My entry to the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards

NOTE:  My colleague Dawn Raffel's lovely new book THE SECRET LIFE OF OBJECTS has been published. It contains tiny, luminous pieces of narrative.  In celebration of that, I and other writers from LEA, the League of Extraordinary Authors, have been asked to write a piece of flash fiction of our own.  This is mine.

"I Was At The Zoo"  

by Dwight Okita

I was at the Lincoln Park Zoo gift store, browsing the dizzying menagerie of toys on sale.  One stuffed animal called out to me -- a small, furry stuffed penguin.  My mother would love it. But as the penguin sat in my apartment that night, bashful beside the white lamp, I knew my mind was changing. I could not part with my new friend.

The next day, I made a full confession. "I was going to give him to you, Mom, but he's just too cute to give away."
"Oh, I have lots of stuffed animals.  You keep him. I've got stuffed animals coming out of my ears!"
"Are you sure it's okay?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm sure."

And then a few years later, my mother was drinking a cup of hot coffee with whipped creme on top at Borders Cafe.  She was with friends; I was not with her. They said her head tilted to one side like she was nodding off. What no one realized at the time was: she was having a cerebral hemorrhage...blood pouring into the hemispheres of her brain.  

I was never able to converse with my mother after that.

Days passed without any signs she would regain consciousness. My mind searched for the last conversation I had with her. What did we talk about?  It was New Year's Day. We had lunch at Ranalli's. I ordered for both of us: spinach and feta cheese calzones with black cherry sodas. Delicious.  Mom was impressed with my confident food choice. "You really know how to live!" she said.

As the weeks went by, Mom's hospital bed filled with stuffed animals brought by her friends to keep her company.  Dogs, cats, a stray turtle. I decided it was time to bring in the stuffed penguin and place it with its rightful owner. So that's what I did.

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(As a piece of flash fiction, consider that the piece ends here.  But for those who want to see what happens next in the story, read onward.)



Then months went by with no sign of improvement. A couple times my mother opened her eyes. "What are you looking at, Ma?  Can you see me? I can see you." I was excited and took a video of the moment with my cell.  But the truth was she seemed to have no sense of who I was.

After googling "stroke victim recovery" so many times, doing my Buddhist chanting for the best outcome, after seeing Mom suffer with bed sores and infections and coughing spasms, after consulting the experts in science and in faith and remembering my duty as power of attorney to exert no heroic measures – I finally agreed that it was time.  She had been in a coma for eight months. She was removed from life support. My brother was relieved that the decision fell to me instead of him.

In the last days of hospice, my friend Nancy and I sang songs to Mom. The Dixie Chicks cover of "Landslide" was my favorite. I noticed at times her left foot would move suddenly. Some kind of reflex. I placed the penguin so it leaned against her foot.  My mother would seem to kick the penguin, as if she too wanted in on the fun.

And then I got the call.  Hospice told me that my mother was getting close to passing.  I came to see her and got to say my last things. I hoped that some part of her could still hear me.  They say the hearing is last to go.

At one point, the nurse came in and took Mom's pulse.
"I'm sorry," she said.  "Your mother just passed."
"Are you sure?" I said.
She felt for a pulse again. "Yes, she's gone. I'm sorry." And the nurse left the room so that I could be alone. I was glad I was alone so I could cry in peace.

I looked at my mother.  Her body had shrunken. When I leaned over to hug her good-bye, she seemed more like a doll than my mother. Even at a time like this my mother was teaching me things. She was teaching me about dying. I gathered up her belongings, including the penguin. Now it would be mine again.

*

It is three years since her passing.  The penguin remains in my apartment, leaning against the white lamp.

I think of the last time Mom stayed over at my place for Christmas. She slept on the futon and I slept in my bed.  In the middle of the night she sat bolt upright and said, "Hey, where AM I?" She sounded genuinely alarmed, as if she'd been kidnapped by aliens. The moment struck me as comical.  
"You're at my place, Mom," I said and laughed.  She laughed too.
"Oh," she said and went back to sleep.

In the middle of this particular night, I lie in bed, motherless.  I look toward the futon and for a moment I see my mother sit bolt upright again in the living room. It doesn't scare me. It's not like she's a ghost.  In fact, it would scare me not to see her again.

"Hey, where AM I?" she says once more. But this time my answer is different. It has to be.

I smile and tell her where she is and where she isn't, tell her everything that happened to her after that day in the cafe, how my brother and I had to learn to talk together again after years of estrangement, about the many visitors and get well cards, how I watched episodes of "The Bachelor" just in case she woke up and wanted to know what episodes she missed. I tell her about how she died on a beautiful September morning just inches away from me, and my friend Susan and I scattered her ashes near the baseball diamond across from my high-rise building, and how -- from my 14th floor apartment -- I can see that field where the boys play baseball late into the summer night, the young men running in circles, running toward home.  

"Everything you say is a poem," my mother says.

But what she's really trying to tell me is that she loves me. But she doesn't have to tell me that. I've always known. And that's the last thing I remember before falling asleep.

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