My Mother Is Now Earth

3. Cloud Ceremony

On the day before Easter Sunday, the clouds finally thaw, turning from snow to rain. Warm winds return as the winter weakens, drips away from the skies. The trees along the dirt road and beyond begin to move again, shaking off the melting ice from their pineneedle skins. I see a flash of lightning streak across the grayness, then a crash of thunder bangs on the clouds like a drum. I can hear my younger brother Scott yelling at me to “get inside!” I look away from the skies and see Michael trying to keep up with Scott, holding up his baggy pants, both splashing through loose snow and mud and slipping their way to the barn. We’ve been out here all afternoon exploring , finding buried winter treasures that the snows hid—a rusty tricycle, a baseball glove, and a G.I. Joe doll with one leg missing. Inside the barn, I listen to the rain rattling on the roof while my brothers try twisting a twig into G.I. Joe’s hip, wanting to give him a new leg. The barn is empty now, but my father plans on buying some cows once his next veterans check comes in the mail. He says we’ll save a lot of money on milk and finally have real butter. And he says fresh milk tastes better than store milk. But even if it doesn’t, f3g Cl0ud Ceremony 23 24 1971 we just know it has to taste better than what we do drink— powdered milk. We wait until the rain slows down, then make a dash for the garage. Whiskey spots us from the broken cement porch of the farmhouse and races toward us. The house is lit from a long extension cord running from the garage. My father and older brothers put up the beams a week ago to keep the house from falling in. This weekend they have been scraping old, hard pig and chicken crap from two of the bedrooms. My father says he has no idea why that family turned the farmhouse into a barn after the fire. As soon as we get inside the garage, Scott and I stand next to the woodstove and hang our wet heads over it to dry. We giggle when the drops of rain hit the stove, turn to steam, and rise back up into our faces. Scott whispers that maybe we won’t have to take a bath for church tomorrow. Whiskey shakes the rain from his fur, and I do the same. My mother yells at me to “cut that shit out!” After I finish drying my hair, I hand the towel to Scott. I stand in the bathroom doorway, looking at my mother and Philly in the kitchen. My sister reads from her catechism book while my mother hangs round slices of pineapple on her ham. My mother has been preparing Easter dinner all day. Her bread dough is puffing up over the edges of the pans. The potatoes have already been peeled, sliced, and placed in a kettle of water. In the early morning, she will start the ham in the oven. Once we get home from church, she will have the potatoes boiled and mashed. The corn will be steaming, her bread cooled and sliced. We’ve been to St. Joseph’s every Sunday since moving to Big Falls, but my mother has always stayed home. Every week she tells my father that she does not have a decent dress to wear and that her only pair of nylons has too many holes in them. Cloud Ceremony 25 “What the hell you worried about a dress for?” my father always says. “No one’s gonna be staring at you. It’s church, for Christ’s sake.” I sit next to my sister and her catechism book and pretend to be reading with her. But I am really just trying to get a closer look at my mother’s green dress covered in flour and grease stains. f g The only television channel we get comes from a big city in Canada, Winnipeg. My mother was hoping there would be that movie about the Ten Commandments, but the only show on television is a hockey game. My mother tells us to shut it off. In the kitchen, my father pounds off the lid of his milk can with a hammer. He keeps his...