Sundown

“What building is that?” my mother asks, looking emptily out the window from her hospital bed.

“That’s my elementary school,” I explain. “We’re not far from your house. Remember you used to walk me there when I was in kindergarten?”

She examines the school’s silhouette, brow furrowed in confusion as the sun creeps closer to the roofline, shadow shrouding the red brick pattern of the structure across the street. The green paint once coating the bell above the side entrance has chipped and faded; only a few dull flecks remain. I can still hear its jarring, military ring; see the children lining up single file; smell the mustiness of the cafeteria as the doors open, and mothers gather on the curb to give one last smile to their waving children, disappearing one by one through the double doors.  

“Do you have school tomorrow?” she asks.

“I do,” I lie, trying to join her, to be a denizen of the world she now inhabits. She’s here in this rehab facility to get stronger, they tell me, to more thoroughly heal after her surgery so she can be safe at home. But I know wellness is behind her, somewhere back in a world where she still has my father, her sisters, a house full of children to cook for and the recollection of all our names.

She starts as the phone rings at the nurses’ station just down the hall.

“We better get in line,” she warns, grabbing my wrist, thinking she’s heard the bell across the street. “Ma will be mad if we’re late for school.”

“We have time,” I say. “That’s just the warning bell. Ma wrote us a tardy note so we wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“She knows we’re here?”

“Of course,” I reassure her. “Ma knows everything.”

Her lips form a smile that fades almost as quickly as it appears, and as the last glimmer of sun dips down behind the school, my mother nods off, exhausted by the long day she thinks she’s endured.

James M. Maskell has taught high school English for over twenty years and writes in the early mornings before heading off to class. His poetry has been featured in Loud Coffee Press; and his first non-fiction work is forthcoming in Windmill: The Hofstra Journal of Art and Literature.