Branches Book

BRANCHES

I didn’t want to hurt you more. So when I went to stay at dad’s while you were in the hospital, I didn’t tell you that we had dessert three nights in a row, each night something different from the last. And when you didn’t show up to my parent teacher conference because the doctors said you were “too unstable” to leave the hospital, I lied to my teacher and told her you were sick with the flu. I wanted, almost needed, to make you happy, to fix you. When Jacques told us he had to return to France indefinitely for work, I knew that no one else was trying to do it and you weren’t going to fix yourself. I took it upon myself to enter the talent show at the hospital, where sick children or family members of patients could sign up to perform a song. I practiced and rehearsed Pippin’s “Corner of the Sky” to perfection and received nothing short of a standing ovation from the half dozen audience members. I won first place and they gave me a plastic gold trophy with paint already chipping, giving away the shiny exterior, but I didn’t care. I rushed to your room, room 204 on the second floor, to show you my prize. The room was bleak with chipping white paint and I smelled a sugary sweetness that made my nose crinkle and my eyes water. Your skin was so white, I almost laughed. It looked as if you were wearing face paint, like the dancers who paint their faces for Day of the Dead to look like skeletons. You held an uncanny resemblance. When I walked towards your bedside your eyes were half closed and the nurse warned me you might not be totally coherent because of the meds you’d been given. I wanted to ask the nurse what the medicine would do for you but she left before I could form the question. I rushed to your bedside, practically shoving the trophy in your face. Although I knew better than to expect outright praise from you even then, a part of me was still hoping for “good job” or “I’m proud of you” in response. But you didn’t respond. Instead you gargled an inaudible reply and closed your eyes, leaning your head back onto the pillow. I wondered if you had even noticed the trophy. We remained this way for so long, you seemingly asleep and me still holding the trophy in mid air, the two of us the perfect portrait of optimistic child and disappointing mother, holding out my prize, willing you to acknowledge it, but getting nothing in return. I look back on this moment now and wonder if I had known deep down what was to come. That my temporary stay at dad’s house would become permanent, that you would never leave this hospital for the remainder of your life. Whether I knew it or not, in that moment all I could think of was the trophy, and my burning need for you to acknowledge it, to acknowledge me. You hardly moved and said nothing for so long that I considered leaving. But then you opened your eyes and with one shaking hand you placed your

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