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Back The Salt in Our Blood Save as PDF
Chapters (41)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. I.
  4. II.
  5. III.
  6. IV.
  7. V.
  8. VI.
  9. VII.
  10. VIII.
  11. IX.
  12. X.
  13. XI.
  14. XII.
  15. XIII.
  16. XIV.
  17. XV.
  18. XVI.
  19. XVII.
  20. XVIII.
  21. XIX.
  22. XX.
  23. XXI.
  24. XXII.
  25. XXIII.
  26. XXIV.
  27. XXV.
  28. XXVI.
  29. XXVII.
  30. XXVIII.
  31. XXIX.
  32. XXX.
  33. XXXI.
  34. XXXII.
  35. XXXIII.
  36. XXXIV.
  37. XXXV.
  38. EPILOGUE
  39. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  40. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  41. About the Author

It’s hard to take her seriously when she’s in full steampunk garb. I tell myself it is the costume that keeps her words from settling somewhere deep inside me, but long after the door closes behind her, I know that the costume is not the problem. It’s me. I have torn out, stomped down, and more or less destroyed all the fertile ground in me where a relationship with her could grow. I don’t know how to repair that. And I’m still not sure I want to.

I glance down at the page where I was sketching. Normally, I focus on realism, on drawing and shading something so well that you start to forget it’s not real. Serious art. More technical skill than creativity. But even this was too much for Moony. Don’t be ridiculous, she would say. The time I told her I wanted to go to art school instead of college. The time I asked for Prismacolors for my fifteenth birthday. The time she caught me watching YouTube videos on how to put together a portfolio after lights out.

But now, quite without thinking, I’ve drawn the wall of dark trees from my dream. There is a break in them where the light streams through. That’s where I’ve put him, the boy. I don’t have a face for him yet, just his color—the yellow waistcoat.

This isn’t realism at all. Or is it?

My tears fall like large raindrops, blurring all the lines.

V.

I’M BORED OUT OF MY MIND. I CAN ONLY SKETCH TREES for so long before I start to feel cross-eyed. There’s a small television, but I can’t imagine settling into a TV coma right now. Not after Moony. The image of her lying there, vacant, replays itself over and over in my mind. I sketch the flowers from her curtains and the open door, but I can’t commit more of the scene to paper to get it out of my head. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it keeps her with me.

I move around the apartment aimlessly, opening drawers and cabinets, shuffling through things. This is the detritus of my mother’s life. These things—this can opener, this collection of lighters, this unopened box of playing cards—are what she left me for, what she left me to gather. They hardly seem worth it, but then again, I’m biased.