Love Lift Me by Synthia St. Claire Page A

I had to admit I was ready to
leave the hospital sooner than they wanted me to go. It was like pulling teeth
to get the doctor to sign for my release. I think he finally did it because he
was getting tired of being yelled at by mother.
    For
eight grueling days after that, I didn’t do much else besides rest, punctuated
by bumbling trips around the house on crutches. The doctor gave me a brace,
with express instructions not to take it off until the staples were removed. I
must have looked pretty strange hobbling around like that. It felt like pure
freedom the day Daddy took me to the outpatient center on the edge of town and they
took out everything and the brace came off. Finally, I could bend my knee again.
     
    A
little over three weeks after the accident, things were starting to get back to
normal. Well, as normal as things got around the Atwater house.
    “Kat,
go on and sit down, child,” Mother chastised me from her position manning the
enormous old stove in our kitchen. The thing had cooked thousands of meals
since they had gotten it installed in the late sixties and it was built strong
enough to withstand a nuclear explosion. “If you don’t stay off that leg, it
ain’t never gonna heal up right!”
    She
had on her apron, which really wasn’t much more than a piece of oft-bleached
canvas that was even older than the stove. That particular accessory had been
worn by her mother, and her mother before. The strings were tied in a knot
around the back and hung down over her backside. They’d probably been that way
for forty or more years; trying to untangle them would be pointless.
    Still,
she wasn’t one to go about unmanaged like that knot in her apron - Her
mostly-white hair, which had been a golden, honey-blonde twenty some years ago,
was curled up and looking neat from a recent trip to the salon. The simple,
floral dress she’d picked up in the mid-nineties during a winter sale at fancy store
in Wilmington hugged her narrow hips and swished to and fro under the apron as
she busily worked the kitchen. She still had on a pair of white flats that
she’d been wearing since church let out. They looked terribly uncomfortable and
clicked on the wooden floor with each step, but she wouldn’t take them off her
feet until the entire family settled down later in the evening.
    Mother
was just like that. She never traded comfort for appearances. A person that had
never met her would have absolutely no idea that she was fighting cancer and
that’s the way she wanted it.
    I
sauntered up beside her and placed a warm bowl of mashed potatoes on the counter.
“My leg doesn’t even hurt anymore, Momma. The doctor took the staples out weeks
ago. See?” I twisted my leg around and showed off my scar. It was still not
completely finished healing, but the ugly red line had already receded to a
pinkish-white hue. Although I never thought it would be classified as a “cute”
by anyone, I was glad that it wasn’t any worse. She turned away from the frying
meat in her cast iron skillet and gave it and me a cursory glance.
    “That
don’t matter, young lady. You ought not to be cruising around here like that so
soon after having surgery.”
    “Says
the woman that also just had surgery,” I shot back at her with a laugh.
“Look at you sashaying around in here. Come on and let me finish cooking that
stuff. You’re the one that should be taking things easy.”
    She
really should have been. Mother had started her chemotherapy treatments before
I even got back home from the hospital and they were starting to take their
toll. Daddy drove her in to the cancer clinic and sat with her five days a week
and they were gone for hours at a time. She’d barely touched more than a few morsels
of food for days and her already petite frame was becoming increasingly thin. I
could tell she was getting tired, but I knew she wouldn’t slow down a bit until
she had no other choice.
    “I
ain’t never taken anything easy young lady, and I