Poppa always knew how to press my “rational” button. How many times have I told you? Now, stop being silly and go introduce yourself. “What if she doesn’t believe I’m her daughter?” “Do you think she’ll be happy to see me?” I asked Poppa. I gazed at the dark length of the front door, consumed with what was on the other side of it. My hands knotted over my stomach, over the swarm of butterflies warring within. I sat for a long time, catching my breath. The screen door wasn’t locked-didn’t even have a lock-so I let myself into the dark space and sat in the little garden chair to the left of the front door. I ignored him and crept through the unfriendly gate and up the porch steps. Her mailbox was strictly utilitarian, and the fence that circled her property was chin high and unfriendly.Īh. A lone tree decorated her lawn, a sweet gum, bare and ugly-nothing like her neighbors’ gracefully spreading shade trees. None of the other houses nestled chummily near hers even her garage was unattached. My mother’s house huddled in the middle of a great expanse of lawn. “Then I’ll make her change,” I said, passing a mailbox shaped like a chicken-1817.Ī few short feet later, I was better than close-I was there: 1821. I never imagined she would live in such a place. Rosebushes and novelty mailboxes don’t explain her attitude. No? His grim tone unnerved me as it always did when he spoke of my mother. Where are the slaughterhouses? The oil oozing from every pore of the land? Where’s the brimstone? But here on Lamartine, the trees had been tamed, corralled behind ornamental fences and yoked with tire swings.ĭisturbingly pretty. Portero sat in a part of East Texas right on the tip of the Piney Woods wild tangles of ancient pine and oak twisted throughout the town. I had to fish my penlight from my pack to see the numbers streetlights were scarce, and the sky bulged with low, sooty clouds instead of helpful moonlight. “1821,” I told him, noting mailboxes of castles and pirate ships and the street numbers painted on them. “I have to creep up on her,” I whispered, unwilling to disturb the extreme quiet of midnight, “otherwise my heart might explode.” Why didn’t you have the truck driver let you off right in front of her house? Poppa’s voice echoed peevishly in my head, as if he were the one having to navigate alone in the dark.
For the first seven years of my life, we hadn’t even lived on the same continent, and now she waited only a few houses away. I felt odd too, standing in the town where my mother lived. The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street.
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