Rebecca Anderson | What Mama Told Me
I thought I remembered watching a mouse
break a snake’s back on top of the woodpile,
in the old house with the orange shag carpet
and screened porch. Then I remembered
how I didn’t remember, how Mama told me
that’s what happened, and I clung to her truth like a parable
without a moral. I wanted to make meaning
out of being three, sitting in the front seat of her yellow Chevette,
seatbelt pinning her in place as I slithered over ripped vinyl,
listening to her talk at me about how she didn’t think about Daddy
when she listened to love songs. I know I saw a mouse
with its neck snapped in the trap behind the houndstooth chair,
its blood splattered on the orange shag,
except maybe I didn’t. Mama told me
the blood part, and I drank it up, retold it
because it was a shorter story than the one about the ribbon
choking my stomach when Mama said she never got to live
because of Daddy and me. I wrote songs
about snakes and mouse blood,
lullabied myself to calm until the Halloween
Mama went out, leaving Daddy and me alone.
We carved a pumpkin, sat in the dark,
watched it flame from the inside. (Safe. The fire
can’t get out.) Still, I imagined the snakes leaving the woodpile
but watched for them anyway.
I told myself I was scared of snakes
until I walked the desert at forty-three, heard a rattle,
and felt calm like Halloween.
I told myself I was never afraid at all,
just pinned to Mama like a metal bar
on a mouse’s neck, learning how stillness
can be mistaken for surrender.
break a snake’s back on top of the woodpile,
in the old house with the orange shag carpet
and screened porch. Then I remembered
how I didn’t remember, how Mama told me
that’s what happened, and I clung to her truth like a parable
without a moral. I wanted to make meaning
out of being three, sitting in the front seat of her yellow Chevette,
seatbelt pinning her in place as I slithered over ripped vinyl,
listening to her talk at me about how she didn’t think about Daddy
when she listened to love songs. I know I saw a mouse
with its neck snapped in the trap behind the houndstooth chair,
its blood splattered on the orange shag,
except maybe I didn’t. Mama told me
the blood part, and I drank it up, retold it
because it was a shorter story than the one about the ribbon
choking my stomach when Mama said she never got to live
because of Daddy and me. I wrote songs
about snakes and mouse blood,
lullabied myself to calm until the Halloween
Mama went out, leaving Daddy and me alone.
We carved a pumpkin, sat in the dark,
watched it flame from the inside. (Safe. The fire
can’t get out.) Still, I imagined the snakes leaving the woodpile
but watched for them anyway.
I told myself I was scared of snakes
until I walked the desert at forty-three, heard a rattle,
and felt calm like Halloween.
I told myself I was never afraid at all,
just pinned to Mama like a metal bar
on a mouse’s neck, learning how stillness
can be mistaken for surrender.
Rebecca Anderson is a writer, visual artist, and mental health clinician who works from her small farm in central Maine. She is an MFA candidate at Mississippi University for Women's low-residency creative writing program. Rebecca was nominated for Best American Short Stories 2019 and has had recent work featured in Barnstorm Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Anodyne Magazine, Waxing & Waning, and Passengers Journal.
Nuala McEvoy is an English/Irish artist and writer currently living between Germany and Spain. Nuala paints places she has visited using her memory and her imagination. Nuala has had two exhibitions in Münster, Germany, and is currently preparing an exhibition in London.
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nualamcevoy | Instagram | Linktree
x @mcevoy_nuala