Free The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen Page B

past the sink, back toward the door.
    â€œI’ll call you when I’m done,” Mama says.

    â€œAll right,” Illa says over her shoulder. “I’ll finish making your breakfast in the meantime.”
    â€œNot feeling hungry, I said.”
    â€œBut Dr. Lawrence says—”
    â€œThat man says a lot of things.”
    â€œOkay,” she yields. Odd that her mother would refuse food, but Illa doesn’t want to get into a fight on her first day of full-time work. It would cast a pall over an already bleak summer. “I’ll get you a change of clothes, then,” she says, a little too loud.
    After emerging into the hallway, Illa wanders to her mother’s closet. When she kneels to rummage in the dresser for a shirt, her eyes wander to the shoe boxes in the corner. After Mama gave up on the physical therapy, she went through the house and collected all the old pictures of herself and hid them here, a kind of graveyard for her former self. She also stashed away her yearbooks, anything that reminded her of who she was. Illa missed the photos; she had been proud and a little envious of her mother’s intelligent, hawkish good looks. The deep-set Mediterranean eyes and fine, high forehead over which she side-swept her straight dark hair. Illa had thought her mother’s body was just as a woman’s should be—not wiry and boyish, like Illa’s, but voluptuous in a way that was both maternal and secretive.

    Taking a seat on the floor of the closet, Illa slides a yearbook out from under the shoe boxes. She flips to the index to see where her mother appears in the book and is somewhat surprised by the long list of page numbers. She knew her mother had been well liked, but the number of times Mama appeared in the book suggests a level of popularity Illa can’t believe belonged to someone related to her. One by one, she thumbs through the photos, most of which are blurry and crowded with other kids. A group outside the Pelican Club, one of the all-night roadhouse dance halls over the state line; kids cheering at the edge of the Red Dump while someone slides down the mud bank and into the mucky water below; Mama posing coquettishly, hand over her mouth in mock fear, next to a ten-foot gator that someone caught and killed. Seeing the ease with which Mama navigated high school life gives Illa a flash of that old pride; she keeps turning the pages.
    Buried in a section called “Junior Life” is a photo of Mama and Charmaine Boudreaux, Mercy Louis’s long-gone mother. They’re at the beach, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, the Gulf spread out like mercury behind them. Mama wears a white two-piece, her hair wild with the salt wind, the lids of her eyes drifting to half-mast, giving her a sleepy, sexy quality. Next to Mama’s Brigitte Bardot, Charmaine is well scrubbed and guileless, a chambray shirtdress falling slackly around her thin frame, face turned toward Mama adoringly. The image makes Illa’s heart beat fast. Was her mother friends with Mercy’s mom, or were they just standing near each other by chance when the photographer passed by, the picture capturing a closeness that never existed?
    Illa decides to ask her mother, even if it might pain her to look at the photo. Maybe Mama needs to be reminded of how strong and beautiful she once was so she’ll have something to work toward. Remembering why she’s in the closet in the first place, Illa stands to choose out a skirt. As she flips through the hangers, her hand lingers over the only serious outfit her mother still owns, a black jersey-knit dress with three-quarter sleeves that she wears whenever she leaves the house. In the past six months, there have been three such trips: two to the doctor’s office, and one more recently, to last winter’s memorial service marking the third anniversary of the refinery explosion. Tensing in her chair, Illa waited for her mother to