Читать книгу Undressing The Moon - T. Greenwood - Страница 8

She was always at the edge of leaving.

Cattails stand guard along the banks of the Pond. I am six years old, and I cannot swim. The cattails keep me safe. The air is so thick with summer it’s hard to swallow; it’s even hard to breathe tonight. I lift my hair off my neck, twist it into a knot, and pray for a breeze. But the air is still, and I am alone, waiting for my mother to come back. I can hear the sucking sound of her bare feet in the mud as she circles the water’s edge, but I can barely see her in the waning light of the moon. Besides, she is moving too quickly to hold on to for very long.

I try not to think of Daddy maybe waking. Maybe standing in his gray slippers on the back porch, peering out into the starless night, wondering where she has gone. It makes me sad, the way he stands with his hands in his pockets, staring after her, whenever she leaves. His face turns the color of gravel even if she is only going to the grocery store. He might not see the note she left, perched between two bananas in the fruit bowl, saying that we were only going to look for the moon. He might think that this is the last time. That this time it’s for good.

There is supposed to be a lunar eclipse tonight, and my mother explains it the way she explains shadows and thunder—without science or words too big for me to repeat or understand. It will just disappear, she says. Slowly. Like pulling a dark dress over its pale face.

I look up at the sky and watch as this happens: I’m struggling to hold on to the vague outline that is my mother as she wades deeper into the water. Panic is thicker than heat. I look for her, thinking of Daddy’s pockets, as she and the sliver of moon both disappear. I know she will come out again, wet and slippery and shivering. Like last time, like every other time, but there is always this terrible moment when I am unsure, when everything bad is possible.

And even after she finds me waiting for her and we start walking quietly back to the house, I am still afraid. Because strangely, on this still night, what scares me almost as much as my mother’s ability to disappear is the absence of light. And I wonder, without my mother, who would undress the moon.