Chapter Text
Birthed by the earth, he heard, when they had still gone on family visits looking for answers. A grab-and-take person, not owed by the world. She sought her own.
“We’re all allotted some, Rustin. Each person has their deserved piece. Your mother wanted more than double.”
Her clothes, her photos, every personal and private thing bar her purse, left to sun-bleach in the house in Galveston. Items of jewellery belonging to her grandma. Well-thumbed books. All tear-stained, until one day pop had forgotten to cry, forgotten to clutch.
Two years old and talking, asking where momma is, and as if the woman had died, all those once beloved items went to her son, furring with dust as he grew. At five, he didn’t remember her face, or her hands. Sense memory didn’t transfer in what she left behind. Rust was too small to carry any of it.
He found her again when he could have held onto it all; her sweaters folded and stashed away in boxes still stacked in the corner of the cabin as if used for bearing. Pop bought the necessaries after he’d already loaded his truck, the family house had not been left looking lived-in, but the boxes were never opened. He had wanted a fresh and uninhibited start. Always a hypocrite, signing forms only to burn them.
Maybe Rust finding sign of her when he had grown so self-aware, constantly assured that he didn’t need a mother, meant that somewhere, she thought of her son.
Rough wool in three different shades of brown. It scratched as if Rust wasn’t giving due reverence. Holding the sweaters to him wasn’t enough; he could catch the punchy smell of incense and the warmth of the land, under soft floral laundry, only for a little while. Unfolding them, he found a few long dark blonde hairs and lost them as quick as he held them up to the light. The sweater rode tight under his armpits when he pulled it on, too–broad shoulders and broadening further, it would stretch as long as he wore it. If he couldn't, he would tie it around his waist to keep it with him.
For once, pop said nothing.