Dislocation by Toni Juliette Leonetti

I bought my forever home twelve years ago. Nothing big or fancy, no pool I used to dream about. Just enough space for me. But it has what matters most: location.

I don’t mean the town it’s in. Colma, California, always fog-shrouded, with the coldest “summers.” But who cares about summer anymore? Or being cold? That kind of cold.

I haven’t moved in yet. 

The holdup? After ten years—no, twelve?

Well, I don’t qualify. I wouldn’t fit in with the neighbors. Yet.

Even when I do, my move-in might never happen. This worries me, worries at me, a brain worm that never sleeps, won’t let me, either.

It crawls in circles I can’t find my way out of, as I’m afraid I won’t find my way into that waiting home of mine.

Because when you are ready, you can’t handle the move yourself. 

That’s the poverty people mock when they say they couldn’t do anything worth doing, if they were alone. Not enjoy holidays or fight through cancer, not keep their noses to the grindstone or clean of cocaine. “I couldn’t—” fill in the blank “—without my husband, my wife, my children, brother, best friend.” My someone. Anyone.

Translation? Oh, you’re on your own? Tough luck.

Especially when your new place requires something special before you move in. Something you can’t do for yourself.

Embalming. 

That’s the extra price of admission. To my lot in the housing Colma’s known for, cemeteries sprawled along El Camino Real and Hillside Boulevard, Mission Road. F Street. That last one has my new address. 

Embalming is essential if you aspire to a mausoleum. The director explained in a gentler way, but the blunt way is that you’d stink up the joint too much otherwise. 

No embalming? No glossy marble penthouse, no worm-free (I tell myself) cocoon beside Mama. No, instead, writhing dirt that smothers stench better. Faraway dirt Mama’s voice could never reach.

What if I died alone? As I’m certain to? I wouldn’t be found for months. At least. 

They’d never let me in, up, beside her, then.

I enter the gates an hour before they close at sunset.

I bring two bottles of sleeping pills. Water to push them down and chocolate for a sweet finish, like Mama’s dessert after every meal. 

A note is pinned inside my jacket, wrapped around ten thousand dollars and my owner’s certificate for crypt 217: “Please forgive me.” Even now, I must beg and bribe. Must not offend. If they think I’ve tainted this place, splashed blood or scandal here, they won’t help me. That’s why I’m not using a gun, the quicker, surer way. “I need to stay beside my mother. There’s no one else who’ll put me there. Please put me there. Please.” 

In my car, I swallow everything. 

I slow fast, pulse clotted with gravel, stones accruing, thumping, downhill. My legs already outside me. 

My hands push them farther out, out of the car, past the glass doors, through that chilled sick smell disguised as flower rot.

I’ll fold onto that prayer kneeler, look at the photograph I attached a while—years?—ago—when she died. Daddy helped me choose the right picture, the happiest. Her face when I was born. My last sight, the same as my first—

Daddy? No, he—couldn’t help—he left before her. 

Where is she? 

The numbers blur till my fingers have to read them. 

Here’s 217 on one end. Blank, waiting for me. Nameless.

Daddy—yes—he’s on the other end. 215.

But between us, 216 seems empty. No photo. No name there, either.

My mouth’s emptier. Not a skeleton of scream in it. 

What happened to Mama?

A last flash. Her face. Not happy. Blank, waiting for me. Nameless. In a place with—a guy? Albert?—Als—something. In a—ward. A—“memory ward.” That’s it! Where she’s been for—ten—twelve—two?—years?

Where I belong, too. Following her, or—or beside her, like here, not like here, but not—

fill in the blank—

not me—

leading—

A native of San Francisco, Toni Juliette Leonetti lives in the Bay Area. Her writing appears in places including Okay Donkey, Spectra Poets, HAWKEYE, Some Words, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, and Literally Stories. She’s on X @ToniJulietteLeo.