So Much
Depends Upon
Randall Brown
I
drag the red wheelbarrow up the hill, the handle too big, its tires banging
into my heels and ankles; atop the hill, another me appears, to watch as I'm
jolted on the ride down, to yell, "Hold on," to rush down when the
wagon topples over and I am thrown away.
I call my mother to say
Happy Birthday. She says, "Happy, hah, if you only knew the shit I was
going through."
Do you know what Sisyphus did to earn his punishment of an eternity of
rock rolling? When Death came for Sisyphus, he chained Death in his closet and
no one could die and the limbless wandered the earth, full of phantom pains and
phantom reaches for things and people they could not grasp.
In my dreams, pills drop as if shaken from a bottle the size of
heaven. I want the orange one.
My mother repeats "I
love you so much" until her voice deteriorates into something like silence.
This has nothing to do with me.
And Atlas, too, could not stand the boundaries Fate demanded of him,
so he left the earth to march upon
The other me finds me too late, the pill already dissolved, me already
beginning to be okay with my brokenness without him.
I catch coherency now and
then in my mother's talk--rehab, assholes, sorry, stop, car crash, scratches,
let off.
The other me says, "I don't matter."
My mother stops.
"Are you still there?"
I should tell her about the red wheelbarrow hurtling toward something,
of going forward while also leaving something behind. Our hill, our backyard,
and she lay stretched on a lounge chair, covered in baby oil, glistening and
untouchable.
"I'm hanging
up," she says.
I wanted to run her over but couldn't hold on.
"This is it."
"Hold on!"
In
the waking world, the body arranges itself for sleep. The muscles draw
themselves tight, the eyes unbalance themselves, until the body slows down and
the muscle relax, and the vigorous life of dreams is counterbalanced by the
paralysis of our bodies. We are immobilized by dreams, not because of any
inherent weakness or lack of courage, but because we must be; otherwise, each
night, we'd thrash ourselves to death.
I'm overturned and cannot speak. My mother holds her empty glass in
the air and shrieks: "Get up! Get up! Can't you see I'm burning?"
The sound of the footsteps, like a rain of rocks, as the other me runs
down the hill, past my body, unable to reach to grasp his arm or leg—and he
snatches the orange glass and brings it back to her, a chalice brimming with
ice and Maker's Mark bourbon.
Author’s
Bio:
Randall Brown is a teacher who lives
outside of