What We Bury

Jan 28, 2002

Mother died today, finally. I had to fight her everyday just to get her to eat, and, still, she hardly ate anything. All she consumed was my life. For a long time, I prayed she’d hurry up and die. Horrible, I know, but I swear I’m not a bad person. If God ever gave an answer to my prayer it was “let her starve.” But I couldn’t. I kept fighting her — fighting for her — until the end.

I wouldn’t wish dementia on my worst enemy, not even on Mother.

Jan 29, 2002

Call it vanity, but I feel I have to clarify that I don’t hate my mother. When she passed, sure, tears of relief fell alongside tears of grief. But the grief was there.

Since you’re reading this journal, there’s a good chance you’ll read (or you’ll have already read) any of my many other journals. There is plenty of Mother in there. Though, maybe all that is more evidence against (rather than for) my argument.

Then let my word count over time be my loudest witness. Writing used to be my fpassion; lately, I can barely write two paragraphs.

Is that not grief?

Jan 30, 2002

Apparently, mother did have a last will… of sorts. An attorney called me today with his condolences, and then he told me Mother had left me a message.

“Right,” I said, “When she couldn’t sit up or speak on her own, she wrote you a message to give to me.”

“She wrote this in September, 1985.”

My throat went dry. That was almost twenty years ago.

“It says, ‘Julie, please dig up the papaya tree, and do it yourself.’”

I almost screamed into the phone. She knew I eat a papaya for breakfast every morning and she wanted me to dig up that tree?! Why not the lychee tree (which has never borne fruit) or the banana tree (I hate bananas)? Just because she never liked that papaya tree, doesn’t mean her dying wish had to completely disregard mine.

And she's dead — why care about it now?

Jan 31, 2002

Had papaya for breakfast. It was delicious and perfectly chilled and oh so juicy.

That tree is never coming down.

Feb 1, 2002

I dug it up after the funeral.

I’m shaking while writing this so forgive any mistakes.

The papaya tree came away from the ground easily. Maybe all papaya trees have weak roots, but these were made even weaker by the fact that they had to grow around a large leather duffel bag less than a foot deep.

I’m terrified to open it, so it’s sitting on the dining table, with roots and clumps of dirt still hanging off it.

Feb 1, 2002 — 2:32AM

I couldn’t sleep with that bag on the dining table. I lay in the dark and its image would float before me like Mother’s leathery, dirt-clung corpse.

So I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. The zipper stuck, and I had to take a knife and slice it open. The leather was stiff and brittle and opened up easily.

At first, I thought it was full of old receipts. You know the brown kind? But they were dollar bills — fifties, twenties, tens, fives, and a whole lot of ones. The mud had soaked through and turned the surface ones brown. But the ones just beneath were still green and smelled like money.

On top of the pile was a ziploc bag with a piece of paper in it, one that looked just like the kind in my journal, but torn out. I pulled the note out. It was written in Mother’s handwriting.

At the top, a date was written — July 24, 1981. Below that, was the first word: it said my name, “Julie.”

I sat down. I chose a seat at the dining table, away from the duffel, the money, and the dirt.

“If you’re reading this, I’m gone. I apologize for the tree, but its your favorite, so I figured it would be the last to come down if Dad changed the yard.

“Also, the papaya tree was the most feasible for me to move, because of its shallow roots. I wonder if you’ll remember it used to be six feet to the right. You were thirteen then, so its possible.

“Let me get right to it, then, since you’re probably wondering about the money — I stole it. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that when I stole it, I ruined three lives: Louisa’s, mine, and yours.”

I stopped reading and sat back, heart pounding. Mother never acknowledged the hurt she might have caused me: abandoning me at nine; showing back up at thirteen (but never really showing back up); being aloof and emotionless and as cold as the cinder block walls of our home. And she never mentioned a Louisa.

I picked the letter back up.

“Greed and envy are like intertwining roots digging down and squeezing its firm, filthy fingers around you. The day I let it take hold of me was the day I chose to be no better than dirt; roots can’t survive in anything better. Fitting, that when you read this, I’ll be in the ground where dirt belongs.

“I have no excuse for leaving you and your father, so I’ll give none. I went out on my own, and I felt free for the first time. But I had no money and no means to get any, so I relied on the charity of others, which was hard to come by until I met Louisa. She was everything I wanted to be (and nothing like the life I had back with you and your father). She was rich, beautiful, child free, and a social fixture. She had freedom and finances. And she shared the latter with me liberally. She put me up in a motel for months. She said she saw me as the kind of neo-feminist she could never be because she relied on a man for her money. And though I technically relied on the same man’s money, she said it didn’t count, because she was the one who gave it to me, not him. She footed my bills while I pursued my passions with no responsibilities. Except, there was always one responsibility tugging at my chest: her.”

My fingers gripped the letter tightly, crumpling both sides. I wanted to tear it to bits. She felt one responsibility — not to her husband or her child who she abandoned — but to a stranger.

“I knew that no matter how free I thought I was, I was moored to Louisa, because without her, I had nothing. I needed to cut her loose, and the best idea I came up with, foolishly, was to rob her blind in the night. That way I would have not been given the money; I would have taken it.

“I went over well after midnight when she should have been asleep.

“The lights were out, and her husband was gone on a work trip. And I knew where she kept the money because she often retrieved it right in front of me. It sat in a safe behind a painting of wild horses on the landing on the second floor. I didn’t know the safe code, but Louisa never locked it anyway; because “it was just money”.

“I pulled the painting off the wall and emptied all the cash into my leather duffel bag when a woman cleared her voice behind me. It was Louisa.

“Do I know you?’ she said.

“I slowly rose, but hunched and tucked my head low in case she recognized me by my hair. I did not turn around.

“I must know you, because only my closest friends know where I keep the cash.” Her voice trembled and rose to just below a shout. ‘What kind of friend steals from another?’

“I knew, in seconds, she would figure out it was me, and I panicked. She’d been so generous to me, that for her to know I betrayed her was too much. Even if I got away with the bag of money in my arms, I’d never be free of the accusatory look that would ruin her beautiful face. So I spun around blindly and shoved her hard to run past her. But in all the time I had spent up on that landing staring at that painting and the money behind it, I had never paid attention to how low the bannister was. She fell backward, the railing hitting her just below her rear and throwing her over — down, down, down — until she landed on her head on the marble floor below with a sickening pop.”

Mother’s writing had reached the bottom of the page. Paper trembling, I turned it over.

“I knew by the silence and the stillness that she was dead. So I ran.”

I placed the paper on the table. My mouth felt dry, my pulse pounded in my neck. Mother had murdered someone? It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. The next few lines were going to read “gotcha” somewhere.

“I ran toward the only place I could think of — back home. Back to you and your father. Along the drive there, I thought for sure I’d be discovered. But then I realized I’d never met Louisa’s friends or her husband, and she never told them she was giving me money. She had wanted to protect my reputation that way, which is why she always gave me cash; she wanted no paper trail that tied me to her. I was free, as long as I could hide the money.

“So, now it’s the night after, and I’m home, though you and Dad don’t know it yet because you’re asleep. I buried the money in the backyard, and went inside and saw you sleeping, and I nearly wept. You’re so beautiful, like Louisa, and so innocent, unlike me. I never should have left home and given up the few riches I had here.

My greed is dead, buried with the duffel in the yard. Louisa was right, “it was just money.’ I just want to be with you and your father — to be around your goodness everyday — but I don’t deserve it. At the same time, I know that you deserve better than what I’ve put you through. I shouldn’t be allowed to stay, but I cannot run away from you again.

“So I tore this page out of your journal and am writing you this letter in the future.

“Julie, I want to be a good mother to you and a good wife to your father, but if I do, you both will reciprocate and be good to me. So I’m staying, but distantly. I’m sorry for that. But I vow that one day when I’m gone, you will have a mother. And since I know you love to read and write, I’ll keep a journal everyday full of my thoughts about you that I cannot express in person without you reciprocating. If you don’t want to read these journals, I don’t blame you. Your loyalties alone to your father would be reason enough to not read them. But if you do, they are in a joint safe I will open in your and my names at First American Bank. The code will be today’s date: 062481.

“When I’m gone, I hope you’ll find it in yourself to be able to give yourself, at least in journal form, the mother you never got in life.

“Signed, Yours.”

--

I have no more words.

Sep 3, 2002

It has been a long time since I’ve written. I took time off to process everything that happened since my last entry.

I looked into every Louisa in the bordering states that died or was murdered in 1981. She wasn’t hard to find. Her husband is dead and she had no children, so I have no one to give the money to. I donated it to an orphanage nearby.

Of course, I didn’t feel comfortable lugging around a bag of money, so I drove to First American Bank and turned it into a cashier’s check. And since I was there, I opened Mom’s safe box. Inside were forty-two little black notebooks — Mom’s journals starting on July 24, 1981 and continuing until a year and change before she died — probably when she stopped being able to write. She didn’t miss a day.

I’m still going through her entries, and I’m learning so much about how much she held back through the years. Each notebook’s cover is plain black leather; but inside, the pages come alive with Mom’s emotions spilt messily upon them. This written vulnerability doesn’t make up for the utter lack of affection she showed me and Dad while she was alive. But she had her reasons — however wrong — and gave me what she gave me.

I’ve decided I’ll respond to her daily journals, as if we are corresponding, though I know she’ll never read my responses. It will read like a sort of back and forth, with a little imagination — she’ll be my mother, finally.

END