Marie Schutt
Homing
My mother had hair on her chest and always lipstick on her mouth. She taught us to read by touching and mouthing the words, thumb and breath. The smartness of our brains would never be enough, she warned. She wasn't quite sure where we'd come from, how we'd been given into her life, though we all suspected it had something to do with her knack. She started storms and stopped currents and burned things in the toaster and told us "do as I say, not as I do." The other side of her power was a terrifying tenderness. One summer, she grew so big we wondered—thrilled—if she'd eat us alive, finally reclaim us, but she kept her focus on Big Macs and box-mix pancakes and local produce, pounds of whatever was in season. She was elemental. None of us knew what to do with her. The women of our town hated her thick hands and wild yard but loved her upside-down cakes and righteous bellow. Children and cats came for her crackling warmth. Men steered around her. We loved everything about her, even our fear. Everywhere she went, we trailed her like an out-of-step parade, until she'd go somewhere we couldn't follow. Then, we'd retreat and keep watch: back porch light buzzing, screen door unlatched. We'd play cards or watch old VHS tapes in the dark with the volume low until we heard the furtive sounds of her return. We'd know, then, to rise silently and gather at the kitchen door, where we'd watch her wolf down the bologna sandwich and milk we'd left out for her, her jaw moving in the stove light's dim glow. Thank you, my girls, she'd say, turning to face us, composed of our parts but still strange, and still—yet—an entire family in the body of one person, ours but no one's, looking only at us as she wiped mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth with a dirty, sharp-nailed hand.
About Marie Schutt
Marie Schutt is a writer, reader, and language lover based in Chicago. Her stories have appeared in The Rupture (formerly The Collagist), Sundog Lit, Gravel, deComP, and elsewhere.