I grew up in Harden, Ohio. Population 4,000, give or take a few who wandered off and never came back.
My father, Gerald Mitchell, fixed pipes for a living. My mother, Judith, worked part-time at the grocery store on Route 31. And my older sister, Vivien—four years ahead of me in everything—was the sun the whole house orbited around.
I don’t say that with bitterness. I say it because it’s true.
Vivien was loud where I was quiet. She told stories at dinner while I cleared the plates. She brought home report cards with a speech attached. I brought home the same grades and left them on the counter. Dad would hold up Vivien’s and say, “That’s my girl.”
Mine stayed on the counter until Mom filed them away.
There was this thing Dad used to say at family barbecues. He’d point his beer at Vivien, then at me, and go, “Vivien got the brains. Flora got… well, Flora’s Flora.”
Everyone laughed. I laughed, too.
I was eight the first time I heard it. I was eighteen the last time. The joke never changed. Neither did the audience.
I went to nursing school, graduated, got a job offer in Denver, Colorado, and packed everything I owned into two suitcases and a cardboard box.
The morning I left, Dad was fixing a pipe under the kitchen sink. I stood in the doorway and said, “Bye, Dad.”
He didn’t come out from under the sink. He just said, “Good. One less mouth.”
That was June 15th. My birthday.
I didn’t leave because I stopped loving them. I left because staying meant disappearing, and I was already halfway gone.
For the first year in Denver, I called home every Sunday—7:00 p.m., without fail. Mom picked up sometimes. Dad never did. By the second year, the calls went to voicemail more than they didn’t.
I texted Vivien about it.
They’re busy, she wrote back. Don’t take it personally.
Then, a week later: You know how Dad is. He thinks you abandoned us.
I sent birthday gifts, Christmas packages, and a hand-knit scarf I spent three weekends making for Mom. I never heard a word about any of them.
When I asked Vivien, she sighed and said, “I think they threw it away without opening it. Flora, I’m sorry.”
That sentence sat in my chest like a stone.
Then, one Thanksgiving, Aunt Martha—Mom’s younger sister—called me. We were talking about nothing in particular when she said, “By the way, your mom just loves that scarf you sent. Wears it every Sunday to church.”
I went quiet.
“Flora, you there?”
“Martha… Vivien told me they threw it away.”
Long pause.
Then Martha said very carefully, “That’s not what happened.”
I didn’t push her. Not that day. But something shifted inside me—a crack in the story I’d been told, just wide enough to see light through.
Leave a Comment