Writer’s Block

by beverly williamson

I just can’t write about it.

Of course I want to write about the Polaroids of us upside down on the couch with our faces painted, mustaches, and eyes on our chins and bandanas on our heads so that in the picture we look like funny painted eggs. That was Mama’s idea. To be funny and upside down. And we were the only ones who would do it, but everybody laughed. I couldn’t believe she used her eyebrow pencil.

If I wrote about my big idea to take her to the zoo I’d have to lie and write: we walked and walked and looked and looked and enjoyed. Because I don’t want to write that she kept sitting down to smoke and then said she wanted to leave. She couldn’t walk and look and enjoy because she kept fumbling for a lighter and wheezing. Of course I was mad as hell.

I’d like to detail the times she did the Charleston on the hard wood floor and we watched like people watch a circus – delighted and a little nervous about the wildness. I’d like to explain how she could swim without getting her tall hair wet and how she gave her shoes to her older sister who married a man who wouldn’t work.

I started writing something in the hospital room, but I don’t know where I put it. I think it was about making tomato sandwiches or about how she saved me.

But I really can’t write about it.