The Interview

I don’t know how to approach her. Seeing her now is even more terrifying than when I was little.

I’m not little anymore, though, and so I’m forced to visit. 

She smells strange, and where her hair was, there are now only a few straggly strands.

I attend a junior college about twenty minutes from my father’s house.

I live with him now, after everything.

One of my classes requires that I interview an elder about something that happened in their life. Something important. I don’t know any old people. I don’t have grandparents anymore. But I’m told that I can interview my mother.

My mother who is dying.

I put the small tape recorder between us on the side table.

Click.

She tells me the same stories, as familiar to me as lullabies. My two brothers trying to maim each other as little kids. My father showing her how he wants his sock drawer organized. The furry Italian kid she still wished she’d run off with and never married my father.

I’ve always wondered what that would’ve made me, if she’d done that. Would I still exist, but as a black-haired and perhaps hairier version of myself, or would the idea of me have evaporated entirely?

I guess it doesn’t matter.

We don’t touch upon her illness, though the conversation is starting to take a decidedly darker tone. In it, it’s clear that she understands she will die. But she’s been two years off her meds, so she’s not entirely lucid when she says…

I’m not worried about you, Jennifer. Your brothers, maybe, but not you.

I wonder why this is, but I don’t ask her. Instead, I reach out for the recorder.

Click