Writing prompt: Write about a box
Photo from Columbia News Service
It wasn’t just one box. It was twenty. Or probably more than that – thirty or forty at least. Her mother was a pack rat and a compulsive shopper. In between this visit and the last she had acquired a juicer, a new microwave, an iPod (did she know how to program the thing?), and a set of wooden spoons from a charity based in Africa, in addition to countless other things that Janine couldn’t identify. Some of the boxes were opened and empty; others sat waiting for the knife, their contents in darkness.
It wasn’t just the boxes. It was the newspapers. The books. The bills. There were piles obscuring the windows. Her mother had beaten down a path back to the rest of the house, like a deer makes a path through the brush and undergrowth, to get to the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom. Could she get to the bedroom? The couch -- the only piece of furniture without boxes and papers on it -- had been made up like a bed, with a soiled set of sheets and a blood-stained pillowcase.
Janine followed the trail back to the bathroom, walking carefully, one foot placed in front of the other because there wasn’t enough room to walk normally. Willow, her mother’s ancient grey tabby, all bones and croaked meows, darted in front of her. Janine didn’t respond in time and her fall triggered an avalanche of boxes, a flurry of papers as her mother watched from the kitchen.
“Find the birth certificate?” her mother asked. Oblivious.