Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro Page A

toward me.
    I turn to my dad framed in the doorway. There are tears in his eyes.
    â€œPlease? I need you to come with me.”
    I feel something run up my spine and nestle itself underneath my hair. I touch the back of my head where it tingles.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Dad?”
    â€œI just don’t want to be alone today. Please?”
    The tears change everything. I don’t know how to respond. I stare back down at my glass horse, suddenly wishing I could throw it against the hard surface of the floor and shatter it into jagged pieces. But as much as I want to break something, I can’t. Just like Jamie says, I am a “chicken girl.”
    Sometimes I want to be like Jamie. I want to know how it feels to throw glass bottles in street gutters, hurl eggs at Mr. Rivasplata’s car, steal salami from the grocery store, hear the sound of my fist breaking through Sheetrock, and dodge the Novato police. But I can’t. I’m the good one, the quiet one, the one who never gets into trouble. A skinny toothpick holding up the whole house. I am the one my dad counts on.
    My carefully planned day slips away. I set the glass horse down and slide it across my dresser like I am making a well-thought-out move on a chessboard. I push its front hooves to the edge of the dresser and there it halts.
    â€œIt’s okay, Dad. I’ll go with you.”
    â€œThanks, darling.”
    As I lace my shoes, I think about my dad’s tears and the night he came home and told us his mom had died. I had so many questions about how she died but my dad wouldn’t say. Jamie and Eden hadn’t spent a lot of time with Grandma Rita, but I had. A year or two ago, my dad put me on a plane and I flew by myself from California to LaGuardia Airport to visit her. A driver picked me up to take me to her house in a town called Katonah.
    Grandma Rita was in bed when I arrived. After I gave her a hug, she told me she’d always wished for a little girl but she only had sons. I sat beside her and we talked for a bit. Or rather she asked me lots of questions. I was terribly shy. I had so many thoughts that I couldn’t get out of my mouth: What was I going to do while I was here? Why hadn’t my brothers come? Why was she staying in bed? Where was I going to sleep?
    I spent that night in the upstairs room, listening to the sound of the cicadas and the attic window rattling. What I remember most vividly about my visit is peering into her dining-room cabinet filled with beautiful china and glass objects. A red swan, hand-painted plates, and an ornate emerald egg perched on a gold stand.
    When Grandma Rita died, my dad’s tears startled me but they made sense. He was going to miss his mother. I’m guessing that my dad is upset now because his girlfriend broke up with him a few days ago. He’s had a lot of girlfriends, but he never picks the marrying kind. Usually they are much younger than him and not interested in having three instant kids. Not that we’re interested in a young mom who’s not our mom anyway.
    When my dad has a steady girlfriend, I feel like I can take a huge, deep breath and slip away from always having to pay attention, always trying to keep the peace. I hate being the only girl in a house of boys.
    On the way to his antique shop, we stop at Perry’s Deli and buy two Pepsis and BLTs.
    My dad’s shop is packed with antique furniture angled in every direction. I walk through the maze of desks, dressers, tables, cabinets, armoires, old-fashioned barber chairs with red velvet upholstery, and shelves full of green and pink Depression glass. The antique medical cabinets have thirty-five skinny oak drawers in different sizes made for doctors’ scalpels and tools. I could hide a lot of treasures in a cabinet like this. I’d love to show it to the judges of the room competition.
    But I can tell that I’m going miss out on the International Room Cleaning Competition, and the