Sidewalk Cracks

The day I first saw my mother fall, I had outgrown tattered black tights, temper tantrums, and tiny plaid Christmas dresses lousy with red ribbon. Wrapped in the cool of my passive dislike, I watched her toe miss the bottom stair and arc upward, her body curving like a question mark, her lips a horizontal gash. Five stairs bit her heel, collapsed her knees, arched her back, rammed her shoulders, pounded the rear of her skull. After the tumble of sound, she lay still, eyelids pulled over the picture of her pain. When I met my mother’s eyes again, she was standing, but I still sick with the aftertaste of fear. It seems the girl I was is a stranger to me; trussed up in red, stepping furiously on sidewalk cracks.