“Lifeline” by Sumita Mukherji (fiction, ’15)

 A story by Sumita Mukerji (fiction, ’15) appears in SmokeLong Quarterly:

 

Lifeline

 

Pia hides under the breakfast table while her mother hunches on the couch and scratches at her palm. Inside the house, acrid air. Leaves of Grass—her mother’s favorite, gifted from Pia’s father—long unopened. The slap-slapping of her mother’s sandal as she bobs her knee. The way her polyester pant leg flutters, the way her mouth trembles as she mutters to herself. The hairs on top of her mother’s lip, unshaven. Pia wants to crawl out from under the table, to remind her that she’s there. But her mother’s ample mouth droops, and Pia remains where she is.

For several minutes her mother has been scratching—distressingly, achingly—at her lifeline. The trait isn’t new, but the intensity is. As each minute passes, Pia’s stomach sinks, to her thighs, her knees, her feet. Her mother squeezes her own wrist. Veins Pia never noticed push against her skin. Pia sits on her heels, and her sundress rustles—surely her mother will notice—but there again is that acrylic nail against dry skin.

After a while, her mother studies her palm. She scratched at her lifeline when Pia’s father trained for a marathon, lengthening the time of scratching with each new mile he ran. She scratched when her father went to bed earlier than Pia did. And when he went out at midnight to drive along the highway. And now, once more, her mother’s determined scrape-scraping. Like the calico who visits their yard, scratching at the back door’s screen.[…continue reading here]