And Then at the End, the Very End

Get it down now, before the memory bleaches out, before it stops playing and replaying—the horrific blow from out of nowhere, and staggering sideways and sideways against the force of it, trying and trying and trying with every fiber and bone not to yield to the floor, but impossibly, and thwacking the back of your head smack on the basement linoleum, with your legs afloat, your silly bare legs, in front of all the men done with their potluck dinner, men, reverent men, and you’re scrabbling blindly to pull your skirt back down. Then your husband is there, just his voice, Sit up, try to sit up, and somebody else, a woman, No, let her be, so you wait, and then you pull yourself upright enough to lean against a chair, holding your head, holding your head

You open your eyes to see the child on the sofa—still where she sat when you carried your slow cooker over, still with some beans in, and set it by the door to take home—and how she’s looking back at you, not with alarm, or voyeuristically, more in blank curiosity. Your husband helps you up like a hospital orderly and out to the lobby, where you just want to sit on the stairs and sob and sob into your hands, without an audience.

And Julia is there, steady Julia, when your gushing lessens. She’s moving her nurse finger back and forth, up and down, for your eyes to follow, like you’ve lost your ball bearings, but that’s too silly, and you even grin you’re so fine. Lana too, she wants to go get some ibuprofen, and back she comes with two in her soft palm, and water. Oh I hate it, I hate it, you say. My skirt up, for all the world. I saw it all, she says. I saw everything. I was right there. You couldn’t see a thing. She says it with such Christian conviction you believe her. Still, your legs shooting out, the mortification.

The man nearby, too, somebody’s guest you never saw before today. So sorry, so sorry. No no, you say, it’s not his fault, you rammed him, too, and is he okay? and he rubs at his forehead to show it only hurts. So sorry, so sorry, he says, and you say it’s fine, fine. You don’t say the rest, that you’re not sure you can properly stand up and walk. For sure you’re not about to try, not while he’s still on hand and observing, and potentially give him an additional spectacle, yet more to flail himself over. Neither of you were looking where you were going, is all.

Pain shoots down your one leg only briefly, when your husband helps you upwards, and your feet work, so you might not be broken, and he and Lana hobble you out to the car, and you let yourself down on the seat, oh heaven, and he brings the cooker with your beans, and he gives you a slow ride home in the Christmas daytime sun.

Which might be when the puzzle emerges. Something’s confusing.

“Where did our bodies hit?” you ask.

That man said his skull hurt. He touched a place above his eye. But your rear end is all that’s bothering you, besides your smarting head.

“I didn’t see that part,” says your husband. “I didn’t see your head hit.” From his vantage point in the room, futilely diving toward you, he couldn’t tell. You fell through the doorway.

“Well, it sure hit,” you say. No question. You met the floor hard, hard. It still stings. Why doesn’t your shoulder ache, too, or your cheekbone, or whatever exact spot you were slammed? The man had maybe just turned away from a conversation, intent on getting out the door, out to the church’s parking lot, and you must’ve been recrossing the room at a clip, disencumbered of your beans, which made you two cars colliding mid speed. It was the momentum, the velocity.

Huh? you think. Your head? In those delayed, drawn-out moments, you lurching and lurching toward the floor, resisting with all your might, was a whack to your own skull merely slow in registering? Did the repercussion lag in the same way as your downward spill, stretch out like cold, jarred molasses, and impact only when you crumpled?

Like when the echo comes back from the mountain?

It seems preposterous, your head not slapping the floor, but what else makes any sense?

The last days of the year, at home in the quiet and then the not-so-quiet after the Pittsburghers come rampaging in, you’re thrilled and grateful. You’re fully mobile. Just soreness. You do wonder about those wide, flat bones traversing your pelvis. Hairline cracks, maybe? Scraggly, spider like? But you’re not going to some septic hospital to find out. Bones heal.

Your head, though, feels emptier than before, like your thoughts are eluding you worse. It’s as if something broke loose. Before, you were just growing old, not from damage. Time was only perpetrator, not criminal. You perceived no colli—colluding. You wonder if you’re spiraling. You’ve managed to dredge your brain remnants, enough to get this much down, but what more debility is to come? and what would be the point in finding out?

Photograph for illustration purposes only: Grandgirl Age 12 mid air, captured by Grandboy Age 10, December 29, 2025, on Mama’s phone. Mid air can be good, stupendous. Mid air can feel like forever.