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I LET MY SISTER WEAR THE PARKA
that belonged to my husband when he was fourteen and
growing up in Yankton, South Dakota. It was pale blue with a gray fur
trim around the hood that Mike told me was wolf, but now looked like dirty
fuzz from the bottom of the couch. It fit her well and I admired her
petite form while she twirled around. She stuck out her arms to show how
the parka was too big for her, how it swallowed her whole.
"That's
good," I told her. "Because you'll generate extra heat in there."
But she was
worried about her wrists. The parka she said didn't quite fit around her
wrists. Wouldn't the cold leak in? Her wrists were thin and bony and
she called them delicate.
"It doesn't
matter," I told her. "The cold always finds a way in."
We left for
the funeral around noon. The day turned out to be one of those sun
beating off the ice days, where you better wear sunglasses or the shards
of light pierce your eyes like icicles. It wasn't cold enough for her so
she took off my husband's light blue parka with the gray wolf fur trim and
threw it on the ground and let it lie underneath a tree trunk while she
walked back to the open hole, twirling the gold bracelets on her delicate
wrists. She gave me a sheepish smile and said, "I was getting hot."
I wanted her
first Nebraska winter day to be sharp and frigid. I wanted to take her
sliding across a black ice highway, or get her lost in a blizzard. I
wanted to give her an experience she could take home to Orlando and tell
her husband while they sipped iced tea around their blue water pool with
the pink hydrangea bushes and yellow tile. I wanted today to be anything
but a shiny, sparkling day.
After the
funeral was over I picked up my husband's parka and put it on over my
black dress. I sat down on the ground, underneath a tree and pulled the
hood over my veil. I sniffed as hard as I could, sniffed like a she-wolf
looking for her mate, but I couldn't detect any trace of Mike, just old
fur and dust. I sat and howled while everyone walked to their cars.
My sister was wrong,
it wasn't too hot for the parka. I could feel the chill congealing the
marrow of my bones.
Reprinted with permission
from Milkwood Review, #1, December 2000
Copyright © 2000
by Sarah Biggs-Wudel
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