She was there, her mother. In the scent of cigarettes and cinnamon breath mints, Windsong cologne and citrus-scented hand lotion. Gail held her there, this woman who loomed larger than life, not because of who she was, but who she was supposed to be. Gail held that sweater, its softness so ironic, and then she took it home.
On the last day in that apartment, Gail took the urn home too. For now. Until she could figure out what to do. She smothered the urn in the sweater, then locked it in a closet.
****
Gail returned to work and it was a walk past a department store window on her lunch hour that gave her her answer. A woman stood there, undressing a mannequin, and when Gail saw the plastic cream skin, she felt a jolt of recognition. A quick talk with the store manager, and Gail walked out with a mannequin’s leg tucked under her arm. A trip to the hardware store for a saw and a trip to an art store for some acrylics in pink and purple, cream and black, and just a touch of green. Gail was ready.
Gail got the urn out and set it on the kitchen table. Next to it, she placed the leg. She blinded her mother with the sweater while she took the saw to the lower leg, severing it from its thigh. But the urn remained uncovered, the sweater bunched around its base, for the next several weeks while Gail tried to teach herself to paint.
The pink and white mottling came first, a darker pink here, a soft cream there. Then the purple tributaries grew, from dribbles on the knee down either side of the leg, branching off in small and ineffective little rivers that dammed up and kept blood from going to the foot. Gail painted the rivers as broken, ending suddenly, then restarting again. Randomly, she placed darker purple splotches, laced with black, the way she imagined clots to look. Useless blood that had nowhere to go and no body to feed and rolled over onto itself into a gummy mass that hurt instead of helped.
The toes and sole took the longest, as Gail tried to recreate the exact color and artistry of gangrene. The black that wasn’t quite black, but green as well, that bit into the flesh on the underside of the foot and then crept upward. Gail worked until she got the swirls right, the feeling right, the understanding that this was somehow treacherous, yet beautiful at the same time.
It took a while to find the gravesite. A place that would be filled with dirt, but was still blanketed with sunlight flickering through leafy branches. When Gail found the place with the brightest grass, she knew she’d found a compromise with her mother. Dark and close underground, yes, but above, air and light and color. And she would wrap her mother in the burgundy velvet knapsack, and around that, the white sweater.
A talk with the cemetery director gave her the privacy she needed. Gail placed the urn into the grave, then tucked the sweater around it. Next to the urn, she placed the mannequin’s leg. Gail touched the urn, then stroked the leg, before stepping away.
“It’s the best I can do, Mom,” she said. “It’s not your leg, but it’s close. And it’s going to be dark, but it’s in a bright spot.”
Down in the ground, the urn looked small, the leg next to it, bright and colorful in its illness. Gail bent down, scooped up some dirt, and sprinkled it in. “And I miss you, Mom,” she said. “But I don’t. And I love you. But I don’t. I guess I don’t expect any of this to ever make any sense.”
And with that, Gail left her mother behind.
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