Free Missing Mom by Joyce Carol Oates

dark oily liquid spread beneath Mom and on her lacerated neck and chest and lower body yet I continued to think that she must have fainted and struck her head. I believed that I could see her breathing. Pulses beat so violently in my eyes, I could not be sure what I was seeing. As in a dream I approached her. I seemed to be floating and yet I must have stumbled, I’d struck my leg on the handle of something metallic for there would be a bruise on my shin afterward, I felt nothing at the time. Mom was lying awkwardly on her right side, her right arm outstretched as if reaching for help and her left arm twisted beneath her. Her face was turned upward, her skin was deathly white as I’d never seen it before. Her eyes were partly opened and I believed that they were aware of me.
    I was sobbing, pleading: Mom! Mom! Mom! I was kneeling beside her. I touched her, tried to move her arm that had stiffened. I tried to lift her. I tried to revive her. But her skin was so strangely cold. I thought, There is something wrong, Mom’s skin is so cold and it isn’t winter now. When I leaned over her something ruptured and began bleeding in my chest.
    Mom’s pretty clothes, stained in blood! A blue linen jacket, a floral print blouse that matched a blouse Mom had sewed for me back in high school. Blue cotton knit slacks stained in blood.
    I panicked, on my feet and swaying. I could not faint: I could not give in. I fumbled to open the garage door. The switch, where was the switch! My fingers were slippery. It was crucial, my mother needed fresh air, to help her breathe. The sickening stench of blood in this confined space must have caused her to faint, and fall.
    The garage door opened so slowly! A rumbling of gears overhead. My bloody fingers would leave their imprint on the switch that operated the door. The bloodstained soles of my shoes, jogging shoes with articulated ridges, would leave their imprint on the concrete floor and on the asphalt drive outside: clearly at first, then diminishing as I ran from the garage. I knew that I had to get help for Mom for I could not revive her and yet it was a terrible thing to leave her alone, and so helpless. I was partway down the drive when I heard my name called in a faint anxious voice Nikki !
    I understood: I was the only one. I was all that Mom had.
    When I returned to the garage I saw that Mom was moving. I saw that Mom was breathing. Through my pulsing eyes, I saw. I ran back to her, and tried to lift her. It seemed to me in my confusion that if Mom could be lifted to her feet and if she could stand, she would be revived, she would be all right. It was a matter of balance, wasn’t it? Mom was looking at me now, her glassy eyes fixed upon my face, I saw that she recognized me, always I would believe that she recognized me, yet her head fell back limp, her mouth was open in a way unlike her and there was a terrible raw wound beneath her chin. So much blood, so many hidden wounds. Her skin was clammy as before, her body was oddly stiff and resistant and heavier than I had known it and she had not moved, she had not been breathing, and yet she had called to me, I’d heard her!
    This had been a mistake, whatever had happened. My mother had been stabbed many times. Someone had been angry with her to stab her so, and that was not possible. There’d been some mistake, whoever had done this had come to the wrong house. He could not have wanted Gwen Eaton, it had been a mistake.
    Tenderly I laid Mom back onto the floor. I pulled a strip of canvas partway beneath her. It would be difficult to explain afterward what I’d done or had intended to do and yet it was logical at the time, and necessary. I would make Mom comfortable, I would position her at rest. She would appear to be sleeping. There is peace in sleeping. There is not horror, pain, ugliness in sleeping. I must have shut her eyes. I must have touched her eyelids, to shut them. Never had I dared touch another person’s eyes in such a