Some sort of accident

short fiction

This story was recently rejected by a lit submission. I was going to send it to my editor before posting it here but then I decided I wanted you to read it as it was born, as it was rejected. For the record, I love it. And so it stays mine. Blessings.

“I am telling you that I saw an archangel.” Ma said this stark white thing like she was something soft. Like she hadn’t hit me as a boy. Hadn’t forced her knee in my gut.

“It was peeking out of the clouds,” she said. “Son, I am telling you that I really saw an archangel and it looked right at me.” She pushed some hair behind her ear as if she were some small girl. “And then it hid from me,” she said. “It shifted away like some sort of accident, all out of sight like that.”

We sat on Ma’s new mattress, the one she now slept in alone. And we were soft together, her big body hugged by thin cotton pajamas, pink roses littering her heavy thighs.

She went on, her hands in the air. “Well, he had these big white wings and long brown hair.” She looked at me with a warning. “Yes, like the paintings.”

I said nothing as I picked at a piece of lint on her over washed comforter. And as her cheeks flushed to peony, I thought of her foot in my ribs.

“Well, anyhow,” she said. “I’ve seen one before, you know. I see them a lot, those archangels. Yes, I do.” She nodded with her eyes closed. “Just ask your dad, Son. You just ask your dad.”

Dad with his eyes looking outside of windows, his hands holding car keys, his clothes washed separately.

“So, this time,” Ma continued, using her hands to sketch outlines in the air. “This time, when I looked up to the clouds, well, the archangel, he was painted with guilt.” Her eyes were wide ivory fields. “He was!” she said. “And then, with the might of a storm, he flickered off. So, quickly, he scurried in the sky, like so.” Ma mimed her fingers like running legs. Like mine, always running yet Ma, she was always catching up.

She went on. “It was just like when I died three times during surgery.” She waited a breath for me to respond but instead I counted ten, twelve, eighteen pink roses on her thin cotton pajamas. “The surgery for my tumor, yes, that one, when you were fifteen.” Ma nodded as if in approval with herself. “Anyhow, I died three times during that surgery, Son. Did you know that? And, did you know, that, also— also, I saw God.” She repositioned her legs and pulled her shirt down over her belly. “Yes, I looked God right in the eye and his eyes, they were blue.” She looked at me and she nodded. “So, anyway, I looked him in the eye, and you know what God told me?” She waited on my response, but I only watched her eyelashes flutter. “Well, God told me, ‘I’m taking you.’” Ma looked out the sliding glass doors. Her face fell and her brows met. “Well, I told God it wasn’t my time. I did. I told him that.”

Ma got real quiet and her shoulders melted into her chest and she swallowed. I placed my head on her knee. She took a hand to my hair. I counted the pieces of popcorn in the ceiling.

She continued. “So, there I was with God, but we weren’t alone. No, we were not. It was not just me and God.” Her exhale was an ocean wave crawling. “Son, your grandfather was there.”

Big bulky guy, my Pop. He was always saying things like don’t talk to your mother that way and you better stand up straight and the fist can be iron if you want it to be. Mostly, though, he was dying of cancer.

Ma continued. “So, anyway. Your grandfather, he was there, and he didn’t have his cancer, and he had his hands on my shoulders.” She placed her hands on her own shoulders, and she squeezed twice. “And you know what God said? I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Well, God, he said, ‘I’m taking your father too.’ Well, I wouldn’t have it! No, I wouldn’t!” She had her eyes shut and she was shaking her head. “I said, ‘No, God! It is not our time! I am telling you this!’”

Ma had become so animated that my head on her knee was a car driving a pot-holed road.

She went on. “And then, you know what. Son! Do you know what? I saw light. I saw so much light. God’s light!” Her hands were in the air, a Hallelujah. Her hands that had once turned to fists. Her fists that had once turned to iron like Pop said.

She dropped her arms from their praise, and she kept on. “So, after I saw God, I rose above the hospital.” She stroked the side of my head. “Yes, I was right there in the sky looking down at the building and there was a small opening in the roof. I could see myself lying there and I was dead. I was!” She put a hand on her heart. “Your dad will tell you, I had died, and he held my hand while my heart was a stone.”

Dad held nothing but his ways out. Ma had been going on. “…. Yes, I was on the drugs, the anesthesia, I know your dad, he’d say that, but I did die. I did die and your dad was there with me. And my soul, it was my soul that did those things, the flying and the talking to God. Can you believe it?”

I couldn’t but instead of saying that I smiled up at her. Nodded for her to continue.

“Well, you know this, but God, he didn’t take me. He didn’t take me that day. No, he listened to me. God heard my cry.”

I thought of it, that day. Me struggling to get a floppy dollar into the vending machine. Dad not answering his phone. Pop dying of cancer, alone in his bedroom. Ma dying, of what, alone in her hospital room.

Ma exhaled, a sea storm. “But, yes, you know the end of this story, Son. You know, God took your grandfather. Just two weeks later, God took my father.”

A sunny summer Tuesday, I remembered. Felt like a happy song playing alongside a sad scene. Felt like some sort of accident.

And Pop visited me after that. Not so much in the clouds but rather curled up on the ceiling in my kitchen. Or once he had his fist up, legs crossed, while he sat in the corner chair of my low-lit living room.

Finally, I spoke, and I said, “I’ve seen an archangel too, Ma.”

She looked at me with hope swimming her eyes.

“I have, Ma.” I looked at her with wilted love. “I have seen one and it did, it did feel like some sort of accident.”

Ma took a rosy palm to my cheek, and I closed my eyes.