Vamoose
Kathy Anderson The sisters took a walk every morning to relieve the extreme boredom of watching their mother die. Dying was the slowest process in the world. It seemed every stinking cell had its own turnoff switch and every rattling breath was designed to trigger yet another. There was grief too, and a surreal state of denial, but the overriding feeling they had was an intense stultification that reminded them of being in elementary school, trapped in a class that would not end, where a teacher mouthed unintelligible, meaningless facts at them and all the sisters wanted was for the bell to ring and release them to a recess yard full of fresh air and sunshine. They walked at different times so that Mother was never left alone. Those glorious walks. A sister by herself is a happy sister. Neither of them could believe they had survived an entire childhood crammed into that tiny row house bedroom, in bunk beds stacked over each other like prisoners in a jail cell. They had both left home as soon as they could and had never gone back. Wednesday was returning home from what she thought of as her morning sanity walk when a purple van pulled up, its sides festooned with a huge logo reading Mice-Be-Gone and a horrifying graphic of a stampede of mice swarming a kitchen. She gagged and doubled over the sidewalk, trying to keep her chocolate croissant inside. “I told you not to call them,” she cried to Tuesday, her older sister, who was holding the front door wide open for the