Burning Esther Cabot

“I never thought I’d be a father,” your father admits to you. “But your Aunt Eileen convinced me. She said parental instincts would kick in. You know what happened instead?” “What?” you say, your tone curious, but not genuine. “Nothing.” He waits before continuing. “Your mother wanted to be a mother.” These are the last words he ever says to you or the last words you remember. You walk down the hallway and put your ear to the door of your mom’s “at home office.” She’s defined the room as an office but you know she’s just putting up a front for the benefit of your feelings. In reality, the room holds nothing but books and catalogs that she wastes her days reading. You blame your father—who left you at age eight—and the man in the white coat for her pain. After hearing silence, you sneakily walk over the creaky floorboards to your kitchen, but trip over your oversized hand-me-down clothes from the Salvation Army.

You drag your now twisted ankle over a grimy wooden floor to the fridge door, a refuge for you to place all your weight and pain. You open the door and see a half-empty bottle of water and a dusty piece of broccoli. You stop yourself from stuffing it down your throat and close the door. Over the noises your stomach is making, you leave the kitchen and try to do your homework, but after an hour has passed, you reach a question you don’t know the answer to. You decide against asking your mom because she’s in the kitchen “cooking” dinner. “What do you think the answer is, Bailey?” you ask the peacock in your room. You hear a response that can only be heard in your head and you laugh. Bailey is your “out-of-school friend.” The girls your age—age ten—at school don’t talk to you because they say you smell funny. At first, they make this claim based solely on your ripped, stained clothing, but as time goes on, you let their perception become reality. You stop showering because you believe their whispers. You lose height from their words like a candle loses height from a single breath; you’re at a point where you feel you could be extinguished. You ache for approval from your mother, who only talks to you at mealtimes or to give you an origami peacock. The man in the white coat says hobbies are good for her. You wish your dad would come home and put an end to the layers of eviction notices that blanket your front porch. You want to know why he left because you want your flame back. “Wake up already! Dad’s been gone for eight years,” you yell at your mom. “We have to take care of ourselves and I can’t handle the expenses alone. You can’t miss your shift.” You feel hatred for your mother— whose approval you no longer care for—burn inside you and a hatred for the run-down studio apartment you’ve been forced to live in. As you drag your mom to the grocery store on Sixth Street, you pass by a man in a white coat, a doctor. You slip your hand inside his coat and grab the green paper you so desire. After watching your mom enter the store, you spot an old lady crossing the street and run to give the stranger one of your “baby hands,” as your dad’s sister, Aunt Eileen, used to call them. “Thank you, Miss,” she says. “Of course,” you whisper to yourself as you walk away with her wallet in your now rough feeling hands. You feel a fire rise inside of you and know that this will be a good day. “Two hundred,” you tell your mother upon returning home, expecting her to bow at your feet. She responds by giving you a look of desperation, and at that moment, as you hear the creak of her rocking chair, you know she’s not the same mother who wanted a child. She’s a mother who needs one. You’re talented at what you do and you know that she would be nothing without you. As you wait for her gratitude, you wonder what it would be like if you left her. You walk into your room and smile to think how much she would miss you then.

You feel tall, like you could do anything. With your newly found confidence, you throw your shoebox of forgotten paper birds into the ancient-looking trash can under your desk. You light a match and let it fall, watching the flames rise and subside. You stare at the smoke in your room as it leaves through the window and wish it back.