Sarah and Her Mother’s Coffin

Sarah is not her mother. She hates pink, she hates clouds, she hates the smell of rain in the summer and the sound of dogs barking in the park. And now she hates her mother’s casket, which was somehow all of these things despite not being any of them. The pine is unfinished—probably some sort of a health code violation—and smells like, well, wood, with none of the usual lingering fumes of finish. There is no lining, no padding, and the lid is hingeless, fitting on top like the shell of a small ceramic turtle meant to hold jewelry, the kind sold by shady gift shops in land-locked sea resorts. The casket is humble. It makes Sarah angry.

“Really, Mom?”

“I think it’s nice.”

Her mother has a gentle smile on her face. In it, Sarah sees the affirmations her mother says in the mirror every morning: I am good, I am light, I am the heart of the sun and the soul of the moon.

“It’s much less…chemical than the others. I want a natural burial, Sarah.”

The attendant perks up, “Yes, the oak is a much less imposing choice, and we can still line it after purchase if you—”

Her mother waves him away.

It’s always like that, her mother, the wave, the distance. Sarah often wonders if her mother’s hand contained the mechanical components necessary to gesture invitingly.

“Look, Sarah.” Her mother takes a breath. “I understand this is hard, but I don’t want this to be a difficult thing between us.” She stretches her hand across the plain oak casket towards Sarah.

Sarah doesn’t answer.

Sarah’s mother looks back at the attendant, with what could be described, by him perhaps, as a sincere and earnest face. “This is perfect, thank you. Is there paperwork?”

And the two of them get busy with the particulars, Sarah’s mother occasionally turning to Sarah with a suggestion or request for the day-of, always posed as questions; “Oh, Sarah, what do you think?” and “Oh,  Sarah, is this too much?”

Sarah drives her mother home. Her mother cries silently and nobly from the passenger seat.

#

Sarah works full time as a float at a preschool. Her favorite class is the fours, because the skills they learn at that age are obvious. Can you tie your shoes? y/n Can you wipe your ass? y/n Do you know your colors? y/n.

At work, Sarah sits under the playground shade in the infant section. The twos are out on the big playground, and Sarah can hear her favorite, Matty—on the other side of the chain link fence that separates the babies from the toddlers—scream as he yanks wildly on a loose pole. It clangs and clangs and echoes, over and over. Sarah watches the other teachers on the big playground stretch their bare legs out on the blacktop, in the sun.

A breeze hits Sarah in the shade and she shivers. One of her babies eats grass.

Inside, during naptime, Sarah looks at the babies. She inspects the back of their heads for flatness.

At home, cooking dinner, Sarah feels wrong. Her mother is dying and she is cooking hotdogs in a pot of water on a stove. It feels wrong. Sarah considers herself close to her mother. She does not consider her mother close to her. Sarah’s parents split up when she was young. At least, she thinks they did. Her mother says she would never be caught dead tied to a man—legally or otherwise (Sarah has never questioned whether this would be true for women, her mother just doesn’t seem like the type). The pot of water begins to simmer and she fumbles with a bag of buns.

But Sarah is here, so she must have a father. And she remembers having a father, vaguely, a man who was…around…vaguely. Outside those snippets of memory—which very well could be extrapolated and hallucinated from staring at the childhood photos on her mother’s living room wall for too long, from fixating young eyes onto the blur of a man’s pant leg, the owner of which will forever exist off-camera, unexplained, undocumented—outside of that, it has always been Sarah and her mother. Just Sarah and her mother. Sarah has no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and certainly no siblings she knows of. Sarah never met her grandparents.

Her mother rarely talks of her own mother, a woman she describes as infectious, and entirely in the wrong sort of way. Sarah isn’t really sure what that means, but she thinks it means that her mother, and her mother’s mother, are alike.

She does find her own mother infectious, in the entirely wrong sort of way. Her mother has spent all of Sarah’s life teaching Sarah about her. Sarah has learned who Sarah is despite her mother, and in contrast to her mother. Sarah is the open spaces surrounding her mother’s reflection. Negative space. Sarah wonders if she will still exist when her mother is dead. The water boils on the stove in front of her. She scoops the hotdogs out and lays them in their buns.

#

Sarah thinks she is too old to feel young and too young to feel old. She lives in an in-between place. She is old enough to know that she is too young to know anything. She thinks this as she avoids getting ready for work, as she sits on her couch and watches her cat, Barfus, lick plastic joke barf from his favorite spot on the floor. Sarah often spends long periods of time staring at her cat, Barfus, licking the plastic joke barf. When Sarah adopted him, she noticed that he always barfed after eating anything tuna flavored, and when he barfed, he’d always try to eat it. He loved eating it. He would purr while he ate it. When Sarah switched his food he stopped barfing, but he looked sad. So, Sarah went to a joke store in the mall and bought plastic joke barf. Now, she watches Barfus lick the plastic joke barf for hours on end.

Sitting on the couch, watching Barfus lick plastic joke barf, Sarah decides that if her mother is dying, she should try harder to connect, before the end.

#

Sarah’s mother is in Sarah’s passenger seat. The air is still, though not hot, and her mother is fanning herself with the discharge papers from her doctor’s visit and making ‘mmmm’ noises that Sarah would not describe as talking.

Sarah asks, “How was your appointment?”

Her mother says, “Sarah.” There is a long pause, and Sarah thinks her mother might be done talking. “They scheduled the surgery.”

“To remove it?”

Her mother ‘mmmm’s again.

Sarah tries again. “How are you doing?”

Her mother makes a disgusted noise. It sounds a little like Barfus when Sarah tries to pet his stomach.

Sarah continues driving.

“Oh, Sarah, I forgot to say, I like your hair much better today. It looks much better when it’s down. At my funeral Sarah, when I’m gone, make sure they don’t put my hair up. It’ll look flat and ugly.”

#

Sarah is at home, scrolling a dating app. She’s stuck staring at the profile of a man a year older than her. He looks familiar. Kind of cute. Not her type though. Not that she’s picky. She’s just not really into blonds.

Her phone rings, her mother’s face takes up the screen, startling Sarah. She swears.

“Hello?”

“Sarah? Where are you, Sarah, why can’t I see you—turn FaceTime on, Sarah.”

“Mom, I’m—no, I’m busy, what—”

“Oh, you’re busy, okay I’ll just go then—”

“No, mom, it’s fine, what’s up?”

“You have your own life, Sarah, I don’t want to interrupt—”

“It’s fine, what do you need?”

“I’m not trying to be needy, Sarah, it’s just, I’ve run out of tea and you know how I feel about ordering delivery. They don’t pay them right—”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll bring some over.”

“Thank you, Sarah. Get something fresh this time?”

#

There is a large delivery truck in Sarah’s mother’s driveway. Sarah parks on the street. As she heads inside, two delivery men pass her by in the yard. One nods at her.

“Mom?”

“Oh, Sarah! You’re here?” Her mother’s voice is coming from the dining room.

“What’s with th—” Sarah stops. A large pine box lays on the dining room table. Her mother’s casket lays on the dining room table. Sarah is trying to speak. A part of Sarah’s brain is struggling to reset.

“What—”

“Do you have the tea?” Her mother is inspecting the casket.

“Do—what?”

“The tea, Sarah. You said you were going to bring tea?”

Sarah stands blinking for a while. “Why is it here?”

Sarah’s mother sighs and takes the grocery bag out of her hand and heads to the kitchen. When she returns, she continues past Sarah into the hallway. The bathroom door closes.

Moments pass. Sarah stays standing in the dining room, staring at the plain coffin lying across the table. It takes up the whole table, and a little extra, resting over the edge on either end. The last of the delivery men nod at Sarah as they step out, leaving the front door open behind them.

Her mother returns, her face is damp around her eyes. She rubs a spot on the table, next to the edge of the casket, and mumbles something about scratches on the table. From the kitchen, the kettle whistles.

#

Work, naptime in the four-year-old class. Sarah sits on the ground at one of the kids’ tables writing names onto empty coloring sheets. Two kids won’t go down, and the room lead has them both in her lap. Sarah hears the three of them whispering. The teacher is reading them a book. Sarah remembers being young and sitting in her teacher’s lap. When she was six, she was obsessed with “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” Her favorite part was the rain, washing the spider out. She imagined a family of spiders, the mother spider with all her babies on her back, riding the wave. She imagined that the itsy-bitsy spider didn’t belong in the spout, and that the rain was saving it from being trapped. One day at the public library, Sarah found a miniature version of the book and slipped it under her shirt, into the waistband of her pants. Her mother found it under her bed weeks later. She spent the whole way back to the library asking Sarah what she had done wrong as a mother, how she could have raised such a naughty child.

Sarah looks down and notices a spot on her arm. Paint probably.

#

Her phone has been chiming all morning, her mother is sending her a continuous stream of names and addresses, people she expects to be invited to the funeral, with occasional blacklisted names mixed in. Sarah doesn’t recognize most of them. After a few minutes, she stops checking. Every ding sends a jolt up from her stomach to her throat. She watches Barfus bat at a fly in the corner of her apartment.

#

“Hey, mom?”

“Hmmm?”

“Can I ask you something?” Sarah’s mother is once again in Sarah’s passenger seat as they exit the pharmacy pick-up lane.

“Hmm?” Something in her mother’s tone sounds more attentive than usual. Sarah feels hopeful.

“You never,” she thinks a moment, “you never talk about us.” That isn’t quite right. “You never talk about us, like, being close.”

Something in the car, the energy, the air, her mother—something in the car shifts.

“I mean—like, we don’t talk a lot, and—”

“You want to talk more, Sarah?”

“Well—” Sarah stumbles, stumbles, stumbles, she feels—almost—that she is not stumbling—like she is rolling, rolling down and far away from her mother. “I just wish we were closer.” It squeaks through her chest, barely.

“Oh, Sarah. It’s okay to miss me, when I’m gone.”

Sarah runs a stop sign. Neither of them speak.

They pull into her mother’s driveway.

“I’ll always be with you Sarah, even after I’m gone.” Her mother gets out of the car, shuts the door behind her, and walks to the front door. At the door, she turns back, smiles, and waves politely, then goes inside.

Sarah feels itchy all over.

#

Cold water rushes over Sarah’s head and down her body. Her breath is hitched and sharp as she fights to keep her body relaxed. She hates cold showers, but she woke up hot and sweaty and sick, and needed to get the heat out. In her dreams, she sees her mother’s face, smiling a polite, detached smile.

When her body feels sufficiently numb, she shuts the water off. She reaches for the towel and sees the spot on her arm. Barfus meows and scratches the carpet on the other side of the bathroom door.

#

“Oh, I’d love some tea—won’t you stay for tea, Sarah?”

Sarah doesn’t respond, she doesn’t agree, she doesn’t tell her mother that she doesn’t like tea, or that she’d prefer coffee, or juice, or water, or that actually she has to go soon; she has a date tonight. She sets the kettle on the stove and lights the burner. It’s old-fashioned, everything in her mother’s house is old-fashioned. She doesn’t even have an automatic vacuum, or a camera doorbell, or a microwave, or a car—which is why Sarah has to drive her around everywhere.

So Sarah makes her mother’s tea. Her mother acts surprised when she hears the kettle whistling, “Oh, Sarah, you didn’t have to do that. Use some of the jasmine, that oolong doesn’t taste quite right.”

They both sit in silence while her mother sips her tea. Sarah’s mother has chosen to sit at the head of the table, her seat is pushed back to accommodate the casket. Sarah’s mother’s clear glass mug is barely two inches emptier when she proclaims she is tired, gets up, and goes to her bedroom. Sarah sits alone at the table, beside the casket, and stares at the photos framed on the dining room wall. They’re all of either her, or her mother, save two. In one, Sarah is an eighth grader, holding a science fair ribbon for third place. Behind her is the poster on the use of AI in medical research that she had spent a whole week working on by herself. Her teacher poses with a thumbs-up next to her. In the other, her mother is pregnant. The photo is a selfie; her mother is young, early twenties, her makeup is garishly dewy. A man’s leg blurs in the corner.

#

Her date goes okay. The guy is funny, but Sarah has a difficult time paying attention to his jokes. She barely looks him in the face. They go out for tacos—an excellent choice on his part—and at some point during the meal, when she realizes she’s been staring absently at the last taco on her plate, offering her date little more than a ‘ha’ or a ‘humph,’ she wishes she’d met him later, after her mother’s death, perhaps, after the grieving phase. No—during it. She would be sad and hard to reach, and he would, say, make a bad pun about the mechanical bull by the bar and neither of them would laugh at first. Then they both would explode and she would smile again for the first time in weeks, then they’d head to her place and have passionate grief sex and she could get on with her life.

They pay, and leave, and they each walk to their separate cars and Sarah drives herself home and he takes himself wherever men go after a bad date.

Later, at home on the couch, she texts him:

Hey, sorry for the lame time.

Hey, sorry for the|

Hey sor|

I hope I didn’t come off as|

I hope I didn’t come o|

She sends: Sorry, my mom has cancer.

Then she throws her phone, then she picks up her phone, then she deletes his contact. Two minutes later a text from an ‘unknown number’ replies back, Hey, I’m so sorry—she doesn’t read the rest.

That night, Sarah falls asleep thinking of hugging her mother. She does not dream.

#

“I had a date last night.” Sarah rarely calls her mother. This morning’s call is the first from Sarah to her mother in months. Her mother didn’t comment on the unusual event.

“It went alright.”

“Oh, that’s great dear. How was he?”

“He was good, funny.” She toasts bread.

“Mmmm, we do like funny ones, don’t we?”

Sarah paused. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. I’ve just been thinking about your father is all.” There’s almost a genuine sadness in her mother’s voice that Sarah isn’t sure she’s ever heard before. No, not almost, it was sadness. “I’ve thought about reaching out to him, considering…well, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.”

“You don’t talk about him.”

“You never wanted to hear about him, Sarah.”

That wasn’t true. “I did—I do wonder about him—”

“Oh, you were so glad to be just the two of us I thought I—”

“I asked you about him—”

“Didn’t want to ruin what you and I had.”

“I asked you—”

“You were so little, Sarah—”

“Every single birthday—”

“It doesn’t matter, Sarah.”

“It does matter—”

“You can have a relationship with him if you want, if you changed your mind—”

“It’s not changing my mind, it’s—”

“You have my blessing, when I’m gone, if that’s what you need. I’ve always wanted the best for you. Everything I’ve done—”

Sarah’s toast clicks up, undertoasted. She takes a deep breath, shifts gears. No point in arguing. “Where is he?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Sarah. I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

#

It’s Thursday, a week before her mother’s surgery. Sarah is in the shower, staring at the spot on her arm. She’s sure she’s always had the spot; spots don’t just appear—they grow. Or else they’re always there. She’s sure she’s always had this particular spot.

Her phone buzzes.

Are you on your way?

Sarah, we can’t be late.

I hope you’re on your way.

#

Sarah always waits in the car during her mother’s appointments; It’s polite, her mother says. Less than half an hour has passed when her mother returns. Sarah asks, “how did it go?”

“Oh, I’m so scared, Sarah.”

“How did it go?”

“What a gloomy day.”

Sarah imagines herself asking again.

“They’re going to remove it—” she taps the cancer on her arm, “—but of course who knows where it’s spread to, if it’s in my lungs, or my heart, or my kidneys.”

Sarah drives.

#

Sarah wakes up to another phone call, and in her hazy sleep-state she answers. The call is short but only because Sarah promises to come over. As she’s pulling on a hoodie, she feels an odd heat in her chest rise up to her throat. She’s angry, but it will be a while yet before she figures that out.

#

Her car is a piece of junk; it makes a loud rumble that is somehow both high pitched and deep every time the gear shifts. Her mother peeks out the front door and disappears back inside before Sarah has even turned off the ignition.

“Mom?” Sarah calls. She closes the front door behind her. “Mom?”

She finds her mother in her bedroom; it’s dim, the only illumination is the rising sun slipping in from around the edges of the black-out curtains, and it takes Sarah a moment for her eyes to adjust. Her mother sits in bed, surrounded by wadded-up tissues. Sarah does not try to turn on the light; her mother removed the light bulbs years ago. If the sun’s not up, then why should I be?

Sarah sits down next to her mother for a silent, unspeaking moment. The tissues fill the space between them, and Sarah stares at them. They are spaced evenly apart. A few of them appear to be used. Sarah’s mother lets out a shaky sigh and blows her nose. Sarah stands up and collects the tissues from the bed, then the empty glasses on the nightstand, then the clothes from the floor. Sarah continues until she is in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher, and outside, placing trash bags in the bin. She pulls her mother’s manual vacuum up the basement stairs; she scours the floor with it.

When she is done, she returns to her mother’s room. Her mother is asleep. Sarah closes the bedroom door quietly behind her and goes into the living room. Her mother’s pills are piled on the coffee table between the two green loveseats in the middle of the room. Full bottles mixed with empty bottles mixed with half-full bottles. Sarah picks up an empty bottle, looks at the label. She recognizes the name but doesn’t know what the medication is for. She gathers the other empty bottles and brings them, piled in her arms, into the dining room.

She stares at the pine box on the table. They have not talked about the coffin. Sarah thinks that somewhere in her mother’s mind, this is easier. She imagines that her mother daydreams of dying at home, alone, suddenly. She imagines, in her mother’s daydream, Sarah requesting that the paramedics place her mother’s body inside this casket. That way she will be in place for the viewing—Sarah’s viewing. There is no other family to witness her mother’s death. Sarah will be all there is. And her mother will be here, dead upon the dining room table.

Sarah opens the coffin. It is empty inside. It still reeks of plain wood. She thinks it is rather large. She imagines her mother inside. She thinks of holding her kids in her lap, and of reading to them. She imagines climbing inside the casket, with her mother.

Sarah goes home.

#

Sarah is drinking. She has a mug of white rum—the only alcohol she could find in her apartment—and her laptop is open to WebMD, The American Cancer Society, The Skin Cancer Foundation, Mayo Clinic. Her mother’s empty pill bottles are piled on the couch next to her. She references the names of her mother’s medications against a psychiatric forum. She downs rum. What started as a need to satiate a morbid curiosity has turned fast and frantic. She finds an article—Stage One Melanoma: What to Expect.

Sarah falls asleep on the couch with her laptop open in her lap.

#

Sarah watches left-over spaghetti burn on the stove while her mother’s face smiles at her from her ringing phone.

#

Sarah sits in the shower, under the water which has had enough time to shift from burning hot to lukewarm, and daydreams of a car crash. She hasn’t completely decided who is in the car, her or her mother, or both, when her phone alarm goes off. Time for work.

#

They place her with the threes; not her favorite, but that’s alright. It’s nap time when she arrives; she works with the room lead to prep snack. She spoons applesauce from a jar into little bowls, which makes Sarah think of applesauce cups, which makes her think of Jell-O cups, which makes her think of the hospital, which makes her think of the chemotherapy her mother isn’t doing because her cancer probably isn’t even that bad, and probably never will be.

The rest of her shift goes by just like that: object, extension, connector, problem. Diaper, cream, rash, cancer. Ponytail, lice, spread, cancer. Cot, sleep, care, mother.

#

Sarah stares at the spot on her arm. It looks larger. She feels, for a very small moment, afraid.

#

Sarah is parked in her mother’s driveway. Two large trash bags sit in her trunk, and Goodwill is loaded up on her car’s navigation system. She hovers her finger over the Begin Navigation button. She moves her hands to the wheel without pressing it. Her mother sits in the passenger seat beside her, fidgeting with the strap of her purse.

“What stage is it?” Sarah keeps her hands on the wheel.

“What?”

“The cancer, what stage is it?” Her voice is quite calm.

There is a pause before, “Things change so quickly, Sarah, I—”

“When they diagnosed you—” she’s louder now, “what stage did they diagnose you at?”

“I hardly see why it—”

Sarah gets out. She slams the door—it feels good. She needs to move. She walks a full circle around the car. She opens the driver’s side door and gets back in, her fingers are tingling, her face is tingling.

Her mother’s arms are crossed and she’s facing straight forward, looking out the windshield.

“How long did they say you have left?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Did they say it was terminal?”

“I’m going to die, Sa—

“WHEN?” She has never yelled at her mother before. She doesn’t look over, but she can hear that her mother is crying.

#

The kitchen tiles feel cold and comforting against Sarah’s skin. Barfus meows behind her, but she ignores him. She rubs her cheek against the tile. Barfus meows again. Sarah spreads her arms across the tile, moves her open palms across them. She stares at the dust under the refrigerator. Tears pool under her face.

Behind her, Barfus vomits. The spot on her arm burns.

#

Sarah is working another float shift with the fours—her favorite. One of the older boys sits in her lap while she reads to him. She says:

How absurd to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her—

“What’s that?” His finger pokes the spot on her arm.

“It’s nothing. Look.”

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly—perhaps—