Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 70429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
It didn’t matter no more if I ate all of my vegetables, and didn’t give Mama any sass.
Mama was a strange shade of blue… not a pretty purple like my crayon.
She made no sounds. She was quiet. Mama was never quiet. Our house was loud ’tween me, Sue, and her. She kept music playin’. Candles lit. Ovens hot with food cookin’, and lots of sizzle. She kept the vacuum going, and the broom sweepin’. She kept the television loud. She sang noisy songs and strummed a guitar on Sundays for relaxation. Mama lived out LOUD. She spoke no evil. Mama could sing so pretty… and now I realized, I’d never hear that voice again. That laugh. Mama dangled high in the rafters like an angel, but she had no glow. She would forever be a strange shade of blue.
Aunt Angel gripped me so tight, I thought I was going to melt against her. Her cheeks were like mine now. Red strawberries.
“I love you, Caspian. It’s gonna be okay, baby. It’s gonna be okay.” She sobbed out loud, at times buckling at the knees as she stroked my back. Uncle Bobby rubbed her shoulder and buried his face in her hair.
“Where’s Sue?” I questioned amongst the commotion.
Once again, no one answered me. It was as if my words were invisible. I told the police about the man Mama had a tiff with, but they didn’t seem to care. They should have, ’cause Mama went to bed in the sky right after he left. The teddy bear slipped from my hands, but I held firm to that crayon. It was the only thing I had from my house. My home.
I began to feel as if I were floating, but away from myself, if that made any sense. It was like I could see myself in another dimension, ya know? And I was getting smaller and smaller, and smaller as I traveled, floating away like a dead star fallin’ from the sky. I no longer wanted to walk. I no longer wanted to talk. I just wanted to drift between the colored lines, lie close to the purple crayons and make snow angels in the buckets of spilled bird seed right beside my mama. I only wanted to hear Madonna, Sue, and Mama’s voices. Nobody else’s.
I wasn’t certain when it happened, when it began, but I lost my voice not long after Mama died.
I was stuck in a dream. It had to have been—a horrible one. I stood there lookin’ at Mama in a box, a bunch of people in a church cryin’, wailin’, and carrying on. Some minister man stood around with a book called the Bible, talking about Heaven and how God had Mama, and forgives her for her transgressions. What in the heck was a transgression? That man didn’t even know my mama, and he didn’t know God, ’cause Mama said God looked different to all of us, so how would he even recognize Him? I had so many questions, but they fell on deaf ears. Finally, Aunt Angel tried to explain to me, to the best of her ability, what the heck suicide was. I finally understood it, but see, that couldn’t be.
Aunt Angel said it could be, ’cause Mama had somethin’ called depression. Said she had it for years. I told Aunt Angel that Mama would never hang herself, because she had me and Sue-Sue to look after. Mama told me I gave her a reason to wake up in the mornin’. She told me just like that, just that way, not long before this suicide stuff. Why would Mama lie to me? She never lied to me. And besides, who was gonna take me to school, and tell me I had to go even when I cried? Who was going to make me clean up my room, then give me a piece of candy if I did it real nice? Who was going to play games with me, and chase me around the house, then tickle me until I’d almost choke now? And where was Sue?
I heard Aunt Angel on the phone after the funeral, telling someone that my Mama took those little white pills she kept on her dresser, drank some of her favorite wine, turned on Madonna, climbed on the bed, then hung a long white scarf from the rafter, just like so. After I told her ’bout the gruff-voiced man, she said maybe Mama was depressed that they’d broken up, but that she loved me, and just wasn’t thinking right that night.
That didn’t make no sense to me… but I was just a little kid. What did I know? I didn’t know who my daddy was. I didn’t know much at all, but I knew my Mama loved me. She also loved bubble gum and would share it with me. Some said Mama was troubled. Some said she was hard-headed. Some said she lived her life on her own terms. Some said a lot of things, but for almost a whole damn year after she slept above me, her blue slippers dangling in my face, I said nothing…