Photo by Unsplash+
by Luanne Castle
When it happened, I had only seen my mom get off our floral couch three times—first when she went to the hospital to have my sister, second when my sister’s diaper leaked all over Mom’s stomach, and third when she chased said sister with my back scratcher poised. In some ways our lives were all about Mom’s love for the couch and my sister’s unruly behavior.
The day-of you could have blown me over with a gopher’s breath when I came home from school smarting from the jeers and sarcastic whistles over my new scoliosis back brace, and Mom, glimpsing my tears, trapped me with her slipper as I walked by. I stepped over her foot and kept going, mumbling how mean the kids were, but Mom scrambled up from her couch as if she were a ballerina and not a bolster pillow.
She bearhugged me and my exoskeleton, squeezing us, and as she pulled me with her toward the kitchen, her nightgown stuck to my Velcro, making me laugh though tears still blurred my view of her bedhead. On the wall next to the table, Mom nimbly sketched four stick figures with backpacks and threw the first blob of pink acrylic paint, inviting me to color the hell out of those little shitheads.
Luanne Castle’s stories have appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Bending Genres, Bull, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Disappointed Housewife, South 85, Roi Fainéant, River Teeth, The Dribble Drabble Review, Flash Boulevard, and many other journals and anthologies.
