This New Land
by Janice Scudder
And my mother settles for her nap. Ninety years ago on a Sunday morning cathedral stones outside run blue and grey. Inside hard brown wooden pews for the backsides of sinners. Grubby white-lace on the tops of short socks puckered into scuffed black leather shoes. Her best hand-me-down dress from the rich cousins in America. Pleated yellow roses too tight across her breasts. Murmur the Latin rosary with her mam and a special intention to the Sacred Heart of Jesus just in case. The nine o’clock Mass done and absolved and sanctified she’s out in the street, a hop and a skip along the quay and the auburn curls jump up and down. No sense not using her momentum. Please, mam? Hot greasy cod and chips soused with lashings of red vinegar for her tea. And my mother wakes up. She feels along white-washed walls to the safe shore of the empty worn brown leather chair. The sickness flushing the color from her face. Pounding its iron drum tattoo in her chest. Love is, she’s calling me by my father’s name. Please can you give me a safe place for my heart, she says. And love is, I hold her hand, whisper I have nowhere else to be, wipe specks of sour vomit from her mouth with my palm.
Janice Scudder is a poet and novelist who lives in Colorado.