Dead Things

I shook my husband’s shoulder, he looked back.
“Take your hat off, please.” I said. “It’s important for them.”
He sighed once more and did as needed.
Funny how I have remembered all these rituals of rural country once I got there. Townlife with a noble hubby changed my ways, but had not erased a bit of my memory. Here she lays, the main piece of it: my mother.
We were staying over the fresh grave. She was small and skinny down there, her charcoal hairs burnt to ashy grey. Still, she wasn’t calm as dead are, there was something in her knotted tightly, like she was pretending to sleep and failing at it. That was creepy.
The man in charge stopped chanting and downed his hands:
“Now, to the last.” He met my eyes. “Would you serve me a hand?”
Nodded. Seemed like my hubby didn’t get this local wording, so I took the bag from him. I poured my mother’s few belongings on the ground and picked the necklace. My hands were shaky, so he tore the chain up for me. I threw it into grave.
“Dead things for dead folks.” I’ve thought. “Glad, that I explained it for him in advance. Gods know, it’s not the time to argue.”
We were taking things from the earth one by one and doing the same. Most of them were familiar, like these knitting needles now rusty, and this little bronze mirror that was her wedding gift, and a comb of wood with curiously carved head. Picture of playing dears were beyond recognition, but I was seeing them here, like twenty years ago. Little girly treasures they were, and I had desires to have my own set of these things back then. As for now, I was feeling a great time killing them, and killing memories they hold. This way she became more and more dead.
I looked at her once more. Her pale hands were like grindstones, used to be used with no mercy. Since the father’s fleeing, she had carried our world on them: digging earth, raising crops, milking cows. Should I blame her for being hardened by life? I guess not: no way she could live through it untouched. Should I sorry her for being rude with me? “No” again. That have been me who she shouted at, and laughed at, and beaten.
“Hey, hon.” I heard. “What’s wrong?”
My husband hugged me, tears down his back.
“Nothing.” Inhaled. “Everything is finally right.”
I smiled. I was feeling like these salty cries carried her away from me, from my mind. My chest became lighter, and shoulders, and legs – everything relaxed at once, so I was near to fall if he wasn’t holding me tight.
Finally, he put me on my legs.
“Come on, let’s get it done.” He said. “There is only this weird doll to finish”.
I took it up. Hollow pitch-black eyes looked at me, asking. Curved crack sliced her pallid face in halves, making the child-like face even more uncanny. Fixing with resin didn’t make any good – brown gum seemed like infernal gum.
It was mother’s favorite toy. Maybe her game was spoiled from the very start? I cried in fear every time she gave it to me. Something was wrong with that thing.
Unbelievable expensive she was, I believe. Not wooden, but ceramic, and that precise in crafting it looks like a real baby-girl, but white, cold, and violent in glance. Like a bodyjar for a hellish daemon of tales, a crawling horror in shadows, stealing children and drinking souls of weak and unguarded.
Although many years had passed, I saw this doll untouched by time. The only mark – this crack – was my work. I had slept on a bare floor for couple of weeks, but still, that hit worth it. Unnatural foe, it was the main part of my grim childhood.
I sat down with a monster on my lap. Took the doll’s hand up and hanged it free. Now she was so weightless, unimportant. I had let it fell. And she fell: legs spread before, head fallen in front, face to the earth. Like a sock-puppet with no hand inside.
“It’s hand lays down there, two meters below”. I cried, and laughed. “Gods bless, I grew my own spine”.

Earth covered the grave. We were staying here, watching the sun going down and this man collecting his tools. I felt warm, strong fingers on my hand. He was a good man, my husband, was always ready to support me in grieve. So let it be my only dirty secret: inside, I was happy as never before.