Back to Issue 11

Jennifer Porter​

Jimmy's Urns
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The three of us—Isaiah, Mom, and me—sit at the kitchen table, cutting out paper rabbit heads and coloring them with colored pencils, though we are grown-ups. We glue the rabbit heads onto long popsicle-like sticks and glue pastel-blue bow ties where the wooden stick meets the papery head. On the table are a couple bags of neon and glittery plastic eggs Mom bought new for this year, the fifth anniversary. Jimmy’s favorite color was neon orange. Mom bought an entire sleeve of neon orange, extra-large, plastic eggs.

It is raining a warm heavy flush of spring, and I wish for it to stop raining when we visit Jimmy at the railroad crossing.

There’s something Isaiah has been pressuring me to tell Mom, but today is about Jimmy. He thinks it will make Mom happy and we should try and make her happy sooner rather than later, when she’ll find out anyway. Why wouldn’t I tell her?
What if it makes her cry? Sometimes I want to slap Jimmy for what he’s done.

Mom cannot shed the exoskeleton of grief.

When we get to the railroad crossing, my husband pulls a short distance down the employee-only access lane that parallels the tracks just twenty feet away. He parks the SUV and turns around to gently squeeze my knee. Part of me knows that I should tell Mom today. The other part of me worries there can only be one Jimmy.
Mom puts on her large dark sunglasses. Jimmy’s laminated fresh face smiles from the white wooden cross between two twelve-inch-tall concrete urns. The wide urns, adorned with carved lions, are patchy with mold and erosion. I smile back and tell Jimmy our news.

Jimmy’s not so sure I should do that, likens it to the poor kid lugging around a backpack filled with rusty railroad spikes, but he’s pleased anyway.
We help Mom clean the plastic shamrocks and the weathered dancing leprechauns out of the urns. We unwrap the bright green glittering garland and take down the green and gold glitter sign with its black construction-paper kettle.
Mom places the Easter eggs and pastel-colored artificial flowers in each urn and we push in the bunnies. She steps back and takes a wide-angle look and nods her head in approval. Cars and trucks pass by over the level crossing and I keep looking both ways to see if a train is coming. The train is so loud, she’d never hear me.

Every Halloween and Christmas our family took a ride on an old-fashioned, steam locomotive. Mom and Jimmy always rushed to sit in the caboose so they could stick their hands out the window and not get in trouble with the conductor.

I take a deep breath. Now is a good time, I think.

But then I hear a train down the tracks, and within moments the warning signals at the crossing sound and the gates lower. Isaiah and Mom keep working on the urns, but I stand there and wait for the train.

At twenty seconds before the intersection, the train blows its first long whistle. Seconds later another long whistle. The train shakes the ground. I instinctively put my hands on my stomach.

The train must blow a short whistle then another long one before it reaches the middle of the crossing. If someone is on the tracks, the conductor can blow the horn as often and as loud and as long as needed. I think about Jimmy ignoring the train horn that night five years ago and while I do, baby Jimmy jumps inside me for the first time at the sound of the final train whistle.

This baby inside me is a wondrous thing.

When the train barrels by, it tries to pull me along with it. Since Jimmy left, I have thought about going. I would want to go quickly, and not slowly and painfully, like I fear my brother did. But this time, this time is different. I look down the tracks, and I swear Jimmy is holding onto a handle on the side of the locomotive, waving good-bye. The wind rushes his hair into his eyes and his grin blinds me. I wave back. I realize with a sharp pang that I’m glad to see him go, though I love him dearly.

“How does it look?” my mother asks after the crossing guard has risen and the warning signals have quieted. 

She brings me back to Jimmy’s urns.

“It looks nice, Mom,” I say. “Jimmy would like it.”

My mother tries to smile. I cannot imagine if something happened to my Jimmy, and I feel closer to my mother than ever before.

“You look tired,” she says. “Being pregnant is hard work. Thank you for coming.” We hug. I let Mom sink into my shoulder. I feel strong and able.  

Jimmy’s twenty-eighth birthday is next month, and my husband and I will be at Mom’s kitchen table coloring paper balloons that we will glue on long thin wooden dowels. Maybe then I will tell her my baby is a boy and I will name him Jimmy. Or maybe I will keep him to myself for a while longer.
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Jennifer Porter lives near East Lansing, Michigan. Her writing has appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Old Northwest Review, The Dos Passos Review, Apeiron Review, drafthorse, The Ocotillo Review, and other journals and anthologies. Her novella The World Beyond can be found in the Binge-Watching Cure anthology with Claren Books. She is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars and the co-founding prose editor at The Tishman Review.K.
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