PC717: The Stiffening

[Ocicat]

PodCastle 717: The Stiffening

Author: Nicole D. Sconiers
Narrator: Laurice White
Host: Matt Dovey
Audio Producer: Peter Adrian Behravesh

Previously published by Nightlight Podcast

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Show Notes
Rated PG-13


I was eight years old when I realized that I never saw my mother sitting. Ever. Or lying in bed or immersed beneath a blanket of suds in our old clawfoot bathtub. She was always upright. Afternoons would find her in the kitchen, tending something on the stove or wiping down counters with a dish rag. This is how I remember her: thick black hair spilling over broad shoulders and sturdy legs clad in a print skirt and drugstore stockings. She loved to cook, to bring a steaming and pungent plate of collard greens to the table, to serve my sister Trina and me a slice of her famous orange pound cake. Even though she was on her feet all day mixing batter at Xavier’s Donuts, the sound of a metal spoon clanking against a pot usually met me and Trina when we came home from school.



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[kittybriton]

Having recently embarked on my sixth decade of life, this story continues to haunt me.
As Rabbi Lionel Blue put it: "the elastic starts to wear out"