The first time I ask God for a sign, He leaves a dead mouse on the sidewalk. 

I see it, curled up next to Mom’s wilting dahlias, on my way to the school bus. At first I think it’s a gray rock. Then, as I get closer, a miniature stuffed animal. But there are flies buzzing all around it. Its perfect, tiny paws are drawn up near its face. It doesn’t smell, at least.

Okay? I say, my hands steepled together, but God has His Do Not Disturb sign up.

I don’t know why God would leave me such a disgusting message. I don’t need rabies, or scurvy, or whatever it is dead mice can give you. And I don’t need a reminder that the flowers Mom and I spent hours planting last summer are already dying. I just need to know if Mom will be okay. And yes, I’ve heard all about His Mysterious Ways, I know He’s not supposed to hand out easy answers, but it’s not like my question affects nations, or important people, or the fate of the world. It’s just my mother. And isn’t God allowed to break the rules when He wants to? 

After school, while Dad slices an apple, I ask him if God has ever talked to him. Not just the in-your-heart bullshit, but actual words.

Dad says to watch my language. He explains that God doesn’t talk like that. Not His style. 

“Remember that story?” he says, referring to the one single time he, not Mom, made me wear a flowery dress and dragged me to Sunday school. “After the Ark landed on the mountain and all the people and animals came out onto solid ground, God put a rainbow in the sky. It was His way of promising that He would never destroy the world with a flood again.”

“Is that real?” I ask.

“Of course rainbows are real.”

“No, I mean the story.” 

Dad doesn’t answer, but he does give me cheese cubes with the apple.  

A few days later, God leaves me something else: a deer track in the mud. I wasn’t supposed to cut through the park, and now I wish I hadn’t. What am I supposed to do with a deer track? At least the mouse was a real thing. A deer track is just a hollow. An emptiness.

But then again, who am I to question God? I hold my breath, listening for the snap of a twig. Looking for a flash of tan fur. Maybe this is a good sign, after all. When Mom was healthy, she loved seeing deer wander through our yard, even though she complained that they bit the heads off our zinnias and brought ticks. 

But I don’t see a thing. Only trees and more trees. Dad says deer spook easily, but Mom always used to find them. Also snakes, painted turtles, and birds zooming overhead. She taught me the difference between cranes and herons and geese and swans. 

“Cranes migrate south for winter,” Mom told me, when I was eight and she was someone who told me things, “but they always come back. They nest in the same spot every time.” 

I squint at the deer track and try to figure out what it looks like—a coffee bean, or two tadpoles, or a heart split down the middle.  

Does this mean Mom will wake up early tomorrow and make coffee and be waiting at the kitchen table when I come downstairs, smiling like sunshine, her tortoiseshell glasses on, hair piled up in a fluffy bun like a puffball mushroom? Does it mean her heart is broken forever?

God, I plead, be more specific, please.

And maybe He’s finally listening. Because at dinnertime, Mom comes downstairs and makes soup. She walks to the corner store to buy fresh bread, and the three of us share tomato bisque and bread and softened butter. Mom cuts another slice of bread, lays it on my plate, and I think of the story of the fishes and the loaves. When she brushes her hand against the back of my neck, a shiver crisscrosses my whole body. 

“You need a trim,” she says softly. “Should we do a haircut tomorrow?”

I don’t say anything—I don’t want to spook her. I don’t want her to pull her hand away.

“See?” Dad says, wiping a spatter of red from his chin. “Look at you, up and at ‘em.”

Mom smiles in a way that makes me think of dead prairie grass.

That night, I hear her crying—not loud, not angry. She sounds like a kitten trapped under a basket. Dad’s voice rumbles through the floorboards, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I press both fists to my eyelids and try to picture her smiling—the way her eyes used to sparkle—but all I can see is that stupid deer track. I hope the deer is smart enough to stay off the road. 

The next morning, Mom stays in bed, the floral comforter drawn over her like a garden. She tells me she won’t be able to cut my hair today. She tells me she’s sorry.

I crawl into bed with her. She pulls me close and lets me stay there, even though I’ll be late to school, even though she probably just wants to sleep. Something taps against the window—a long, pointed beak, or a twig, or an arrow. Maybe this is the sign I’ve been waiting for. Maybe there’s a rainbow stretching across the sky, a promise that He will never again destroy my mother in this particular way, and I only need to look up to believe it. 

I close my eyes and burrow under the blankets. I can feel my mother breathing next to me, our bodies rising and falling like the flood. 

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson