Quickening

IMPULSE The morning I was leaving for college, Mom fainted. She had been playing solitaire at the kitchen table and had stood up too fast. I was washing the car with Dad, who'd gone inside for matches, then came back out and said, "She's down." I dropped the hose. Water pooled in the crevices where weeds grew, ran down the driveway and out into the street. "Did you call Dr. Wykoff ?" I followed Dad into the kitchen. "Now, how'm I going to do that, Mandy?" Of course. The phone had been cut off. We hadn't paid the bill. The cards were scattered over the table. Mom lay on the kitchen floor, her pilly pink robe half buttoned and wrinkled around her fleshy splayed legs, slippers still on her feet. Her blue eyes bulged and blinked. "It took you long enough," she said as we bent over to help. She twisted my forearms in a vise grip while Dad, wheezing, cigarette hanging from between his clenched lips, hoisted her up from behind. "Be careful, for God's sake," she said. "You know how easily I bruise." "Can you make it to the car?" he asked. "We'll drive you to Ransomville General." "I'm not going to the hospital looking like this! It's just a meegrain. The dizziness will pass. Help me to bed." "They're called migraines, Mom." I took one side and Dad took the other. "Would you listen to smarty-pants!" Mom was short but wide, and solid, still a dead weight after her faint. Her robe smelled of trapped sweat. "Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" I asked. "Didn't I just say no? Don't treat me like I'm stupid, Miranda. I had the brains for college, too, you know--" I should have guessed it was about college. The three of us stumbled through the kitchen door, down the little hall, into the bedroom. The bed springs squeaked and squealed as Mom settled in. "Oh dear," she muttered. "I won't be able to drive with you to your college." "Gee, what a surprise. But I'm still going." All through high school, I had worked toward college. I had been in the honor society, had gotten a partial scholarship, a federal grant, a student loan, and a work-study grant. This moment of leaving had been the point whenever I thought, What's the point? "And you can't stop me." I walked out as Dad was turning on the electric space heater and the humidifier, pulling the curtains shut. "Did I say anything? What's the matter with her!" Mom shouted. "Bring me my pills, Miranda Jane!" She hadn't left the county in years. It was predictable. Why did it upset me? I didn't even want her to go. My heart banged out of control against my rib cage, in panic and hope that Mom would just disappear, even if it meant her dying. I took the flat plastic box out of the refrigerator and brought it to her. It was separated into compartments designating times of the day and days of the week, the measure of Mom's life. For her migraines, she took Fiorinal or Naprosyn, depending on the nature of her pain. For the lupus, she took Prednisone twice a day. For her postpartum depression, she had been on Elavil for eighteen years. Halcion to fall asleep. Dexamethasone for her asthma. Premarin since the hysterectomy. And Xanax for the panic attacks. When I was little, we did drills where she pretended some health crisis and I rushed to the refrigerator to give her a pill. "No!" she would scream. "I'm a dead woman. You've just given me the wrong medication!" I had since resolved never to take pills, not even aspirin. "Do me a favor. Tell your father to shave before he goes. He looks like a bum." Her round face was as pale as her worn pillowcase. I handed her a Naprosyn and aBrown, Laura Catherine is the author of 'Quickening' with ISBN 9780375503733 and ISBN 0375503730.