Seeing Ghosts at Bed, Bath & Beyond | Kristina T. Saccone
I don’t try to understand why Mama acts like this anymore. The move into the nursing home, necessary for safety, tipped the scales of dementia. Despite wearing the face I grew up with, Mama quit being herself in most every way. Today is no different.
“That light is always in my eyes,” Mama says, cupping her hands on her forehead, face pale despite a dab of rouge on both cheeks. I look at the perfectly grey day out the window, but you can’t rationalize with someone living in a permanent fog.
Pulling up a chair, I take her hands on the wash-worn quilt, softened squares of cream cotton with petit pink dahlias she hand-tied a lifetime ago. “Mama, I wish I could do something to help with the light.” Without hands to hide her eyes, she just squeezes them shut, tears moistening the peach fuzz on her powdered cheeks. Vertical blinds knock like windchimes over the air register. Curtains, that’s what this room needs, I think. A good set of curtains in a beautiful fabric, like the kind Mama worked into her quilts.
When she finally opens her eyes again, Mama says “Is that you, Angela?” That’s my cue to give her a soft kiss and say goodbye. Aunt Angela passed years earlier, but Mama can’t always understand that her little sister’s gone now.
I get into my rusty-topped Taurus, the passenger-side floor covered with old cups I keep forgetting to toss after extra night shifts at work. The tank is low, so I throw in $5 and grab a 99-cent coffee. Bed, Bath & Beyond looms in the shopping center next door. No harm popping in to look at curtains.
The sliding doors open with a blast of fluorescent light and cold air from half a dozen Vornado fans at the entrance. Grabbing a cart, I roll past the kitchenware. The porcelain and crystal in the wedding registry section put a little pinch in my chest. Pushing along the bed linens and small appliances, I force myself to ignore the As Seen on TV display. Around a corner, drapes hang in an alcove from the ceiling.
Organza embroidered with tiny silver flowers on a vine. A blue brocade with shimmering golden peonies. Woven chenille with tribal prints in vertical repeat. Orange-fuschia ikat with ivory curlicues. Crepe plaid in blood red. Something that looks like houndstooth but melts in my hands like silk. And petit pink dahlias on cream cotton, so close to the squares in Mama’s quilt.
Feeling the familiar fabric, the weft and weave lets light leak through the edges. When I pull it back, it’s suddenly blinding. Dissipating, there’s Mama in a pinafore dotted with petit pink dahlias, her ankles crossed in a too-tall chair. She’s five or six years old. Her chocolate-colored circlet curls frame a rosy face with a neat satin bow on her head. Mama giggles, the sound of someone who hasn’t seen life yet.
Out of the dark, arms hand her a swaddled baby, wrapped in daffodil-yellow muslin. Mama peeks into her sister’s small brown eyes. A lifetime of small joys pass between them, warm and welcoming, and then too bright.
My eyes burn. My head throbs. Maybe I didn’t need that extra caffiene today. Checking the package, the curtain is called “Cocoon,” $29.99 a panel. I can make it work with the 20% off coupon at the bottom of my handbag and no weekend coffees for a few months.
The next time I visit, Mama smells like baby powder and Tide. A nurse installs the curtains while we eat lunch. Mama smiles today but still wears tension in her face like a mask. Locking elbows, we walk together back to her room. Mama cups her hand over her eyes at the doorway, shuffles to the window and pulls the new curtains closed.
“Goodnight, Angela,” she says with a softening brow. “Give me a kiss goodbye, my dear girl.” Then, when Mama holds out her hand to me, for just a moment the ghosts lift away from her face.
Kristina T. Saccone crafts flash fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Six Sentences, The Bangor Literary Journal, Emerge Literary Journal, and Unearthed. Find her on Twitter at @kristinasaccone or haunting small independent bookstores in the Washington, DC, area.