THE RED DRESS
It hung there in the closet while she was dying, Mother's red dress, like a gash in the row of dark, old clothes she had worn away her life in.
They had called me home, and I knew when I saw her She wasn't going to last. When I saw the dress, I said "Why, Mother-how beautiful! I've never seen it on you."
I've never worn it," she slowly said.
"Sit down, Millie. I'd like to un-do a lesson or two before I go, if I can."
I sat by her bed and she sighed a bigger breath than I thought she could hold.
"Now that I'll soon be gone, I can see some things I taught you good....but I taught you wrong."
"What do you mean, Mother?"
"Well, I always thought that a good woman never takes her turn, that she's just for doing for somebody else. Do here, do there, always keep everybody else's wants tended and make sure yours are at the bottom of the heap. Maybe someday you'll get to them. But of course you never do. My life was like that,doing for your Dad, doing for the boys, for your sisters, for you."
"You did....everything a mother could."
"Oh, Millie, Millie, it was no good..for you, for him. Don't you see? I did you the worst of wrongs. I asked for nothing...for me! Your father, in the other room, all stirred up and staring at the walls....When the doctor told him, he took it bad-came to my bed and all but shook the life right out of me! 'You can't die, do you hear? What will become of me? What will become of me?' "It'll be hard, all right when I go, he can't even find the frying pan, you know."
"And you children...I was a free ride for everybody, everywhere. I was the first one up and the last one down seven days out of the week. I always took the toast that got burned, and the smallest piece of
pie. I look at how some of your brothers treat their wives now. It makes me sick, because it was me that taught it to them, and they learned. They learned that a woman doesn't even exist except to give. Why,
every single penny that I could save went for your clothes, or your books, even when it wasn't necessary. I can't even remember once when I took myself downtown to buy something beautiful for me. Except last year when I got that red dress. I found I had twenty dollars that wasn't especially spoken for. I was on my way to pay it extra on the washer. But somehow.... I came home with this big box. Your father really gave it to me then. 'Where you gonna wear a thing like that to-an opera or something?' And he was right, I guess. I've never, except in the store, put on that dress. Oh, Millie, I always thought if you take nothing for yourself in this world, you'd have it all in the next somehow. I don't believe that anymore. I think the Lord wants us to have something here and now. And I'm telling you Millie, if some miracle could get me off this bed, you could look for a different mother, because I would be one. Oh, I passed up my turn so long I'd hardly know how to take it. But, I'd learn, Millie. I would learn!"
It hung in her closet while she was dying, Mother's red dress. Like a gash in the row of dark old clothes she'd worn away her life in. Her last words to me were these:
"Do me the honor, Millie, of NOT following in my footsteps. Promise me that."
I promised.
She caught her breath, and then Mother took her turn in death.
Carol Lynn Pearson
