Inherited Spirit

words Sarah Phillips-Burger image OlPhotoV/Shutterstock

Ruth was always running late. The ongoing joke in her family was that you could always depend on three

Rthings: death, taxes, and Ruth being the last one to arrive anywhere. And now, as she looked down at the clock on the dashboard, she saw she was an hour-and-a-half late to meet her mother. She had promised she would help clean out her grandmother’s house that had sat empty since Nana went into the nursing home. She pressed on the clutch and pushed the gear shift into fourth as she sped along the highway, her car revving in earnest to make up some lost time.

She pulled into the driveway and parked between two pine trees in her grandmother’s yard, her tires crushing pinecones and coming to rest on the accumulated needles. Ruth opened the car door and felt the rush of the July heat almost push her back into her seat. Like a cold Coke taken out of a refrigerator in a hot kitchen, sweat immediately began to gather on her neck. A blue metal dumpster sat in the driveway that lead to the front door and as she passed it, the day’s heat radiated out, warning her away and toward the side door. Nana, it seemed, was a bit of a hoarder.

Ruth tugged the storm door open, and it creaked its welcome as she stepped inside the disheveled kitchen. It still smelled like her Nana’s; the scent of warm cornbread, sugar, and coffee soaked into every pore of the room. The boxes that filled the floor were marked with a Sharpie, noting their temporary inhabitants. All the cabinet doors were open, the shelves behind them barren. Ruth tossed her keys on the white countertop next to a pair of yellow latex gloves and followed the narrow trail left open through the boxes.

“I’m in here,” a voice echoed from down the hallway.

She found her mother sitting crisscross on the bathroom floor, a box on one side, a trash bag on the other, her head leaning into the cabinet under the sink.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ruth began.

Her mother’s hand waved away her apology before she surfaced with an ancient-looking blue jar, the faded label read Noxzema Skin Cream. “What do you think? Trash or antique? I can’t tell anymore.” Linda held the jar as though she was a model on The Price is Right. She was dressed, as she normally was, in chinos and a white button-up shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her shoulder-length, saltand-pepper hair was pinned back in a tortoiseshell barrette.

Ruth crinkled her nose and shook her head, “Why did she keep that?”

“Who knows,” Linda shrugged before gently setting the jar in the trash bag.

“What would you like me to do?” Ruth asked, secretly hoping her mother wouldn’t suggest cleaning the other bathroom.

“How about the spare bedroom?”

“Will do,” Ruth replied as she turned and headed down the hallway, photographs filled with past and present family members staring at her as she passed.

The spare bedroom was once her mother’s, but as she looked around, Ruth couldn’t see one speck of evidence that she had once inhabited this space. Even without the empty boxes, the room was cluttered with knick-knacks collected over decades. Creepy clowns inhabited the walls, shuttered behind red frames and dusty glass. Stacks of old books occupied an entire corner, rising up out of the floor like centuries-old stalagmites. Covering the queen-sized bed, a polyester duvet the color of Barney clashed against ruffled ornamental pillows painted with sunflowers.

“What was she thinking?” Linda’s voice startled Ruth, waking her from the nightmare that her eyes seemed locked on.

“This room is terrifying,” she laughed in reply.

“I’ve got a date with my grandbaby. Promised him a Happy Meal. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Tell my nephew ‘Hi’ for me. Oh, and I have a Fourth of July thing to go to later…”

Again, her mother waved her response away as she walked toward the kitchen, “Just do what you can. It’s not like all this is going anywhere.”

Hands on her hips, Ruth looked around once again before deciding to start on the dresser, a white lacquer monstrosity with fake gold hardware. She put an empty box on the bed and grabbed the packing paper. One clown, then two bunny rabbits were wrapped and placed in the box, followed by a Precious Moments musical globe that Ruth suspected was broken and a set of atomizers once filled with her grandmother’s perfume.

She then wiped down the surface of the dresser and sat on the bed before opening one of the top drawers. In it, she found a giant pile of photographs. As she pushed them around in the drawer, she noticed a theme. These were all of her grandmother’s home and yard, in no particular order. She picked up one and recognized the front yard which was covered in dandelions. She remembered her grandmother once telling her that the number of dandelions in the spring could predict how difficult the rest of the year would be. Ruth turned the picture over to find Spring of ’68 written on the back and thought, “Maybe Nana was onto something.”

She stacked the pictures into a separate box and sat down to peer inside another drawer. She was surprised to find only a single photo album. It was red and soft, and as Ruth ran her hand across the lush velvet cover, her fingers left lines like freshly vacuumed carpet. She opened it to find her own almond-shaped eyes staring back at her, as well as the slim nose and cupid’s bow that she saw reflected in the mirror. Only, they weren’t hers, they were

her mother’s. But this wasn’t the mother that she knew. This was high school senior Linda.

In the photo, thick bangs covered her mother’s perfectly arched eyebrows. The rest of her hair was worn in a long, low ponytail that lay on her shoulder like a mink stole. Her mouth was set in the slightest smirk that would later be used when her children said something clever. Ruth’s fingertip traced her mother’s face, marveling at her beauty. When she turned the page, she was met with a completely different version of her mother, college Linda. She had a short pixie cut that set off her high cheekbones and long neck. She was wearing short shorts and a sleeveless button-up shirt tied at the waist.

Her mother posed in unabashed laughter, her arms wrapped around a couple of her friends sitting on the hood of an old car. In one photo, she was tanning in a bikini at the lake, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, her skin shiny from baby oil. Another picture was a candid shot of her mother studying, her hair tied up with a scarf, her brow furrowed at something she was reading. The sunlight that lit her up from behind also caught the dust in the air, freezing it forever.

She turned the page again to find her mother at protests, her fist raised high in the air with the other women demanding equal rights. The look on her face was both pained and happy. Ruth could almost hear the chants and feel the solidarity but had a hard time bringing it into her reality. How was the woman in these pictures her mother? Her mother that was always so reserved, so quiet? Her mother, who didn’t use her law degree, instead opting to stay home and raise children?

“What happened to the person in these pictures?” Ruth wondered as she stared and flipped the pages back and forth through time.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Linda said as she stood in the doorway.

Ruth looked up at her mother, then down at the pictures, then up at her mother again. “What do you have there?” Linda asked as she sat down next to her daughter. “Oh, I forgot about this album,” she said, turning it around to face her and running her hand down the page. She took a deep breath as if trying to pull a bit of her youth into the present.

“I didn’t know you went to protests,” Ruth said as she turned the pages back.

“Oh, yes. That was amazing. Well, you know what it’s like, you went to the one in D.C.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this? I mean, look at you, Mom. You were absolutely fierce. You got a law degree. That wasn’t easy back then, right? But then you didn’t use it. You could have done so much more with your life than just being a wife and raising two kids. What happened to the woman in these pictures?”

Linda’s brow furrowed as she tried to understand what her daughter was saying. “That woman,” she paused. “That woman taught you and your sister to be independent.” She pointed at her college graduation photograph. “That woman instilled in you the importance of getting an education.”

Linda flipped to her protest pictures. “That woman married a man that treated us with respect and always told you that you can do anything you want.”

Another turn of the page, “This woman volunteers at the women’s shelter and gives free legal advice to anyone who needs it.”

She pointed one last time at her younger self, “This woman is still me. And now, she is you and your sister.”

A tear ran down Ruth’s face as she looked at the picture under her mother’s finger. Linda touched her cheek, raising her chin until their eyes met.

The first BOOM of the night signaled the neighbor’s yearly fireworks extravaganza. “Don’t you have a party to go to?” Linda asked as she closed the book and set it aside.