Now

It was specifically stated in my will that my mother not be my embalmer. As the Commander-in-Chief of a country in strife, I was practical enough to understand that my creator might survive me. Unfortunately, I was not intuitive enough to foresee my testament being destroyed by my dissidents. Now, my mother, the mortician, was shaving the fine hair off my face in preparation for makeup. 

It might look like she was injecting Botox, but she was really trying to close my mouth using a tool that hooked barbs around my jawbones. I wanted my scowl unyielding, even in death, but she was committed to fixing me a soft, feminine smile. 

Though I was no longer inside my body, I could still feel the heaviness of the chemical paint she applied to my papery skin. Throughout my life, I resisted her attempts to continue creating me—brushing away knots from my hair, lifting the stains from my clothes, combing down everything I had worked hard on. One of the principal duties of mothers, after they loved you of course, was to make you suitable to being loved by others. 

The last time my mother saw me naked, I was just a girl. To become my own woman, I did not permit vulnerabilities like that, like allowing her to embalm me. Still, when I wisped from the center of the dark knot of death back into the world of streaming color, I mused I might get to smell her sweet powder and blush again. I could smell it through my idea of a nose in my idea of a body as I leaned over her shoulder as she piped a glue-like fluid into my old body’s orifices. A memory of biting the gold locket at her chest glinted like my phantom shadow in the shine of the casket. 

My mother’s hand shot up to the back of her neck, finding me, an itch. It was time for her to reveal my body to the other mourners, her swan song. 

The problem with being a guest at your own funeral is that you feel like a host. I wanted to be remembered as clever and indomitable. This is difficult when you step on a landmine visiting your mistress on the border of Belarus. 

Still, I lingered while relatives and family friends cried into the casket. My closest companions from the militia days were not invited. My family resented them for supporting my revolutionary pursuits. 

Suddenly my army burst in, opening fire at my mother, cousins, and the funeral home groundskeeper. My body was picked up gingerly and put it into a vehicle. 

I revisit my body, in the temperature-controlled cellar where my comrades now keep it. The head floats in a fluid-filled container, keeping me preserved until science develops. I will not look quite right for a revolution when I’m revived again. My mouth is closed pleasantly. My hair is tied into bows.

__________

Cate Valinote’s work has appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, The Daily Californian, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University.