“I brought her into this world, and I’m going to take care of her.” Janice’s father said it all the time—to family, to friends, under his breath when he thought she couldn’t hear. He’d died years ago, but her mother had upheld the tradition in spirit. It became a thought hanging between them like a cloud of dust, cut only by the drone of daytime cable.
Janice avoided the living room, where Mom camped night and day by the television. “You look so thin,” would come her weak voice whenever she passed by.
“I know.” As a girl, she'd prided herself on her mother’s opinion. But sixty years on, her observations scratched like a dull blade. Clothes, nails, skin—nothing was good until Mom declared it so. Worst of all, her remarks held incantatory power; they wove themselves with the Thoughts like parasites. “Suicide rates have spiked,” the news would add. “Unemployment reaches all-time high.” The figurines lining the walls would glare.
Mom collected trinkets and bargain-bin junk with equal enthusiasm. When she was well enough to shop, she would inevitably descend upon some bauble and sigh with delight, charmed by promises of sentiment or frugality. Fine statues of cherub-cheeked children from the Old Country moldered on shelves next to half-empty shampoo bottles with bright, after-market labels boasting prices as low as $0.99. Most of them were years old; many hadn’t been touched since they were purchased.
When Mom died, Janice swore she would throw them all away. But now she found their blithe eyes were a continuation of her mother’s soul. The Thoughts resisted, and she resigned herself to keep them. That was fine. All her sister wanted was Dad’s camera.
Their father had loved photography. He used to traipse the girls outside to capture trees and birds, showing them how he angled the lens and adjusted for changing light. “A photo is a souvenir,” he’d say. “It’s a vision you can hold.” He’d pat his chest pocket, which carried tiny portraits of them. Her sister would beg to take a picture.
Janice scowled. She hadn’t thought about that camera in years. But when her sister texted, she suddenly sensed it again as if it were a rogue organ escaped from her own chest. Find it, the Thoughts screamed. It lay in her parents’ old bedroom, buried under a pile of department store clothes with the tags still on.
It was an ancient, black camera without any film. The lens was cracked. But for a moment, Janice caught herself in the glass. The house was swallowed in its eye. For a minute or more, she stared, letting the Thoughts envelop her like they used to.
Then, without further ceremony, she dumped it in a delivery box, papered it in stamps, and dropped it on the curb. “Let her have it,” she muttered, shaking the dust off her feet as she turned back inside. Only the figurines were standing watch when the mailman arrived.