Mom was a candy-striper in high school. Volunteered summers cheering up sick patients. And she was an artist. She'd make drawings. Really good ones. Fruit, and trees. Flowers. Grass and sky, but I never saw her do any of people. She didn't do it much.

When I left, I went through all her stuff. All of it was put away in the attic. And I found the only one I've ever seen, my mother's sketch of someone. It was me. Chubby little girl. I don't remember.

~~~~~~~~~

She’d withered on the vine. There was no other way to describe it. Yes, the cancer had been in remission, of course it had been. Without insurance it was hard to tell for sure. If there was something that could’ve been done- but according to Dr. Aimsley, who had delivered Tara himself, an old family friend of the mother’s side of the family, and according to some of the tests at the Free Clinic, the blood seemed okay, then all right, the marrow of her mother’s bones were proof-positive that yes, she was fine.

The ash-gray pallor of skin, and her eyes...so tired- that spoke uncomplainingly of some unspoken pain told Tara otherwise. And her father had told Donny in no uncertain terms to lay off on being the living couch-spud for a while, and stop ordering his mother around. Why, he himself had given up the rightful pleasures between a man and a wife, and wouldn’t lay nary a hand on her, when it became apparently clear that she just wan’t feelin’ too well these days. Aww, c’mon sweetheart, you’ll get over it in a couple. You’ll see.

In an Hispanic Culture lecture the professor had talked about El Dia de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. And to Tara it hadn’t seemed morbid at all. A celebration of the dead, by the living, for the dead. And for the living, too, probably. Mostly. They bring flowers, and mementos, and food. It’s kind of like a picnic in the park. All day long, and all night long. Excepting it’s in the cemetery. Jamie Greer, who sat to the left of Tara, had exclaimed quite loudly about how...well, weird that was. They’d broken up in groups of three, and the third person in the group was some guy whose first and last name Tara couldn’t pronounce. Romanian. "Tz" and "xch" stuck in, she’s sure. But he wore glasses, had a funny way of tilting his head at an angle, and every time he went to class he always wore the same thing: Birkenstocks, dark-blue jeans, and a blue-gray turtleneck. Tara noticed that he had gotten new frames.

"I like your frames," she had said.

He’d nodded his head in assent. They looked at pictures, flowers, and candles, and pretty, colored paper flags, decorations and the like, and all kinds of food. There were little calaveras, tiny little cookies shaped just so, and covered in frosting, or dye to look like so many tiny, little skulls.

"Eww," Jamie had said. Birkenstock had just ignored her.

"Overkill of the morbid persuasion."

Tara thought about getting booties for Miss Kitty.

~~~~~~~~~

Earlier that day, they'd played in the attic. Donny was asleep and Da wasn't around, Momma's voice, warm arms, lips kissing the top of little girl's head says something about the fields. Momma sings about morning. Streams of dusty sunlight made its way to the floor, and it was all cobwebby. Among the dust and bits of battered, broken furniture, was the scent of something old and precious. Baby Tara looked with wonder at the big, wooden chest. Lots of treasures. Her mother's voice singing.

All day they played in the grass. Then it was dark, and they went home, and by the barn was a bonfire. Hot and crackly, tongues of fire hungry for yards of old material that would never make a dress, and a quilt, and such a lovely pile of books. The scent of something old and precious gone to ash. Little girl presses her face into her mother's skirt, her mother whose knuckles have gone white in the firelight, clutching at fabric, and something else. Flame refracted, such a pretty pretty jewel.

"What's that?"

"Why-"

"Burning the trash. I'm burning the trash. Lemme see. Give it here."

He turns the scrap of paper over in his hand.

"It's just a little poem."

Bonfire flames still hungry barely notice. Blessings burning on a pyre. Little girl watching as flames ate away the castle of her great-grandmother's books, a whirling dervish of ashy snow, leaves flapping to a crispy dark black of char, memories devoured by fire.

~~~~~~~~~

Now Tara looked up at the blue, blue sky. It was funny. Her mother’s favorite theme had always been the tragedy. Maybe because she knew she couldn’t escape it. All the books and her favorite movies, and all these plays where women...died. But her favorite play had been this play whose name Tara couldn’t quite remember. She knew she used to know, but at this precise moment she couldn’t for the life of her remember...but there had been this girl. And no she hadn’t died. She had lived, and she was a cripple, and she couldn’t run away.

But she hadn’t thrown herself under a train, or drank arsenic, or drowned herself in the sea. No, she had stayed, and stuck around, and God help her, she had lived.

Once, when Tara was young and small, and her mother young and beautiful, she had looked at her daugher with something vaguely disturbing in her eyes, something Tara couldn’t discern, like a thorn, or the pinprick of a thorn, (a small thorn?) where you feel it slightly, but still show a kind of quick surprise when you look - and there it is. Little bud, a ball of ruby, birthed by marrow on the tip of skin. (Scarlet warm, not ruby-cold. Tomato soup.)

(but an ill-kind of feeling acquainted the heat, such was this strangeness when met within the familiar)

Her mother, with foreign look, had said "And the wicked shall be crushed underfoot."
Her face was pain. (the eyes) And then she’d shrugged off the strange mood, and hugged Baby Tara, so everything was warm (in that safe, good way) and sweet and safe; all was right. It was just the two of them, playing in a field. Laughing, playing outside. She smelled like sunlight, and apples and love.

Now Tara reached out her hand to gently tug on her lover’s own. Slight ache of Tender Wistful, like warm arms drawing a small child into a safe lap. And their fingers entwined, and the sky did not pour, and Tara -very briefly- bit her lip, and made sure that her lover did not tremble.

Joyce had liked blue. So had Tara’s mother.

Blue Roses, blue roses- something about blue roses...