Free Don't Call Me Mother by Linda Joy Myers

of his leaving fills my body.
    To console myself, I follow Uncle Maj outside to putter in the garden. Thick storm clouds gather in the darkening sky. Uncle Maj’s white hair sticks up in the wind, and his face is red from working hard. A thorn sticks his thumb, and I touch his hand. “You’re hurt, Uncle Maj. Let me get a Band-Aid.”
    “Oh, it happens all the time. I don’t mind bleeding once in a while for my beauties. Here, put these gloves on. You can help me.”
    He teaches me how to loosen the soil from the roots, and how to angle the cuts as he trims the roses. “If you cut the roses back hard, they’ll burst into a fuller bloom in spring. Sometimes cutting things back is a way to make them bloom better.”
    I yearn for the spring, the yellow daffodils and the roses. I sense that there is a right time for everything, but never for Daddy leaving.

    We all ride in Aunt Helen’s car for the drive to the station. Daddy smiles at me, patting my shoulder, but I can see that his mind is already on Chicago and his exciting life there. I get out of the car at Perry, the wind pushing against my back, blowing me toward my father. I grab his thick, warm hand and brush the hair on his knuckles with the tip of my finger. His Old Spice makes me want to cry and grab at him, begging him to stay, but I just watch the train get bigger as it comes into the station, steeling myself for what I know comes next. The whistle haunts me, warning me to get ready.
    “You be a good girl for your Gram,” he says, then turns his back, his shoes tapping on the bricks as he strides to the train.
    The train roars and trembles. The hard wind reminds me how small I am, and that there is nothing I can do about people leaving. I watch every detail of the leaving ritual, trying to take the ache away. The train men bring in the steel steps, and the conductors wave and whistle. The doors snap shut. My father waves—oh, so happily—from his square window. I memorize him, his wide smile, the gleam of his bald head. I’m ready to live on another year of memories.
    I watch until the train is lost in mist and smoke.

 
    Liberace
    The roofline of our neighbor’s house creates a triangle of yellow sun on my rug. During a full moon, the triangle is milk-blue but so bright you can read by its light. The Great Plains is like that, heat and light everywhere. Even the storms are exciting, making my blood swell and rush like the wind and the clouds and the boughs of the great trees.
    The neighbors in the house next door are a real family with a mother, a father, a little girl, and even a dog. Sometimes I wish I lived in that bustling house with a real mom and a dad. George comes home every night after working at Sears. Ruth is always sweet, and she’s tender toward Cherie, who is two years younger than me. The dog’s name is Pudgy, a yipping miniature boxer that I’ve grown to love despite the fact that I was bitten by a dog once.
    Ruth and George’s house vaulted to mansion status after they got a television. They’re one of the first families in town to have a TV. Once in a while Ruth invites Gram and me over on a Saturday night to watch Liberace. All our neighbors have variations of the same house—white walls, beige couch, plastic sheets covering pale carpets. The neighbors’ houses are neat, with no newspapers, books, or forgotten bills piled up. Our house is wallpapered with dark green and burgundy flowers, a French design, Gram said. The maroon ceiling seems to press me into the hot wool of our Oriental rug. Sometimes I can hardly breathe.
    Tonight is Liberace time. A smiling Ruth wears an organdy apron and bears a plate of chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies. All of us are entranced by the small, mahogany box and the black-and-white picture: Liberace’s hands swoop up and down the piano; the silver candelabra sparkles. We all know that Gram is nuts about Liberace, with his super-white teeth, his wrists as graceful as a cat’s tail. “Oh, look at