was no sign. His mother stood motionless in the middle of the kitchen staring out the window above the sink into the blackness of the night. The chimes rang gently. "Remember the chimes mom?" Ernest said after clearing his throat. His mom did not answer. "Mom? Remember the chimes?" "Son please go to bed and leave me be okay son just leave me be." She walked ou of the kitchen and back into the living room, cigarette pinched between her fingers. Ernest leaned against the fridge still, fingering a magnet that held up his school schedule from last year, staring into the heap of papers and junk on the kitchen table, confused. |
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