By Rachel Weinhaus
We argued over splitting up Mom’s china, which he insisted should be kept as a set. Our last fight before that was whether to bury Mom next to Dad in a plot she had bought thirty lifetimes ago or to cremate her. I won that fight because Mom spoke from the dead. The lawyer said my brother cried in his office, but my brother didn’t tell me that. Before that, I told him the girl was no good. He married her, and when she left, I never gloated, but he said he could see it in my eyes anyway. Years before, we were scared kids at the dinner table, watching the teacups and kettle bounce tiny vibrations from my parents shouting. I’d wait for my brother’s small, bright eyes to redden, and then, despite myself, I’d sneak a kick to his shin.
Rachel Weinhaus is a screenwriter and memoirist. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television and a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her personal essays have been published in The Huffington Post, The Today Show, Newsweek, Insider, Kveller, and Brevity Blog. She’s published in Necessary Fiction and Micro Fiction Monday Magazine. Rachel is the author of “The Claimant: A Memoir of an Historic Sexual Abuse Lawsuit and a Woman’s Life Made Whole.” Visit her at www.rachelweinhaus.com.
MoonPark Review 