TheBanyanTree: Story #3-MAMA'S SONG

[Sharon Mack]

Journal Prompt 

Thursday July 29, 2004

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you
renew your springs that never dry up. ~Pearl S. Buck 

MAMA'S SONG

"My inner spring dried up long time ago.  Actually don't ever b'lieve
there wuz one to begin with."

Kara drew hard on her cigarette, twisting her mouth to blow the smoke
sideways away from Dev's face. She laughed a raspy laugh and then
coughed a smoker's cough!  

Dev looked at her sadly, "Of course there was Kara.  Think back to a
good time.  Perhaps when you were a child or when you were younger. 
Maybe there was a time before you..." he stumbled here, "...a
you...ah...entered the profession."

She laughed and her dead eyes came alive momentarily.  "The profession?
 Is that what you call this here that I'm doin'?  A profession?"  Her
hand shook slightly as she took another pull from her cigarette.

"Isn't there one good time you can go back to?"  Dev persisted.

Kara grew quiet, stubbed out her cigarette but not before lighting the
next one with it.  She let her arm hang off the chair loosely and
flicked the new cigarette nervously even though there was no ash yet. 
Dev sat quietly letting her go back, letting her think.

"Y' know," she turned in her seat and leaned close to Dev.  He could
smell her stale alcohol breath and cheap perfume.  He wanted to pull
away but he didn't want to offend her.  Maybe they were getting
someplace at last.  Maybe he could do some good.  Maybe she would die
peacefully, drawing from that spring at last.

"Once when I was a itty bitty thang, before the uncle and my brother
got their hands on me, there mighta' been a minute up in the woods
behind our house.  I was there with my ma and she was washin' clothes
and was singin'.  I sat on a rock next to that old wringer washer and
learned the words.  She had a purty voice and I wanted to sing jest like
her.  'Course I couldn't, but I useta' dream that maybe when I grew
up....but then the uncle came in ta live with us and my brother came
home from jail and I ain't never thought about it agin....till now
anyways.

Dev smiled a slow sad smile.

"You think on that moment Kara...just that moment and nothing else. 
That's your inner spring.  Sing the song with your mother like you did
that day.  Listen to her voice."  

Kara put her head back and sighed.  She closed her eyes and smiled a
little girl's smile.




She never saw it coming...Dev's hand on the knife as he raised it to
her throat.  She never saw the tear fall from his eye as he sliced her
throat, or the gentle way he placed her body on the floor and kissed her
tired face.

Placing her hands across her chest and the knife next to her still
body, Dev felt sure he had done a good thing and she had died
peacefully....drawing from her inner spring at last.

Sharon L. Mack