I’m on the sidewalk in front of my next-door neighbor’s house, just returning from my morning dog walk, when my mother calls. I tell her I’m just getting home, but I can talk for five to 10 minutes. Mom says, I want to talk for more than five to 10 minutes. I say, Talk. She asks what’s going on, and I tell her my students are doing presentations on topics such as, “Was Nick Caraway from The Great Gatsby gay?” And “Afrofuturism as a Tool for Empowerment.” I ask if she knows what Afrofuturism is because I know she doesn’t know because until yesterday I didn’t know. The future of African people? She asks. It’s Black Sci-Fi, I say. Sounds boring, she says. What’s the difference between Black and White Sci-Fi? I begin to explain: Black Sci-Fi is often about racial issues. The figure of the Alien—but she cuts me off: No one will want to read that. I feel like reaching through the phone and smacking her. Do you want to have a conversation with me, or do you just want to be negative? I ask. I’m just telling you my opinion. She shifts to talking about what a mess her house is, how she needs to hire a house cleaner. To take everything out of the fridge and wipe down the shelves. To get down and dust the baseboards. This? I think. This is what she would prefer to talk about over literature? Sticky shelves and dusty baseboards? When I cut her off, she says, Sorry my life is so boring. I feel a stab of guilt. I just don’t want to talk about how you need a house cleaner, I say. And I just don’t want to talk about Afrofuturism, she says. We hang up soon after that—it’s been five to 10 minutes—and I think to myself: This is the end of the story. I loved my mother; now I cannot stand her. The end. There will be no redemptive third act.

When she calls me a couple days later, I don’t answer. But when she tries again later that week, I sense remorse. I take a walk and call her back. She asks what’s going on; I talk about writing and again she talks about hiring a housecleaner, but this time, she catches herself: Sorry my life is so boring. Is she bored? No, she’s not bored, she reads newspapers and magazines and watches TV; she just finished Feud: Capote vs. The Swans and thinks I should watch it. But sometimes I do obsess over certain things, she says. Like what? I ask. Like I get to thinking about certain things, like how my dad would line us all up and spank us, just because my mother had a bad day. Why did she let him do that? Why didn’t I stand up to my parents? She says once when she was a little girl, she and her sister Pat and her brother Paul were playing with Lincoln Logs on the floor of the boys’ room—Oh, God, I think, here we go—and for some reason they started sucking on the green roof pieces and the paint leaked all over their lips and chins and fingers, and when her mother found them all a green mess, she spanked them. Her mother shouldn’t have spanked them, but my mother understands. Eight kids in that little three-bedroom house. How did she do it? Mom asks. She did her best, I say, because I’m not a mother, and I know I don’t know how hard it is. I guess, Mom answers. And sometimes I obsess over things I’ve said to you. What I should have said different.

I come to a halt, like I’ve spotted a big white bird on a neighbor’s front lawn. Maybe she can change, I think. Maybe the story’s not over. I beam, but I stay quiet, not wanting to scare her away. I loved my mother, then I couldn’t stand her, and then she did her best.
___

Natalie Villacorta is a writer from McLean, Virginia. She writes both creative nonfiction and fiction, and her work appears in the Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Joyland, and is forthcoming in the Beloit Fiction Journal and Pithead Chapel. She teaches creative writing at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. You can follow her on instagram @writingbeaver.

Artwork by Char Gardner