What We Keep

The sphinx statue in her mother's garden had weathered to gray, its riddle worn smooth by decades of rain. Maya stood before it, papaya in hand, the fruit's orange flesh exposing itself under her thumb. She hadn't been home in three years—not since the Sunday her mother had asked, across the breakfast table, why Maya couldn't just give her grandchildren like her sister did.

"You're like that statue," her mother said from the porch, rattling a vitamin pill in its plastic container. "All mystery and no answers."

Maya took a bite of papaya, sweet and cloying. "I have answers. You just don't like them."

Inside the house, her father's goldfish circled its bowl in endless loops. She'd bought it for him the year before he died, some misguided gesture of comfort. Now it swam alone, its memory supposedly three seconds long, though it seemed to remember exactly how to survive day after day in the same glass prison.

"Your vitamins are expired," Maya said, joining her mother on the porch. "From 2021."

"They still work," her mother snapped. "Everything still works if you believe it does."

Maya looked at the sphinx again. Its missing nose made it look like it was smelling something foul. "Dad's been gone two years, Mom. The fish doesn't need a palace."

"He liked palaces," she said softly, then: "I met someone. At the grief group. He's nice. He has a sphinx in his yard too."

The confession hung between them like smoke. Maya's mother, supplementing her loneliness with new rituals, new myths. The goldfish swam on, indifferent to their small griefs, their accumulated silences, the weight of everything unsaid.

"What's the riddle?" Maya asked, pointing at the statue.

Her mother smiled, something genuine breaking through. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"

"Man."

"No," she said, dropping the vitamin bottle into her purse. "Love. First it crawls, then it runs, then it needs a cane to catch up with you."

The goldfish surfaced, mouth opening and closing in silent prayer. Maya finished her papaya, sweet on her tongue, and wondered which leg they were on now, or if love ever really walked at all.