Fire Solves All Problems Perfectly pt 49

You drop your bike against the side of the house, cupping your hands on the screen of the kitchen window so you can scare your mother: your father does this all the time and if she gets mad it’s even funnier – but you’re shocked to find her doing a handstand, her blouse pulled up over her baby scars; she arches her legs and splits them evenly, arms quivering, until she is back where she started. The whole maneuver is done with an easy sort of grace; you duck out of sight before she sees you.

Before your mother met your father, when she was working in the kitchen of the nursing home, she was driving home one night on the Candle Creek bridge home from a party – Candle Creek behind the mall is just a stream but closer to the Smoke is nearly a river itself, though shallow and rocky; there is no sidewalk on either side of the old bridge’s two narrow lanes. Her car, a cheap Chevy that broke down all the time did the predictable and sputtered to a stop right in the middle, and when she went to open the hood she did not see the approaching truck, driven by a drunk who died when he smashed into her car. She saved herself by doing the only thing possible, jumping over the side of the bridge and falling forty feet into the midnight air and hitting the water and striking a flat rock that cracked her ribs and broke her arms. Your father says when they met at the Rockford Speedway that she still had casts on both arms, signed by everyone in town, and that she was the bravest chick he’d ever met.

You slam the door to the sun porch when you come in, giving her time to straighten her shirt and run fingers through her hair. She kisses you on the forehead and says she’ll call you when dinner is ready, and to go play with your brother because he’s lonely; you are halfway up the stairs when you see her shadow spilling out from the kitchen and into the dining room slowly invert itself as she stands on her hands once more.