Original fiction · Chapter 1 of 2
The Lines My Mother Kept
The contractor was waiting for my signature when I asked him to stop the truck.
He had loaded the old porch boards and the storm door. On top of the pile was the narrow strip of wood from the kitchen doorway, the one with our heights marked in pencil.
I thought he'd leave it in the house. I hadn't thought to tell him.
Mom was sitting on the front step with a tape measure on her lap. She'd sold the house after the stairs started giving her trouble. I'd taken two days off to help her move, which was more time than I'd spent there in the last four years. We had got good at having conversations about what size box we needed.
The contractor brought the strip down and set it against the railing. I recognized the line from the year I wore my hair in a high ponytail and tried to count it as part of my height. I also recognized my father's marks. He always pressed hard enough to leave a dent.
Below them, in the corner I could never see when I stood straight, was a set of dates from after I'd moved away. There was no name. The lines went up slowly, an inch at a time.
“Whose are those?”
Mom asked the contractor if he could give us a minute. He went back to the truck.
I had a daughter, Tessa, who was six. Mom had met her twice. They'd spoken on the phone plenty, but I hadn't brought her to the house. After Dad died, Mom and I had a fight about how I'd spent his last week in the hospital. We remembered the words differently. I knew that because we both kept repeating them.
I put my thumb against the lowest line. It had been made the year Tessa turned one.
“Did she come here with somebody?” I asked.
“No,” Mom said. “Those are hers, though.” She reached into the pocket of her sweater and took out a folded envelope I recognized from my own kitchen drawer.
