Pieces of My Mother (2 page)

2003

My sandals clap across the hardwood floor and into the blue room where my children sleep. There are school art projects that dangle from clothespins, Legos in every color, stuffed animals of every breed, and shelves full of books. A small night-light flickers in the corner of the room. My seven-year-old son is already asleep on the top bunk. My little girl has called me back in for the third time. I remind myself to be both patient and firm. She is four.

“Yes, Bella?”

“Mama, I keep thinking about the scary cat with red eyes.”

“Have you tried thinking of all things blue?” I ask, hoping she'll be soothed by our nighttime ritual of naming all the things in the world that could possibly be blue.

“Yes. I tried that. I can't sleep,” she says with a whimper. She reaches out and pulls at my arm. I do not feel the patience in me tonight.

“Mama, can you stay with me on my bed? Please?”

She doesn't understand that I am goddamn tired. My husband is out of town, as he is so often these days. I know that if I lie down, I won't be able to get back up. My mind is on the school lunches I haven't yet made, the stacks of dishes lined up all the way around the kitchen counter, and the wet towels that are beginning to smell because they haven't made it into the dryer yet. And then there are the twenty-four shamrock place mats that I promised to cut out for the preschool class tomorrow and the haircut appointment I need to cancel.

I look out to the yellow light in the hallway. The headache that began this afternoon in my neck is now settling in behind my eyes. I rub my left eyebrow back and forth, trying to chase the pain away. I can't do this drawn-out routine with Bella. I can't do the twenty questions, not tonight.
Okay
, I think,
take
a
deep
breath
and
count
to
ten
. That's what all the parenting books say to do. I need to come up with something—some kind of sleeping dust from the sandman, some magic spell from Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

“How about if you close your eyes and think of great names for pets? And not just the name of the pet, but you also have to think of what the pet looks like—in detail.”

She stares up at me, her eyebrows furrowed. “But that might make me think of the cat.”

Her mind never settles. If she were like her big brother, the routine would be a bedtime story, a back scratch, and off to slumberland. But not Bella. She is a girl with an epic imagination.

“Bella, please. It's time to sleep.”

“I'm trying,” she protests.

I watch her eyes blink, and tuck the covers snug around her body. I place her velvet bear underneath her chin and her shaggy cat in the crook of her arm. As I lean down to kiss her good-night, her eyes pop open wide and stare at me.

“Mama, what did your mom do when you were scared?”

Her question catches me off guard.

The room seems to tilt sideways. I don't feel dizzy, but heavy—like I might not be able to stand on my own two feet. I recognize it, this feeling, this physical sensation of being pulled backward, like standing in the undertow at Stinson Beach.

I do not recall slipping off my sandals and lying down alongside Bella on her bed. But suddenly I am here next to her, staring up at the ceiling with its tiny glow-in-the-dark stars.
Star
light. Star bright. First star, I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.

“Mama,” she asks again, “what did your mom do when you were scared?”

“I can't remember, Bella.” My body is stiff on the bed. I am trying so hard to do the right things, to be a good mother. “I didn't get scared much,” I say. That's not the truth either. “I guess she tucked me in and said things to help me to feel safe. Sort of like the things I say to you.”

My mouth aches. I am a coward. I am afraid of the undertow. I don't want her to know that sometimes a mother can't stay. “Let's close our eyes and go to sleep,” I whisper to her.

She smiles, pleased that I am lying on her bed, then whispers a reminder, “Don't leave, Mama.” The room tilts again; the ceiling stars go blurry.
The
words
I
never
once
said.

I cannot tell Bella that my mom left when I was a little girl. And yet it was a simple fact, a well-memorized statement when I was growing up. “My mom doesn't live with us,” I'd say in the same way I'd say, “Lilacs are my favorite flowers.” It didn't occur to me that becoming a mother myself could wash to shore the wreckage of the past. To tell my daughter this truth is to tell myself the darkest truth. That I was leavable. Unkeepable.

I come from a long line of mothers who left their children. What if there exists some sort of genetic family flaw, some kind of “leaving gene” that unexpectedly grabs hold of mothers like the ones in my family? What if that leaving gene is lying dormant inside me? And what if my daughter, with her fretful imagination, worries that I might leave one day?

I picture my mom, a thousand miles away. She has always been a thousand or more miles away, except for the occasional visits. Each of us carried her leaving in different ways. When she left, it seemed she took all the colors with her. The world turned gray and itchy like a tight wool sweater pulled across my chest. In the early years, she didn't call us or show up on our birthdays, which deeply upset my father. He hoped she would at least acknowledge us on those special occasions. Later, she began to drift in and out of our lives like our live-in sitters, always seeming just out of our reach. If we were lucky, we might see her once—occasionally twice—a year. And then we never knew when, or if, we would see her again. Perhaps she might have stayed to hold our small hands if she could have foreseen the directions our lives would go after that summer.

How would my daughter thrive if I leaned down to kiss her good-night right now and told her that I couldn't live with her and her brother anymore? And that I wasn't sure when I'd visit next or if I'd come back? How will I ever be able to answer my daughter's questions—or my own?

I close my eyes, rearrange my unbearable thoughts, and tuck them away.
I
am
a
mother
now. A good mother.

I rest my lips against Bella's shoulder and breathe her in like sweet, warm bread. I want my daughter to feel safe. Every day I rebuild a scaffold inside myself in hopes that she will have something sturdy to hang on to.

It's all I can do for now.

Four Years Later

The telephone rings midmorning. Barefoot, I step outside before answering. It's my mom's sister.

“Melissa, your mom's stopped eating and she's not very—well, cognizant.”

“Stopped eating,” I repeat. “Okay.”

No, this is not okay.
I've been tracking my mom's struggle with cirrhosis and liver cancer over the past few years. I've witnessed her health deteriorating during our occasional visits, which I reached out for more frequently since she's been sick. All my fears surface. She is leaving again.

“The hospice nurse doesn't expect her to make it to the new year,” says my aunt.

I bite down on my thumbnail until it snaps between my teeth and squint up at the December sun. The calculation is a simple one. New Year's Eve is in six days. Her sixty-fifth birthday is in five. Los Angeles to Seattle. I can get there before the sun sets.

I look through the window at my daughter, Bella, waving a wand in big circles inside the house. Bubbles scramble up in the air and then drift down toward her bare feet. She is almost nine now but still believes in Santa Claus and the magic of Christmas.

“Should I come?” I ask my aunt.

“I don't know. It might be too hard,” she says.

I feel an odd pang of jealousy, like she wants to be the only one with my mom when she dies. But I can't explain why I need to be there either. I just know I need to see her one last time. I cannot bear the thought of her sneaking away before I arrive.

“I'm coming,” I tell my aunt, acutely aware of how disappointed the kids are going to be that I'm leaving them on Christmas and also feeling that there isn't a moment to waste.

Bella pleads with me not to leave her on Christmas, “of all the days!”

“It's not fair, Mama. Can't you go tomorrow instead?”

I shake my head, unable to articulate my sense of urgency. My son, Dominic, thumbing through a deck of new playing cards, asks, “When are you coming back?”

I look out the window as if the answer is somewhere in the row of yellow and pink roses still blooming in the December sun, or in the way the palm tree casts its slender shadow against the house. I add and subtract the hours, minutes, and seconds. I have to get there before she dies.

“I don't know when I'll be back for sure.” I hate that I can't give a definite time. I swore I'd never do this to my own children.

“You have to be back for New Year's Eve,” cries Bella. “You have to
promise
this. Please, Mama?”

“Okay, I promise,” I say as I gather a random assortment of clothes and toss them into a suitcase.

• • •

My seatmate on the flight to Seattle guzzles a ginger ale and organizes the peanuts on his tray in two neat lines. He looks to be in his early twenties, at most. I'm not usually one to engage in a conversation on a plane, but the ride is bumpy from turbulence and I can't seem to quiet my mind. I need to talk to someone, anyone.

“You live in Seattle?” I ask.

“Just outside Tacoma. I'm stationed at Fort Lewis right now,” he says. “My wife is having a baby any day now.”

I smile. “Ah, you must be so excited.”

“Yeah.” He fills his mouth with the ice cubes from his plastic cup. “And nervous. Big responsibility.”

“I know. I've got two kids.”

“That's cool. You going to have any more?” he asks.

I laugh at the thought. “No, my kids are big now—nine and twelve.”

“I can't even imagine what that's like,” he says.

Talking to this stranger about to embark on the journey of raising a child briefly lifts my spirits. The potential of birth overriding death this Christmas night is a welcome thought. I can't help but wonder if his child will be born before my mom dies—or after. Our conversation circles around until he finally asks me where I'm headed for the holidays.

“I'm going to see my mom in Olympia. She's sick. Liver cancer.”

“That's rough. I'm sorry.”

I turn to the window, searching for signs of light in the distance. There's nothing else to say. This opportunity to connect with my mom—at last, before she leaves—feels possible. This is what I know for sure: I want to be there when she dies. I want to hold her body. It's pathetic, this fantasy of a good-bye. But I keep imagining myself holding her hand when her body finally surrenders. Only then will I be able to touch her face and allow myself to finally feel a handful of her hair—hair that I have not dared to touch since I was a little girl. I will not contain my grief any longer. It will echo through the house. Though the woods. Past the stars. I will hold her until the sky changes its color.

Every time she left when I was a child, I had to believe in the promise of her return. I tried not to miss her, but I did. This time, my mom won't be returning, and I am terrified of my own unraveling. What kind of courage will I need when I arrive in Olympia?

As a girl, the story of Pandora—and the beautiful and dangerous box that Zeus warned her never to open—mesmerized me. I came to believe such a vessel could exist inside me, and if I dared to tip the lid, it would expose all my dark and ugly places. Throughout the years, it was safer to keep all the things I was fearful of locked inside. Now, on my way to say good-bye to my mom, I am afraid of what I've contained for so long.

The overhead seat-belt sign dings and lights up. We are closer now. The plane wobbles through the winter sky and I close my eyes, longing for those days when my brothers and I were a tribe of three.

“Wanna learn how to light matches, Melissa?” asks my oldest brother, Jamie, busting into my room.

“No.”

“Come on. It's really cool,” says Eden.

“I don't think we're supposed to,” I tell him.

No one is home right now. We are four, five, and six.

“Jamie and me are gonna do it anyway,” says Eden. “Besides, you better do it or we'll stuff Rice Krispies in your ear again when you're sleeping.”

My skin itches when Eden says this. I don't want to wake up to the sound of snap, crackle, pop in my ear again.

“Well, okay,” I say.

“You're a good sister,” says Eden.

I follow my big brothers in their boxer shorts and white T-shirts downstairs to where it is cool. We huddle on the green shag carpet, the three of us like crows hanging out on a grassy field. Jamie reaches up and pulls out a pack of matches that he's hidden behind the owl painting on the fireplace. It's a creepy owl with tangerine eyes that stares at us no matter where we are in the room.

“Lemme go first,” says Eden.

“No, I go first, you go second, Melissa goes third,” says Jamie.

My brother pulls fire out of a matchstick so swiftly. He's an expert at it from the times he studied our mom lighting her cigarettes. I stare at the little wisp of fire like it's a lucky firefly that's guiding me. A tiny blue heart pulses in its middle.

“Now, you got to hold on to it 'til it burns to the bottom. That's the rule, Melissa.”

Then Jamie hollers and flings his match across the room.

“Dang it!” he yells. The match lands on the shag carpet and he jumps on it fast. “Don't worry. It usually goes out when you throw it.”

We all stare at the black spot on the green rug but don't say anything. I notice the owl staring at it too.

Jamie glares at me. “Don't tell anyone about this or you'll get in big trouble. You got it?” We nod.

The smell of smoke makes me sneeze two times in a row. I hope my dad gets home from work before it's my turn. I don't like this game.

Eden grabs the pack and tries three times before his match lights. Then he smiles big. I can see the yellow light flickering in both his eyes. He loves the fire more than any of us. He lights one after another until Jamie grabs the pack from him and hands it to me.

“You gotta tear off a match first. Then flip the cover over backward and place the match tip between the scratchy stripe and the cover, then squeeze—and pull hard,” he instructs me.

I squeeze my paper match between the closed cover and pull, but drop it when the heat pushes through the paper and stings my fingertips.

“Try a new one,” says Jamie.

Again, I try but the burn between my fingers is quick and sharp like a cut. I can't do it fast enough. I just get the burn, no fire, no flame. I concentrate, pull hard, throw my match, step on it—nothing.

“You're wasting all the matches, Lissa!” Eden yells and grabs the box from me.

I crawl on top of the dark blue couch and start counting the little toffee-colored dots on the fabric. Jamie and Eden argue over who gets to light the last match. They throw off their shoes and start wrestling on the carpet. My fingers sting, but I don't say a word. Maybe I should tell my dad that our new babysitter goes to see her boyfriend down the street and asks Jamie to be in charge. But Jamie says this is why she is such a good sitter.

“She trusts me,” he says. “Besides, when Mom comes back to live with us, we won't need any more stupid babysitters.”

Jamie says this a lot, but I've stopped believing him. I listen to the rooster clock ticking in the next room. My feet have fallen asleep underneath me and are tingly, so I wiggle them back and forth.

Then Jamie jumps up from the floor. “Hey, I know something even better than fire. You wanna get some cake, guys? I know where we can get some. Any flavor you want too.”

“You better not be lying,” says Eden.

“Where's the cake, Jamie?” I ask.

“Follow me, but you have to
swear
you won't tell anyone about it, okay?”

“Okay,” Eden and I say at once.

“Jinx,” says Eden. And I'm glad we agree on cake.

Barefoot and silent, we follow our big brother outside. We crouch down on our knees to crawl underneath the house where the dirt smells like rain and there's hardly room to stand up. Jamie says he found this secret spot and the stash when he was playing hide-and-seek. He hunches over a big brown box pushed into the corner and rips open the cardboard flaps. He pulls out smaller boxes with photographs of fluffy, frosted cakes. First I see the all-white cake with matching white frosting. Then there's a pink cake with layers of frosting the color of cotton candy. And there's even chocolate frosting on chocolate cakes and tall yellow cakes with creamy brown frosting.

“Dad gets all the free cake mix he wants 'cause he works for Duncan Hines and they are a cake-making factory,” explains Jamie. “And you don't even have to cook them. They taste good right out of the box. Since you didn't get to light a match, you get first pick, Melissa.”

There is no question in my mind. “I want the white one with the white frosting.”

“Yep. That one's coconut.” He beams and hands me the box.

Eden picks the strawberry-pink one. And Jamie smiles like he's our dad at Christmas passing out the presents.

I tear open the noisy wax bag, and white dust flies into my face. I look inside. “Where's the frosting?”

“I guess it doesn't come with the frosting. It's good without it anyway.” Jamie shrugs.

I scoop my index finger deep into the bag and pull up a miniature mountain. It's cool on my finger and about to fall off. I shove it into my mouth. It's dry, white, and sugar sweet.

We shove handfuls of the sweet powder into our mouths and laugh when it makes us cough. We tear open boxes and sample them all. We say, “Oh, try this one next” and “Oh,
this
one is the best.”

My bare legs are coated with fine, white powder, and I draw a smiley face on top of my thigh. For a moment, I stop wishing my mom were still here. I'm glad there is no one to tell us not to light matches and not to sneak the boxes of cake mix. I like being here with my brothers. We're a tribe of three making a pact in the cool dirt underneath the house. There are so many colors and flavors, and after a while the cake doesn't even taste so good, but none of that matters. We've got sweet things. Fire and sugar.