When Mother calls, Sonia itches to extricate from the repeated grievances: lazy nurse-attendant, unsympathetic doctor, thieving pharmacist, yet listens, therapist-like, although she, too, has problems she can't share―husband unemployed, leaky roof―because Mother'll remind her she could've married Jay, her choice, until Sonia's daughter interrupts and Mother calls the child disrespectful, demanding, at which Sonia grits her teeth, hangs up, only to berate herself: Mother's starved, memories her sole company, once-agile body gone, the inevitable looming, so hand over heart where aggravation and love tussle, she calls back, says cell phones are unreliable, somewhere, somehow, they lost their connection.
Sudha Balagopal has had two novellas-in-flash published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK: Nose Ornaments and Things I Can't Tell Amma. Most recently, her collection, Family Matters, won the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. Her stories have been included in Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions.
Heartbreaking. (Unfortunately, very much identify with most of it, too.)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Nick!
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