I Played the Queen
by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
I don’t tell my mother what I’m thinking as I look around her dark, musty room. Throw things away, Mom. What she’s keeping is torn, faded, crumpled, dirty. Another metropolis of Styrofoam cups has gone up beside her kitchen sink. Again, she’s stuffing empty cups into the love seat. Does she think they’re hidden? The second sister bought her a pack of Styrofoam cups from Walmart, thinking kindness might outsmart our mother, but the fresh ones are in the cupboard, out of sight, and maybe this is the problem? So I toss what I can while my mother pleads for me to leave things alone, and I feel like a raider. My Polish grandmother hoarded. Her basement was a treasure hunt for kids who don’t separate what’s finished from what’s worth saving. My first sister and I would dress in moth eaten hats and scarves, tarnished costume jewelry, set a table for ourselves with chipped dishes, a tureen with a petunia pattern, a mismatched gravy bowl missing its handle. We’d dine on imaginary buttered toast points and sip fresh squeezed orange juice from cracked tea cups like the Queen and Princess of England. My mother used to have an eagle eye. Colorful pillows dotting the sofa, tchotchkes clustered on the coffee table, stacks of art catalogues, their spines color-matched; her violin bow placed on her music stand, just so, and waiting for her to come back and play. She smelled like flowers, and dressed for dinner. A silky blouse, her hair pulled back, slim black pants. Did she ever wear jeans? Out in the yard, Nina and I would practice gymnastics: back bridges, cartwheels, handstands, tricking gravity until our mother called us in to wash up. On our dinner plates would be an edible garnish, usually parsley. Now we worry our mother never gets clean because she needs help in the tub, and to allow someone in risks what she savors being taken for trash.
Pia Z. Ehrhardt is the author of FAMOUS FATHERS & OTHER STORIES. Her fiction and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Oxford American, Narrative Magazine and VQR. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Fellowship and the Narrative Prize. She lives in New Orleans, LA and Queens, NY
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “I Played the Queen”? Alzheimer’s is taking our mother down, and away from my sisters and me. So to begin in scene in the now, in desperation and hopelessness, then inflect – infect – the draft with brightness and movement is to see our mother back in action. I wish her brain could straighten out long enough to read the piece, and see herself – and her mother – my grandmother – admired, appreciated, emulated.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD