Margaret Stanwood

What she deserved

Momma died on a snowy and bitter Tuesday in January. An awfully normal day to die, Tuesday. When I found her body in the yard, I suppose I should have been sad but I thought good riddance instead. She looked like a statue, skin as cold as marble and snow coloring her eyelashes and dark hair white. That would have made her mad. She spent almost an entire Saturday every month aggressively searching her hair for evidence of her age and when found, slathering it in a dark paste until it accepted defeat. Even gray hairs couldn’t stand up to Momma. Blood trickled out of her mouth, a splash of red in a colorless scene. Her eyes weren’t closed and it looked like she was staring off into the distance, which gave me the heebie jeebies, so I kicked snow over her face until I couldn’t see them anymore. I didn’t believe in respecting the dead, especially when the dead in question had beat the shit out of me most days of the week and twice on Sundays.