Chapter 19 sun down (2)

I watched her spread her hands and smile at me.I had forgotten what a pleasure it was to hear my mother tell about herself.What a relief it was for me to have my mother talk about herself instead of me. "One's life goes by quickly, doesn't it, Charlie?" "Yeah," I murmured. "What a shame to waste time. And we always feel like we have plenty of time." I think of the days when I gave myself to the bottle, the nights when I don't remember what I did.Those mornings I spent in my lethargy.Those days of trying to get myself drunk! "It's time for you to have dinner," she said.

With that said, we went back to the kitchen and sat around the round table for the last time.There are fried chicken, yellow rice and grilled eggplant on the table. They are hot and exude a familiar smell. My mother has cooked this kind of dinner for my sister and me hundreds of times.But instead of the huge euphoria I felt when I first got back into the house, now, I feel a little restless, restless, as if I know something bad is going to happen.She looked at me, a little worried.I wanted to distract her so I said: "Tell me about the past." "Charlie, I told you all about it," she said.

My head was about to explode. "Tell me again." She narrated.She brought up her parents, both immigrants, who died before I was born.She told me she had two uncles and a crazy aunt.My aunt refuses to learn English and is very superstitious.She also talked about her cousins, Joy and Eddie, who both lived on the West Coast.Everyone has a little story (“she who was so scared of dogs”, “he who wanted to be in the navy when he was 15”), and now I’ve mapped those little details to each name.In the past, when Mama mentioned these things, Luberta and I rolled our eyes, impatient to listen to her.But many years later, after the funeral, Maria asked me many things about my family—who was to whom, etc.—and I often couldn't answer.I can't remember.A lot of our history has been buried with Mom.You, absolutely don't let your own history disappear like this.

So this time, I listened carefully to my mother telling the story of each branch of the family.Mom snapped her fingers and told all the family stories she could think of.When it was all said and done, she folded her hands together and intertwined her fingers—as if the story of a loved one represented by each finger was also intertwined. "Anyway," she said cheerfully, "that's..." "I miss you, Mom." The words came out of my mouth.She smiled, but didn't answer right away.She seemed to be thinking of sentences, trying to figure out my intentions, like a fisherman slowly pulling a net.

The sun was setting, no matter what world we were in, the sun was setting below that horizon, and she whispered quickly, "We've got somewhere else to go, Charlie."