I was nine years old on this sunny summer day. I was playing up on the Elliot Bluff in Pittsburgh when I realized that I may be late. Mom said to be home for dinner at 4:30 and I was pretty sure that it was after that time. I did wonder why Mom didn't come looking for me, or call out to me, but I just figured that I was going to get a whooping for being late to dinner, and her silence meant it was going to be a bad punishment.
I came along the front of the house at 302 Fairview Avenue, looking at the flowers that Mr. Carouthers tended. He had two large glass houses behind the main house. I knew this because Mom and I lived in the basement apartment to this home, which had an entry in the rear of the building. I also recall looking at the morning glories growing on the block wall across from the entrance that led to our kitchen. I remembered that Mom had been stung by a bee just yesterday, and I hoped that she had healed from that sting.
I had prepared the words a thousand times on my walk home: "I'm sorry, Mom!"; "Mom, I'm sorry..."; "Mom, I was having fun and ..."; "I'm so so sorry that I'm late, Mom!" I spoke one of these when I opened the door, but as I looked, I stopped mid-sentence. Lying on the floor was Mom, she had evidently been painting the kitchen floor. It was a brick red color, and she had slumped into the wet paint in front of the stove. I kept calling, "Mom!" as I knelt down and rolled Mom onto her left side. Her skin was a strange color... more blue that pink. As I rolled her, her jaw fell slack and down to the left. Her eyes were open, but hollow. The tears started and even the the thought of this moment makes me cry over fifty years later. I let gravity roll Mom back to the prone posture that she was in when I originally found her.
In a flash, I ran from the kitchen, through the dining/living room, and into the bedroom. Mom and I shared the bedroom - two small single beds. I used the phone and called Mick, my elder brother.. My voice cried and quivered through my sobs, "Mick, Mom's dead! Mom's dead!!" Mick asked where I was and he told me to go upstairs to the Carouthers' and tell Mister Carouthers what I had seen.
So I did. I hung up the phone and used the internal stairs from the furnace area that led upstairs. I was still sobbing as I knocked at the door. Mr. Carouthers opened it and I looked up at him and mouthed, "My Mom's dead!" He looked at me, and I looked at him and tried again, "Mom's dead!" This time, he knew what I had said despite the tears, sobbing and cracks in my voice. He left me with his wife, Ruby, who was handicapped after having a stroke. We sat and I cried. Mr. Carouthers reappeared at the top of the stairs and Mrs. Carouthers looked toward him. He lowered his head and shook it slowly side to side.
Mr. Carouthers asked if I had told anyone, and I told him that I had called Mick, calling out the phone number that I had memorized. Mr. Carouthers then tried to call Mick, but he couldn't get him. He then called the police.
Much of the rest of that evening was a blur. Mick and Dorth, his wife, showed up and I remember talking to the police, but it was through tears and cries of "I want my Mom!" Eventually, as the sun was setting, Mick told Dorth to take me to their apartment. I would be staying there. I didn't want to leave, I really didn't want to leave my Mom, but then I found myself walking hand-in-hand with 19-year-old Dorothy. My tears were her tears, too. We walked down the hill, hand-in-hand to their apartment on Lorenz Avenue. I cried the whole way. Dorothy had just become my Mom.
