This Mother - Kevin Lichty
The tag on the Persian rug in our living room said Made in Pakistan, because Persian rugs made by Persians were dangerous things. But our Persian rug was a safe Persian rug of red and blue and gold, of diamonds and flowers and long winding curls that made labyrinths on the floor. I traced those labyrinths with my eyes or with the tips of my fingers and felt the soft, soft wool that was hand spun by the fingers of a mother that was not here, who would weave her motherhood into this rug and send it to me so that I could exist in the universe of her motherness.
And in that wool, I could smell the whispers of the spices embedded still in the fibers from the fingers of that mother who was not here. And I wondered what food this mother made with these spices with her fingers when they were not spinning wool and weaving colors and making labyrinths. And in those colors I could hear the ghost of the voice of the mother as she sang and weaved her diamonds of blue and red and gold, but only if I squinted and pressed my ear hard against the floor so that I could hear the sound traveling from there to here. Did she sing to her children at night with this same voice, full of half-notes and half-prayers and half-wishes, until their eyes closed and their bedrooms liquefied?
The rug's space, its eight by six foot space on our living room floor, became my space, and the mother contained within the fabric of my rug became my mother. And we clung to each other every day. And I existed only within this eight by six foot universe of blue and red and gold; of labyrinths and diamonds; of half-notes and spice.
And I would lie on her and watch the leaking pipes paint pictures on the ceiling. And my brother would loom over me as I gazed at the gallery on our ceiling and he would wrap me in her like a burrito and he would sit on me and have my sister and other brother sit on me, and she would wrap me in her arms and tell me everything was okay, and tell me that I was beautiful because I didn't get scared, and brave because I laughed even though my body was panicking beneath their weight, my arms and legs crushed beneath them.
And she would tell me stories, hidden in the dark places between the lines, revealed in the patterns of red and gold and blue, of her homeland, of her children and how they drank milk and drizzled honey on their bread in the morning, and how they would play in the mountains outside their home and pick lavender and bring it home to her in the evening. And she would sing me to sleep at night, after I wrapped myself in a powder blue electric blanket and made a coffin of the sofa cushions. And I would braid her tassels, wet the strands with my tongue and smooth them out on the floor and she would tell me how many girls would love me because of how gently I separated the tangles.
Originally published by Vine Leaves Literary Journal, around 2015
Kevin Lichty was born and raised in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. He received an MFA in Fiction from Arizona State University where he currently teaches composition. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Broad River Review, Hawaii Pacific Review and elsewhere. His debut novella The Circle That Fits was published by Driftwood Press in 2022.
