One
“Come up here on the road! You’re getting your shoes dirty!”
The girl tore off a last flower and held the clover flowers up to her mother.
“Four leaves means good luck,” the girl said.
“We’ll put those on the grave.”
The woman arranged the flowers, peeling away a withered leaf.
“Nana liked clover,” she said thoughtfully, looking off at the church and then at the child by her side. One day, she thought, you got only one day together on this earth.
Six years and one day ago, Emily was born, and the very next day her grandmother died. Every anniversary of her death they walked to the church and laid flowers on her grave. They also sat on the low stone wall for a while. The woman would drink coffee and her daughter some juice.
The walk took them half an hour. They could have taken the car but preferred to walk. The slow trip to the church enabled reflection. She had loved her mother above all else. It was as if Emily had filled in for her Nana. As one love slipped away, another arrived.
She and her newborn had been transported in the Akademiska hospital to the unit where her mother lay in a state between consciousness and sleep.
The little girl had been lifted into her arms. At first it looked as if she thought yet another burden was being added to her already ravaged body.
The woman guessed that the baby’s scent brought her mother to life, because her nostrils widened suddenly. The gaunt, needle-riddled hand patted the tiny bundle in her lap and she opened her morphine-obscured eyes.
* * *
“I want to run the last bit,” the girl said, interrupting her mother’s thoughts.
“No, we’ll stay together,” she said, and right before she died, she realized that she might have saved her daughter’s life if she had let her go.
* * *
The car struck them both with full force. The child was thrown some ten meters and died almost instantly. The mother was thrown forward and the front left wheel of the car ran over her body. She lived long enough to grasp what had happened, that she might have been able to save her daughter. She also had time to note that the car swerved and slid as it accelerated and disappeared in the direction of the church.
“Why are you killing us?” she whispered.
Copyright © 2001 by Kjell Eriksson
Translation copyright © 2016 by Ebba Segerberg
