Mother said often that she was stupid enough to marry once, and botch most of everything. But she was not stupid enough to keep digging a hole once she was in it.

Dad left when she started keeping a summer gun in a fashion holster fastened around her skirt. After he left, he sent us postcards, all of which said nothing about returning.

He would write things like: "Dears, I am writing to you both from my brand new thrift store desk!"

And, "You remember that enormous wrinkle on my forehead? It has vanished!"

"Girls, my lips are much less chapped!"

The very last one he sent, and then they stopped forever, said, "There is virtue in being a little wishful."

We wondered if we would have been better off with no parents at all, living in an orphanage, with the sympathy of bosomy women whispering about how cute we were.

My sister would shush me when mother talked about her business trip to Spain, and how we were so ready to take care of ourselves, and how much fun we would all have on separate continents.

I wanted to tell her that she was burning the motherhood contract, but my sister said how once she was gone we could enhance ourselves with good holiday cheer. I knew what she meant. We both knew where the good stuff was stashed. The seed, you could say, had been planted. The idea of a mother so far away, leaving her kids in charge of the animals, to find them holiday costumes (the dogs), making holiday cards at home, becoming good at cooking eggs and maybe finding some funny movies to watch.

And we could always call our father, maybe hear his voice boom in the phone, if we found his number, if we wanted to feel more like real children. Until then, we'd be giving our own selves advice—that was my sister's way of seeing things. And the world would be full of cheer.

Meg Pokrass' most recent book is ALLIGATORS AT NIGHT, a collection of flash fictions. She lives in the U.K., curates Flash Fiction Festival U.K., and edits the New Flash Fiction Review.

Read her postcard.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of AK Rockefeller.

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