The Door Girl, Part 3

Months before her disappearance, mother had met a new man. I hated him with every little part of me. Probably because of the way he looked at her, but more because of the way she looked at him. It made me want to throw up having to watch them ogle each other from the cigarette smoke-filled backseat of the car. It was actually inappropriate to look at a man like that in front of your daughter. I think if a policeman had seen it, she would have been arrested, or at least have to pick up trash on the side of the road wearing a bright orange vest.

Upon returning home from school one day during this time filled up with shooting hearts and rainbows, I found the door unlocked and nobody inside. I kept thinking that she would show up any minute, but she didn’t. So I pulled down a can of tomato soup from the cabinet, opened it, heated it in a saucepan and ate it for dinner. I put the pan in the sink, put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, said my prayers and curled up in the bed that we shared.

But she was not there for me to lay my hand on and feel the rise and fall of her shoulder to be sure she was still breathing. This was something I did each night after my father died, terrified that she too would leave me without warning. And so I laid there, listening to my own breath, making sure that I was still breathing. Wondering if I would, in fact, continue to inhale and exhale without my mother lying next to me.

When I awoke in the morning alone, I realized that I had continued to exist throughout the night without the one I thought I needed to survive. I would go on living without the one whose scent made me feel safe. My heart continued to beat without feeling her hands on my back. I, in fact, didn’t need anyone else to survive. Just me, breathing in and breathing out. That was the time in which those wild tendrils of self-protection had grown green shoots out of the fertile dirt of my heart. All they needed was some more watering and they would bloom like wisteria up a picket fence.