Mountaintops Mourning
Who is your emergency contact, anyway? An essay by Victoria Hood
I am terrified to be woken by your death. I feel that I will know in the moment, will feel it, but will forget, write it off, get your voicemail, and continue my day. I fear it won’t be until all the Siblings get together in one of our group chats to ask who spoke to you last that we will all find out together that we no longer have any parents.
I used to fear seeing your girlfriend's name pop up on my phone. I knew it would be the only reason she called; after she left the family in disgrace, she would only come back to spread the bad news. But now, you’re long distance. But now, you live alone. But now, your studio apartment, renovated from an old motel room, will sit in silence as it mourns your body alone.
I wonder if it will be Walmart itself that calls. Due to the annoyance of you missing work, due to the produce that never got circulated, due to the lack of someone leaving their back and knees on the floor, they will call to ask where you are. I will only say, I thought you knew. I know Randall can’t call; he moved away. I know Sean is in New Jersey, wishing you would work for him again, but he won’t call. I know the mountains don’t get the cell phone reception they need.
Who is your emergency contact, anyway, and why is it still your dead wife? When was the last time she called? This time last year, I found your eyes mourning her as a full-time job, trying to find her in the ceiling tiles of the stores you walked into. If you put together the corner of the tiles, you can see her smiling, see her frowning, see her thinking about the conversation she had. The hospital keeps calling her and calling her, but they have never received the fax of her death certificate.
Who is the runner-up? Who in your state is ready to bend to lift you? Who in your state has been thinking about your dyslexia? Who in your state is ready for the marathon of words you always keep going? When will you come home?
On the weekends, I plan trips out to see you—just in case. I think about how I would cancel my classes, how I’d be too sad to even look for a sub, how I’d be nothing but a sister—no longer a daughter, belonging to no one, made out of air with my other air siblings. On the weekends, I think about what it means to be a daughter: birth, teeth, running around. On the weekends, I think about what it means to be your daughter: crawling, spitting, smashing ribs.
I cannot conceive of what it means to be fatherless. To wake up in the morning thinking about the things I want to tell you, and find nothing looking back at me but the empty spot where my parents once lived. On top of the mountains, I can see you perched, looking at the ceiling of the sky for Mom. Stop looking up, stop looking up, dad, I’m serious, stop looking up.
Look back at the paperwork you need to fill out and list all three of your children back to back like one long name as your emergency contact; fill out the numbers for all of our phones and we can set a special ringtone just for the notice of your death; do not separate us as son, daughter, daughter—list us all together as my children and ask the doctors to please follow your wishes.
Take your dead wife off of your paperwork, take your girlfriend off of your paperwork, take Walmart off of your paperwork, take the bark from the trees off of your paperwork, take the staples out of your paperwork, take your made-up middle name off of your paperwork.
Instead, please leave only the parts of you that are real and flesh. Tell them your mother’s maiden name, your father’s mother’s maiden name, the names that came together to add you up into the father you’ve got to be. Instead of the words you wish you could put down, please just write our names.
Victoria Hood holds an MA in English from the University of Maine. She is the winner of FC2’s 2021 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, for her collection of short stories, My Haunted Home. Victoria’s poetry & hybrid chapbooks, Death and Darlings, and Entries of Boredom and Fear, was published in 2022 & 2023 by Bottlecap Press, respectively. Her book of poetry, I Am My Mother’s Disappointments, released on Mother’s Day from Girl Noise Press (2024). Her work has been published in Split/Lip Magazine, Tiny Spoon, Interpret Magazine, pioneertown, Querenica Press, The Hooghly Review, Bitchin’ Kitsch, ergot., Cult Magazine, JAKE, G*MOB Magazine, Dollar Store Lit Mag, and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit. Victoria strives to create work that can meld together the punk roots her parents raised her in with the disillusionment of losing her mother at a young age. Overall, she hopes to discomfort, humor, and charm.
 |
|