Saturday Night–Sunday Morning
I scrubbed my kitchen floor today,
not one of those "a lick and a promise" scrubs,
a real down on my hands and knees job.
"To get all the corners clean,
you must get down on your knees," Mama always said.

Her house always had that clean,
just-scrubbed look on Saturday night.
The old blue linoleum’s worn-through spots,
shone dark and glossy with wax.
The oily smell of furniture polish
blended with all the odors of cleanliness.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness,"
I often heard her say on Saturday
Thoughts of God came easy on Saturday—
so close to Sunday morning—
and thoughts of food.

The two cackling chickens, duly chased and caught,
their heads severed by her own hand.
I could not watch.
Their feathers singed now by the lit fire,
her hands deftly moved their plump bodies
through the flaming newspapers.

Their bodies scraped and cut up,
they rested now in the ice box,
waiting to be fried tomorrow.
The freshly baked pies waited too,
and the chocolate cake on the pantry shelf.
Was an abundance of food also next to godliness?
It felt that way on Saturday night.

Papa loved company for Sunday dinner.
Faraway relatives would be invited: "Come up for Sunday dinner, Alma is a wonderful cook"
(as indeed she was).
But sometimes she dreaded it.

She told me once, one hot *
August Saturday afternoon
(as we again prepared for
Sunday dinner on my birthday),
how he had invited his cousins from Lancaster
just two weeks before my birth.
Fifteen years later, distress still lingered
at the memory of that day.
"I didn’t feel good that summer, it was so hot.
And you—you were such a large baby—
I thought I could not get dinner for all those people"

The women folk cousins were sorry for her,
she said, when they saw her body, large with child.
"We did not know," they said,
"Michael should have told us."
She seemed to find comfort in their sympathy.
She smiles now, remembering.
"But I was always glad I did afterward—
Papa so loves company"

Saturday night—Sunday mornings often
followed by Sunday afternoon headaches.
The dark green blinds pulled against
the afternoon sun—it hurt her eyes.

I slipped upstairs, to comfort her—away
from the company where only the murmur of
the voices below interrupted the silence in her room.
She lay on the bed, her forehead
covered with a wet wash cloth,
her long thick black hair
(released from the pins that bound it)
billowed like a dark storm cloud
across the pillow.
Pain etched furrows in her
porcelain white skin.
I rubbed her temples,
the way she always liked.

"Is the pain better yet, Mama"?
A tear slid from the corner of her eye
to the pillow beneath.
"Yes, it helps a little." She patted my hand now;
"You have a good way with your hands—
for such a little girl."

Saturday nights, Sunday afternoons.
Soon it will be Monday,
sweet Monday.

—Freda Zehr