Written piece
Between Altar and Doorway
Renee Johnson
Jamaica
About this piece
Between "Altar and Doorway" explores the breakdown of a mother and daughter amidst the daughter's rejection of Christianity and religion. The mother stays in the background, observing until she starts expressing interest in her daughter's new life.
I rejected my mother’s God, and her mother’s God and the mother before her mother’s God. A glint from the Sun caught her denture as it too separated itself from her sinful body, her woeful state, and unworthy being (her words, not mine). I could hear the oncoming wail deep within her throat and her belly.
My eyes shielded themselves from the spittle that cascaded across my face and along my upper lip.
For weeks, she side-stepped me and cursed the mist from my oils and “devil trinkets”. She wrapped her skirt away from my books and knotted her locks into a protective coil atop her head.
By month six, I watched as she stroked along the spine of my “holy book”, a journal where I lay only myself at the altar for purification and the quest to do instead of praying.
By month 8, she lingered against my door, her breath creeping through the frame and rusting the hinges.
On month 12, she sat beside me on the floor, the fabrics of our pants touching. We breathed and swayed in the rhythm we created. We called no names, shed no tears or begged no bread. The distance had begun to soften into something neither of us named.
In the corner of my eyes, I saw the glimmering of tears slide against her cheek. A reluctant wipe to cleanse of her old self.
A song caught me from the spiritual realm. It was a bird perched on the dead branch outside our living room window.
Although its feet were dainty, the fragile state of the summer-crisped tree branches could not withstand the feel of a slight touch… and it crumbled.
The bird flew away to safer heights. I watched the fragments of the tree - or what was left of it, crumble to nothing.