Heat - 5. Interlude 1, Asher

Interlude 1, Asher

My mother was seventeen when she joined the church. Of course, they never actually *said* that to me. I found out later, after I ran, after I found the last place they would look - her hometown. Found it in a record in the town newspaper. I had never seen a newspaper before coming here, but I knew what they were from TV and I knew you could find stuff out by looking at old ones at the library. After all, cult or not we still had disney channel.

I wish I knew why she did what she did. Maybe she didn’t expect to die? I doubt it. I’ve only seen one birth ceremony in my lifetime and … you don’t survive that. Did she think she was giving me to a better cause? A better life? Maybe she thought that Mom and Dad could take care of me better than she ever could. Maybe it wasn’t her choice, to give me away, to die. Maybe.

When I got here I looked for her parents, the newspaper called them Martha and Don. I asked everyone I could think to ask but nobody seemed to know what happened to them. Could be they died, or maybe they just moved. I couldn’t find any headstones at the cemetery matching the names, though I did find one with my mother’s name on it. Guess they sent the ashes back to her parents, or else there is nothing actually buried under that stone. Written on it were the words:

Riley Piper

Friday, March 19, 1982

Friday, June 21, 2002

I thought it was strange that they added the day of the week, most of the other tombstones in the yard of St. John’s only had the day and the year. Maybe they wanted to highlight the strange synchronicity of being born and dying on the same day of the week, or maybe they just thought it looked better that way. There was also no epitaph to be found on the black marble rectangle, but there was a small panel that, when lifted, showed a smooth carved image of her face - the first and only time I ever saw what my mother looked like. Opposite to the carved image, etched into the brass cover plate was the epitaph missing from the face.

She thought she could fly

So she jumped off the roof

And when they were done putting the cast on her arm

She said “next time for sure”

We miss you, Ry

I will never meet my mother but reading those words, for a moment, I felt like I knew her.