Untitled #1

By Edie Kouri

There's that smell It's her It's all over her bedroom, her clothes Everything that surrounds her Carries that smell It's not a sweet smell like perfume It's not an unpleasant smell like rotten food It's simply her smell It's a comfortable smell She's almost 42 She looks young -- in her 30's maybe Hardly a wrinkle, scarcely a gray hair She likes to get different styles of haircuts when the old ones grow out She looks the same no matter how she cuts her hair She never looks like a 42 year old mother of 5 Not even when she first wakes up I hope that is hereditary She carried 4 boys, 1 girl and miscarried a girl My sister, Cassandra, was the third child -- stillborn It must have hurt to lose a baby It must have hurt more to remember that loss as She bore each one of my three little brothers She's only 5'2" or 5'3" and looks pregnant, permanently Fattened by bringing us into the world Sometimes, when she stands with her hands on her hips I can see her beautiful figure of the past, hiding She's an in-home-health-care nurse I think that's where most of her smell originates It's that clean, medicinal but almost musty aroma Of sterile, ill people It was especially rank when she worked for an eighty year old invalid She has this annoying cackle that fills the house Especially when she's on the phone It's not a laugh it's a cackle She reads romance novels -- lots of them She and her friends trade them like baseball cards They are everywhere in my house She has more Jude Devereax in our house than any book store could ever sell She bought me a bedroom set when I was eight, maybe nine I think it was a birthday/Christmas gift I chose it over gymnastics She put me in karate with my older brother Many years later she put my younger brothers in karate with us Even though "we couldn't afford it" It's funny how my mother could make money appear if we needed it Or just desperately wanted it I still wonder where it disappeared from She has always driven hand-me-down cars That break down, on average, every six months She went through four of those She bought a Mazda van From a used car lot just last week The week before that She couldn't send me money to catch up on my bills She doesn't clean house too often That's what we kids are for She took care of her brothers and sister while she was growing up She always had to clean house then She bites down on the end of her cigarette By the time she's done smoking it, it looks like she tried to eat it The van will smell like her shortly Her coffee cups will conceal the floorboard by the end of her work week She worries about me in college, on my own All the evil things I can get into, like sex, drugs, alcohol Her father was a drunk-- Now he's a reformed, remarried, highly Christian man Her mother is a manic depressive, paranoid schizophrenic-- Now she hides it well with her forty different kinds of medications Her mother's mental illness runs in the family I worry about it I worry about her Sometimes I don't love her I lost a lot of respect for her somehow while I was growing up Sometimes I love her, she's really an amazing person She does whatever she can to help everyone Yet I still don't respect her Sometimes I respect her, she's dedicated to her career and family She makes unbelievable sacrifices But I don't love her Sometimes I love her and respect her And today, I miss her.