Lesson

“Free” the hand scrawled sign read hanging around my neck.

My mother went off the deep end; she tied me up to the mailbox post at the end of the lane and put the sign around my neck. I had been missing for three days before the details pieced themselves together for the police.

It was oppressive, the kind of day where you bathe and never get dry. The heat reached a boiling point and I had been fighting with my baby sister for hours. We were getting on each others nerves like flies biting a horse’s butt. My mother was dressed in a slip, her hair piled high on her head, and sweat trailed down her neck while she stirred something hot on the stove.

“Girls, STOP FIGHTING!” She yelled again.

Of course we didn’t stop.

“It’s Millie’s fault!” I cried when my mother paddled me and dragged me by the upper left arm out the door and down the lane.

My mother’s lip was a stiff line and she starred straight ahead while she dragged me. She had a length of Papa’s rope and a torn piece of cardboard in her hand.

“Please, Momma?” I said. My hair was soaked and my face was beet red. I knew she had lost it. I knew I was in hot water. I tried to wiggle free and I almost got away since my skin was slick with sweat.

“Stop your whining, I have been listening to it for hours and I am sick of it!” she said.

After she tied me up, she looked at me with hot coal eyes, her cheeks were flushed and her slip clung to her sticky body, “There Claire, I hope you learned your lesson,” she said, and turned her back on me and walked back up the lane.

I stood there watching my mother’s back, and I thought about her as gnats swarmed my head and mosquitoes buzzed and landed on my face, arms and my legs. I couldn’t swat them away because the rope dug into my sunburned arms that stung as the hazy sun penetrated down on me through the muggy air. Sweat beaded on my upper lip and the salty taste teased my parched tongue. I thought about how upset my mother was last summer when I had fallen from a tree I climbed and hit my head when I fell. She had just returned from the store and she rushed to my side and cradled my head in her lap as she stroked my hair. Hours had passed before she remembered her groceries on the counter, the frozen peas and the pint of ice cream were completely thawed. I thought about how pretty her voice was as she sang hymns in church and how nice she looked in her Sunday best as she smiled down at me in the pew. I thought about how I always forgot my shoes in the middle of the porch or my jacket in the middle of the living room. My mother always picked them up and put them where they belonged without saying a word.

I wondered what time it was and how long my mother was going to leave me before she came to her senses and rescued me from my misery.

Tears welled in my eyes. “I know you love me Momma.” I said to the empty lane. “I am sorry I wouldn’t stop fighting with Millie. Where are you Momma?”

I spotted an old white van driving toward me on the gravel road. The dust billowed behind it and I braced myself because I knew it would blast my face and get into my mouth and nose as the van drove by, but the van began to slow. The van stopped and a man stepped out.

My mother was not a bad mother; she just went off of the deep end. After my body was found, the sign was still around my neck and the rope had been used to bind my hands and feet; the authorities came and arrested my mother for child endangerment for her role in my murder . When she was placed in the squad car, she sat starring at the mailbox, tears streaked down her cheeks. There mother, I hope you learned your lesson.