Lullaby and goodnight…The song came back to Karen on an evening rare and fragrant. She could nearly hear the voice that sung it. She knew it had been soft and sweet and that it contained tears. The windchimes tickled by a small poof of breeze conjured a mobile - shiny - and it had music too. The tune, Karen couldn’t remember, but she knew it was happy. And there were pictures of sweet clowns on the walls, which were painted blue, like the sky and swirled white into winsome clouds.
Lullaby and goodnight…the voice reached for Karen again and she pulled her old sweater around herself - tighter to make a cocoon that could embrace her anxiety. She chewed on her lower lip, craving a cigarette, something she’d given up in a previous life along with booze and fast-talking men.
“What woman gives away her own child?” Karen had asked herself repeatedly over the years - and more now that she had a child of her own who slept like an angel in her room, inside the house that belonged to the steps that Karen sat upon. Waiting.
Karen checked her watch but couldn’t see the time. She should have turned on the porch light and waited inside, but she didn’t want to make it easy for her. Why should she? The woman had never made it easy for Karen. “What mother doesn’t want their own child?”
Karen sat in the dark and waited against her instincts, her better judgment. Lullaby and goodnight...the warble sought her out again which teased tears from large grey eyes. Did they have the same eyes? So many birthdays, so many years of looking, hoping. Meeting only the answer, no. So much time gone by that Karen regretted consenting to see her. Instead, Karen wanted to hurt her, make her feel abandoned, lost and unwanted.
The breeze grew stronger and leaves skittered like a thousand tap-dancing mice across the walk. “What mommy doesn’t want her little girl?” the question screamed in Karen’s head.
A car made a slow ascent up the hill and in her direction. Karen tensed. Was this it? Would she finally face the woman who gave her to strangers? The car rolled to a stop with a slight squeak and Karen was on her feet, halfway down the walk, no longer thinking of old wounds and past betrayals, but reacting with a need that had never left her.
The passenger side window powered down and the driver leaned toward it. “I’m looking for 132 Oak, is this it?” the man asked.
Karen stopped mid-step, shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “No,” she pointed east, “it’s that way.”
The driver nodded and put the car in motion and headed back down the hill and Karen, toward the house. She wasn’t coming. Too much a coward. The story would have no ending - happy or otherwise.
Karen released the tears from their prison of restraint and stood at the steps weeping, hugging herself, knowing that truth would never be hers and that God had decided that she didn’t deserve it.
Then a hand touched her shoulder. “Karen? Don’t cry, dear.”
Karen dare not turn, not look, not believe - she could not bear to see emptiness again.
“Karen, it’s me … your mother..” and the voice was like the song, the lullaby and the hand was gentle on her trembling shoulder.
“I can’t look,” Karen wept. “I can’t look,” she whispered raggedly.
“It’s all right, I understand. You don’t have to look. I’ll just stand right here - so you won’t be alone.”
As Karen wept, the hand of her mother rested gently on her shoulder and stayed there as an anchor to the truth of them. And Karen’s mother sang, “Lullaby and goodnight…”
copyright 2008
