Less than a year had passed since my mother died from a burst valve in a heart no one knew was faulty. That’s raw when you’re ten. And then Buttercup died. Buttercup was an albino guinea pig with eyes like maraschino cherries. She wasn’t mine. Samantha owned Buttercup, loved her. She gave the rodent a funeral, lined a shoebox with plaid and paisley fabric scraps filched from her grandma’s craft room and had her truck-driver daddy dig a deep hole out back beside the swing set. She sobbed as dirt covered the cardboard and filled the hole to the grassline. For my mother’s funeral, I sat in my Easter dress in the front pew of Mt. Carmel church, my five siblings and stunned father beside me. August heat left a sweat mark on my stomach where the pastel sash pulled tight. I looked at the harsh red altar carpet, at the supplicating statue arms of Mary as she held them out to candle-lighters, at the stained glass windows with their bright and bubbled saints—anywhere but at the powder blue casket that held my mother, her body quiet and still as a wet leaf on a windless day. Friday nights I … Continue reading Calcification