That Nice Girl with the Dogs
Mom looks at me. There’s a pause. I like to think that at that moment, I was not her daughter, I was just “that nice girl with the dogs.” Then, she tells me the secret she kept for so long. “I just couldn’t do it. I felt so bad for Duchess. I couldn’t be there when the man came for her,” she confides. “I went over to the neighbors’ house and stayed there until she was taken away and it was all over.”
She’s not apologizing. For a brief second, I sit in shock and disbelief. She had left me alone to fend for myself, yes, but more than that. She had used me, shifting an adult burden of sorrow and guilt onto a child, in order to protect herself. Anger rises hot within me, but I don’t say a word. All the years of being molded, prodded, sometimes literally pushed into acting the respectful daughter—all those years hold firm and stop my mouth like clay. I sit immobilized, staring at her. She doesn’t seem to notice.
That night, after putting Mom to bed, I lie awake imagining Sirocco with her backbone pressed along my side. I think of her, our time together. But memories of Sirocco always go in one direction like a strong current toward the river’s end, to her death.
I remember the day before Sirocco died as warm for December, and sunny. She spent the entire day on the screened porch surveying the yard between long dozes. Around 5 p.m., she managed the stairs into the house, pausing for water in the kitchen, refusing food. She settled on her dog bed in the living room.
