A Mother's Love (7 page)

As I slipped away from her body, I was surprised by how cold the night had turned. The floor beneath my feet was like ice and my empty stomach gnawed at me. The door opened and I heard my father come in. They went toward their room, arm in arm, the light from the room illuminating the space between their arms, a small space you could slip coins through. They talked for a while in the low voices that you use when telling secrets. Then their light went out and they were quiet, except for the rustle of sheets, the creak of the bed.

Later I woke to the sound of someone moving through the trailer and I knew it was she. My mother was a restless sleeper. Often I would hear
her prowling at night, rummaging through things as if she were a raccoon. I listened to her moving about for a long time, wondering what she was looking for, until I drifted back to sleep.

It was early when Sam woke me, whimpering for food. She shook me, asking me to find her something to eat. “I want peanut butter,” she said. She shook so hard, she rattled the bed, even as I tried to push her away. Though it seemed as if Sam was always trying to stuff things into her mouth, she was a skinny child with tiny bones. Yet now she rocked me with all her might.

I crept out of bed, wondering what I'd fix for her and for me. Sam slipped her hand through mine. The light was dim in the trailer as I opened the refrigerator door, on which my mother kept a list of chores, her menu for the week. She tried to do things to maintain the semblance of a normal life. The menu for the five nights of the week was always the same—meatloaf, boiled ham, roast chicken, noodle casserole, fried fish. But we never ate those things. I have no memory of eating roast chicken on Wednesday or any other day of the week. But I remember the list, because I was always hungry for the food my mother never made.

Sam wanted peanut butter and jelly but I couldn't get the top off the peach preserve. I tried, but it was useless. So I opened the door to our parents' room. The room was dark with the shade
drawn but I could make out my mother, lying on her back, her black hair sprawled across the bed. My father moved on top of her, whispering over and over her name. They were bathed in sweat, glistening like sardines.

D
INNERSTEIN & SONS, Jewelers, was nice enough in the front, its rows of cases filled with mostly diamond and pearl settings. But in the back where I worked it was little better than a sweatshop, lit with bare fluorescent bulbs. A dreary place. It was here that settings were replaced, stones reset. I was skilled at this, and Mike, the owner, paid me well. It was much more than he paid his two stringers, Alma and Suzette, who resented me because I worked free-lance and came and went as I pleased.

I worked at a bench like them, though they did only pearls. All day long they sorted through the bins, picking out the best freshwater or cultivated variety. The rosy pearls, the grays and blues, the pure whites. It was tedious, unappreciated work. Alma, a black woman in her forties who'd raised two boys alone, read gothic novels on her breaks
and had tiny stuffed bears all around her desk. Suzette, who came from Normandy and hated America (I had no idea why she stayed, but I think it had to do with a man), did her nails in her spare time, grinding them with a file. Alma had the eye for the right pearls, but she had been doing this for a dozen years. Suzette was better with the sizing and stringing, so they divided their tasks along these lines. Alma often accused Suzette, behind her back, of being color blind when it came to picking out the right pearl.

Alma and Suzette had basically ignored me for years until Mike, a stout man with a bulldog face, came into the workroom shortly after I'd told him I was pregnant and said I should go ahead and make myself a ring—pick out any diamond I wanted. “A present,” he said, “from me.” The “girls” raised their heads.

“There's not going to be a wedding,” I told him.

Mike shrugged, embarrassed. “Well, if there's anything I can do.”

“Keep me employed,” I said. “I'm going to need it.”

After Bobby was born, the office sent me a silver teething ring and cup, engraved. I was grateful for these gifts, but I could have used more practical things, though Alma did send a pair of pajamas. Suzette, who was not a mother, gave him a pair of tiny white silk shoes.

The day I returned was the first time anyone,
except Mike, who'd stopped by the hospital, had seen the baby. Ben, who worked in the front, handed him a lollipop, which I intercepted. “Thanks, Ben. He'll eat it next year,” I told him. Since Bobby was born, I'd been doing work by the piece at home when I wasn't working on my collages. But now I needed to earn more, so I decided to return a few days a week. I hadn't thought through how I'd manage. Eventually I'd have to hire a baby sitter, but for the moment the baby could sit on the bench beside me in his Kangarockaroo.

“Oh, he is cute. You'll never regret it,” Alma said in a voice that made me unsure.

Suzette stopped filing her nails long enough to glance up. “Nice baby,” she said, looking incredibly bored.

I sat at my workbench, where three diamond rings and one pin setting awaited me. This was a full day's work, at least, if I went straight through. I began with the pin because it would take the most time. It was an heirloom, missing a few of its precious stones. There was a note attached, saying that this was Mrs. Potter's mother's brooch and that it was important that the piece be done properly. I pictured Mrs. Potter's mother at the turn of the century, wearing this brooch on her bodice. A Victorian sitting room, apricot damask curtains.

For the first hour Bobby slept as I cleaned the setting. I scraped and polished. I had earned my
living for years as a jeweler and designer, specializing in silver and gold. Gold illuminated my youth or at least colored the tales my father told of the casinos where he worked with carpets spun of gold, of a desk where all the knobs were silver dollars and the phone solid gold. Of the Golden Nugget and the legendary Golden Lady, who dressed in gold—gold skirts, gold boots, her skin tanned a perfect tawny shade of gold, her hair shimmering like golden fleece.

I have held various jobs, some better than others. I've been a photographer's model, for though I'm not beautiful, I am striking, with my thick red curls. At times I think I might just as well be a college professor or a legal secretary, a computer technician or a veterinarian. I did many things, but nothing really held me. Perhaps my peripatetic youth—so much moving around, my mother's leaving—made my concentration poor; my mind tended to wander from the tasks at hand.

But I was drawn to tiny polished objects, to perfectly carved pieces, to bits of silver and gold. My stepmother, Dottie, our former neighbor, first noticed I had talent. “A gift,” she called it. Though her notion of art was the velvet painting from Tijuana of a tiger or the crying clowns that graced her living room, Dottie watched me doodling, sketching what I saw. I liked to take an object apart with my eyes. But what impressed her the most was that I drew things that weren't there.
People, animals, landscapes. Whatever was in my head. I could close my eyes and see animals I'd only seen in books—like giraffes or angel fish—and these I'd draw in amazing detail. I could sketch the Eiffel Tower or Elvis crooning on TV. I also did odd sketches of my desert world—a scorpion, its tail raised to strike; a coyote sleeping in its lair. Sometimes I drew my mother's face, pressed against a window, looking out into nothing at all. Or a woman with a girl like Sam buying purses in a store. Dottie would discreetly admire these. One day, she told my father, “She has talent, Howard. I'm going to see that she gets to use it.” It was Dottie who pushed me to take a class at the local community college when we were still living in Vegas and later saw to it that I went to art school in Los Angeles.

When I can, I do my work at home, then bring it in to Mike. In the front room of my apartment—the only room that's sunny—I have Ziploc bags tucked away with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, as well as less precious stones like tiger's eye and turquoise, purple onyx and mother of pearl. Occasionally museums send me pieces that their own conservators can't repair, and I am well paid for this work, though it doesn't come in often enough. Once I spent a year on a necklace worn by an Egyptian queen who had died three thousand years before. On my table I had hundreds of the
glass beads and pieces of gold chain. I was six months into the project when Matthew bumped into the table, and it took us weeks, during which we could not vacuum, until we found every single colored bead.

I was a little more than an hour into the heirloom brooch when Bobby awoke. I sighed at being interrupted, and Alma raised her eyes. She made room for Bobby on the bench so that I could change his diaper. Suzette, a disgusted look in her face, turned away. It would take almost half an hour to feed him, and if I wanted to get the work done, I didn't have that time to spare. I found a cushion, propped him on it, and let him nurse while I worked. Alma shook her head as I struggled not to drop him. When he was done, he was awake and wanted to be held.

“Here,” Alma said, “I can take a break. You work. Come here, Bobby, play with your Aunt Alma for a while.”

I've always liked Alma. She too was the daughter of a long-departed mother. Once I shared my past with her after work over drinks, confiding my secret. And Alma said, “I don't know what makes white people think this is so special. It happens to blacks all the time.” Half her friends, she said, had mothers who went away or didn't know who their fathers were. “You want to know the definition of confusion? Father's Day in Harlem.” She tossed back her head of plaited curls and roared.

Alma played with Bobby until her break was over. Then she smiled at Suzette. “Suzie, honey,” Alma said, “why don't you entertain the baby for a while?” Taking pity on me, perhaps, Suzette put down her nail file and shook a rattle in his face during her break.

Halfway through the day my stomach growled. I hadn't had breakfast and it was almost lunch-time, but I didn't want to spend money on a mid-town sandwich. I should have brought something from home, not that I had much in the fridge. My stomach growled again, and I thought that lately I had the gnawing emptiness that I had not felt since my mother forgot to give Sam and me supper before bed. Alma looked over as I smiled an embarrassed smile. “Ivy, have you eaten? You've got to eat something.”

“I'm okay. I don't want to stop.”

“But maybe you
should
stop.” She had half a tuna fish sandwich and a cup of coffee on her desk. “Here. Take these … if you don't want to go out.”

“No, really, I'll be fine,” but she shoved the food over to my workbench. I took little bites, but I felt ashamed. When I was done, it was as if I hadn't eaten at all.

We divided the day, taking care of Bobby until Alma and Suzette had to go, leaving me at the bench, where I worked until past seven o'clock. I
was growing weak with hunger, but I kept working. When I got home, I'd make something to eat.

It was going to take me almost ten hours to complete a job that normally took six. As Alma was leaving, she'd said, “Ivy, let me give you a piece of advice. You can't do this on your own. You have to hire somebody. And you need to take care of yourself.” I nodded; she was right and I would get someone to help, though I knew it would be weeks before I could afford it.

When I was getting ready to leave, Mike, who was doing the books, handed me an envelope with cash for my day's efforts. Two hundred dollars. “This is too much,” I said.

“You worked ten hours; that's what you get.”

“Mike, half the time I wasn't working. It was a six-hour job and you know it. I can't take this money.”

“Take the money; you need it.”

“I'll take pay for six hours' work and not a penny more.”

Annoyed with me, Mike took fifty dollars out of the envelope. “I'll put this in my desk. It's there if you need it.”

“Thanks,” I said, tears filling my eyes.

Exhausted and ravenous when I reached home at eight o'clock, I looked in the refrigerator and found some eggs, butter, a few slices of bread. While I heated a skillet, I put Bobby in front of the
television; “Nature” was on with a show about hummingbirds. He seemed transfixed by the luminous colors, the beating of wings. As I cracked three eggs into the skillet, I heard the narrator explain that the female hummingbird raises her young alone and alters her body functions in order to do so. Her pulse increases, her body temperature drops to conserve strength. Some females, the narrator went on, die of exhaustion, in which case the chicks starve.

I put my eggs on a plate and began to eat greedily, paying no attention to my son. Perhaps I could devise a way to drop my temperature, raise my pulse. I ate as if I were truly starved; I couldn't get the food into me fast enough. It was a while before I noticed the stench, still longer before I paid attention to it. Maybe it wasn't the smell but Bobby's cry that got my attention. And then it took me longer still to see what was wrong. As I bent over him, I saw that his clothes were soaked, drenched in light brown liquid that oozed out onto his shirt, covering him.

I picked him up and saw that he was soiled everywhere. Even his baby seat. I had to find a way to rinse the filth off him. A bath wouldn't work because the dirt would fill his tub. And besides, where could I put him while I got the tub ready. I could take a shower, holding him in the shower, but all I wanted to do was eat.

It occurred to me that I could rinse him off in
the sink under the faucet. Then I could wrap him in a towel while I finished eating. Later I'd bathe him properly and dress him for bed. Peeling off his soiled clothes, I tossed them aside and ran the water in the sink, equal amounts of hot and cold. Balancing him in my hand, I let the water rush over his body, and rubbed a little soap on him. “Now that feels good, doesn't it?” I said. He seemed happy to be washed and to feel the water coursing over his body. He cooed as I swished the water over his chest, his legs, his genitals; the filth that covered him was whisked away.