a view into another time

violet squirmed in her restrictive dress, pulling at the starched collar in a way that reminded me of a restrained animal. my mother scolded her, pushing her hands down and smoothing out her dress again. today was the day we were all to get our photographs done. we put on our best dresses and curled our hair into tight rings, and then rushed into town in our beaten up model-t, all of us jostling around on the dirt road to arrive on time. i stood off to the side of the set up, watching my mother struggle to get my siblings to cooperate. the photographer perched behind the camera, ducking underneath a thick black blanket and emerging every few seconds to instruct my mother on adjustments to make in the twins' positions. my frantic mother fluttered around anxiously, tugging at their dresses or flattening their hair back into place. watching her try to hold herself together made me pity her. getting our photographs taken had been my father's idea. after he passed away, my mother couldn't bear to cancel our appointment. she went through with it, as if to prove she was fine. she was not fine. nobody else could tell, but i could. i could see it in the slight tremble in her hand every time she reached out to separate one of the twins' glossy corkscrew curls. i could see it in her eyes, the glassy look that told me she was not all there. i could see it in the way she held herself, as if she was about to crumble at any moment, as if her insides had all been scraped out and all that was left was her skeleton, bones sagging under her heavy heart. the photographer seemed finally content with the girls' positioning and snapped the picture, the flashbulbs temporarily blinding us all. the photograph would take a while to develop but i knew what i'd see when we got it back. two little girls clutching each other in oblivion, and not pictured, a mother that was falling apart while desperately trying to hold things in place.