A visit from Yolanda

By Pat Raia

PROMPT—Never will I forget ...

I was barely 3 years old when my mother returned to my Aunt Lydia's apartment. Whether she came for a visit – a furlough, so to speak – or had returned for good I didn't know.

Either way, part of me was elated to see her and part of me was afraid that in her absence she had learned to live without me very well.

There she was, sitting on a beige-colored sofa beside my Aunt. The tiny flowers on her cotton house dress lent her face a plainness that I had never seen before. Another woman was there too, I think – a nurse, a neighbor, I didn't know that either.

I stood in front of the other sofa. There was yet another woman sitting there, I think but my eyes were fixed on my mother. But this woman was not my mother. She nearly looked the same, but not quite. Her hair was still curly and black, and she was still on the chubby side. But her eyes were large enough to see their whites as they protruded out of their sockets as if she was struggling to see everything in the room. At the same time her gaze was vacant, like she was trying to make sense of her thoughts. Truthfully, I don't think she even saw me.

Finally, she turned to my Aunt and asked her for a cigarette.

“You don't smoke, Yolanda,” she said.

“I smoke,” my mother insisted.

Her voice grew louder.

“I smoke!”

Lydia handed her a cigarette. She held it awkwardly – not at all the glamorous way some women did between the first two fingers of a hand, but between her thumb and forefinger. Like someone who had smoked only infrequently or had never done it before.

My Aunt lit the cylinder for her. She drew on it and puffed out between pursed lips.

In that instant, I knew my mother would never be the same.

And that was just one more thing I would have to survive.

---

Pat Raia is a veteran journalist and poet. She resides in Florida with her husband Barry and their dog Mason Bartholomew.