Collecting food, collecting dust, collecting time, I stand here sweeping, sweeping
well into the night. My boss informs me that I’m not doing it right; he says
I need to sweep right to left and split the piles into smaller piles, and sweep
it all up. I’ve told him that makes no sense and he tells me to shut up.
I stand here and sweep while my mother sits at home picking at the worn couch with
a drink in hand, flushed as an overripe nectarine. She feels her arm, and picks
at the places where the IVs used to be. She’s in a haze of cigarettes and
drinks, and mumbles to herself about death catching up to her. When I was in grade
school my mother gave me a book of illustrated stories. The first story was of Achilles
and the tortoise. Achilles chased the tortoise, but with each flip of the page his
head grew. He dragged his head through dirt and mud certain that he would be blind
before he ever caught the tortoise. I closed the book and looked up; the light from
the lamp faded, and the room grew dark.
The tiles are checkered black and white. My boss watches over me, and dictates that
I split a pile into another pile and that one into another. I’m becoming lost
in the floor. The tiles extend to no end and are taking over the store. The black
tiles have swallowed up the dust and food, but my boss tells me that I can’t
fool him. “I have a microscope and I know how to use it,” he says. I
bend over, broom in hand, and examine the floor in search of something, but I see
nothing. You can’t sweep nothing.
When I first read the story of Achilles and the tortoise, I asked my mother what
it meant. She told me, “I’ll tell you in a bit, I’m on the phone.”
The next day I asked again, and again she said, “I’ll tell you in a
bit.” She brought the vacuum to life, drowned out my question, and ran away.
This happened bit by bit, every day, every month, and soon every year. I’d
give her a card for her birthday with the words what did it all mean? written
on it. She’d answer, “I’ll tell you in a bit, I need to unwrap
presents.”
If only my boss would turn around, then I could push everything in the dustbin and
leave. Instead my boss hovers and chews on a piece of burnt bread. The crumbs fall
from his mouth and hands, he looks at them, says, “Sweep it up.” In
my dreams I look at the clock. The minute markers begin to fall in thin black strips
and the numbers follow. I’m sweeping back and forth trying to get them in,
but the markers and numbers pile up on the edge. I stumble over myself and try to
make it to the hospital, but already I know the bed is empty and she’s gone.
I’m dividing my time between the motion of rights and lefts, and my thoughts
swing with my arms. My arms swing into the air with the tick and I sweep the ground
with the tock. The clock and I are circumscribed to a single motion. “The
clock doesn’t seem to mind,” my boss says each time he sees me stretch
and take a breath.
In memory I can clearly see her hand, and the book, but nothing else. Her doctor
called, and told me she wouldn’t last much longer. Her liver was weak, and
her bones were frail. She was no longer an image; just a body with tubes stuffed
up her nose, and jammed into her arms. Her hands were bony and brittle. She looked
at me and said, “I’m becoming the hospital, I’m afraid. We taste
the same. We sound the same. My voice resonates like the sound of surgical instruments
being brought together. Too bad my words can’t cut.”
Dust and hair are entangled in the broom; I stand in wonder, how are the two ever
separated? My mother held to life internally through the glimmer of her eyes. She’d
stare outside as puddles came and went, flowers bloomed and dried. The skin on her
arms grew pale, and the hair on her head was clinging in wisps of silver strands.
When the snow began to melt I’d find her at the window, struggling to get
it open, saying, “My hair will blow away like stalks of dandelions, just wait.”
The hospital had become overcrowded, and my mother wanted nothing more but to be
home. The night before I picked her up I dreamed she fell apart at our door. I reached
for her hand, and her fingers broke off in mine, bone turned to ash and I watched
it sift through my fingers. I asked just once, “What did it all mean?”
Her lips crumbled apart and the words slid out in a whisper, “I’ll tell
you in a bit. I’m dying now.”
My boss tells me I’m done. I put my things into my backpack and sling it over
my shoulders. Once outside my bus passes me by. I run to the stop, but I’m
too late; I see the light turn red down the way and my feet slap the concrete. I
run and wave my arms trying to get the driver’s attention. I get to the bus
and go to knock on the door, but as I do the light turns green and the bus pulls
away. I run knowing my mother waits; she wilts on the couch and smokes a cigarette,
taps out the ashes in her drink and drinks it anyways. The driver won’t wait,
and I can feel my mother turning to dust. She’s already crumbling, and so
I run.
is a writer based in Chicago, and is currently attending Northeastern Illinois
University.