A Dream or A Memory?
..........Is this a dream or a memory? I am 5 years old, pulling the covers off of my bed because it’s too hot it’s too hot it’s too hot. I realize that i am screaming again. “it’s too hot It’s too hot It’s too hot” My mother comes in. She throws me off the bed as if it and not me were on fire. She pulls the covers from the bed, but the more she pulls, the longer the blanket becomes. I’m still screaming. “It’s too hot It’s too hot It’s too hot ”
..........The blanket keeps elongating and my mother keeps pulling and the blanket keeps elongating and my mother keeps pulling. “Where’s the end?” she cries. She cries. She’s crying and pulling. “Where’s the end?” She doesn’t notice that she’s throwing the covers from the bed onto my burning body. There is so much blanket over me that i can’t move. I’m being suffocated. My mother’s voice is muffled under the weight. She must be very far away. I’m flailing under the endless blanket and struggling to come up for air, but my struggling attempts to free myself have only cocooned me inside the never-ending blanket. My arms and my legs are bound. I hear myself scream, “Mommy!”
..........Before my brother and my sister died, we had a big house and we had a big backyard. We had an oak tree who had a face formed by two knots and one big hole in its trunk. My sister used to stick her head and torso in the hole and begin kicking her legs frantically while my brother stood behind the tree and played the voice of the evil tree-demon. “LITTLE GIRLS ARE MY FAVORITE SNACK! HA! HA! HA! ” To the left of the oak tree was a path leading to the ocean. We were never more than 15 minutes from the beach.
We moved, my mom and i. Our new house was two hours away from the beach. I don’t know if my mother did that for my sake or for her own. She hid it from everyone, but i could tell that her love of the water, her worship of the water had become questionable and shaky at best. Our new home didn’t even have a bathtub.
..........“It’s so cozy here ” my extended family declared of our new home. Why can’t we say what we mean? They should have said, “it’s so small here ” But instead, it was, “this is just the perfect size for the two of you.” As if my mother had just escaped with her only child from an abusive relationship with a horrible man, as if it didn’t matter so long as “we were together.”
..........For months, our relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, visited us to make sure we were okay. My mother was not “okay.” She cried and cried and cried so hard that she often threw up. “You don’t have to hide anything in front of family, right?” said a distant aunt from a part of the family i didn’t know yet. I didn’t cry so i wasn’t comforted. I was barely fed.
..........I remember being very hungry and very forgotten. I stood in the middle of the kitchen wondering how i was going to reach the cupboards where i had seen taller people find food. The refrigerator was in reach, but i knew that the food in there had to be cooked and i wasn’t old enough to use the stove. I placed a chair about a foot in front of the kitchen counter below the desired cupboard. I tried to bring it closer, but it was heavy. I stood on the chair, but still couldn’t reach. I climbed down and found two telephone books to stack on the chair. Standing on the books and the chair, i was tall enough, but not close enough. My makeshift ladder wasn’t sturdy, but i leaned forward anyway trying to open the cupboard door. It was at that moment that a more familiar aunt walked into the kitchen. She gasped and raced toward me, picking me up from my unsteady perch. She dropped me because of the heat of my skin and i landed in a pile on the floor. She ignored this and began berating me: “What do you think you’re doing You could fall and break your head open. Are you trying to orphan your poor mother?”
..........“i’m HUN-gry,” i whined.
..........“There are plenty of adults here, “she scolded. “When you need something, you ask one of them.”
..........Then, she turned to leave the kitchen and me unfed. This is my first memory of anger.
..........The heat inside of me was unbearable. I knew not to scream. In a tight, low voice that was begging to be loose and high, i said, “are you going to feed me?” She sighed to let me know that i was nothing more than an inconsiderate bother and grabbed a box of animal crackers from the cupboard. As she bent down to give them to me, she said, “What do you say?”
..........The look i saw in her eyes told me that the look she saw in my eyes terrified her. I dropped the box and threw my fiery arms around her and cried, “thank you thank you thank you ” and crushed my feverish lips to her neck in a vicious kiss. She was on fire but frozen by my grip. Her breath came in little gasps that had no way out. I let go.
..........As she shakily came to standing, she said, “You’re welcome.”
..........She left me on the kitchen floor. i bit the heads off of the stale animal crackers.
..........Over time, the extended family came less and less often. Then, finally, one morning, my mother and i sat across from our sparkly, red kitchen table alone. She was afraid of me; i was afraid of being me. My mother wanted to be nice and comforting. She realized that i had been neglected. She realized that she had neglected me.
..........“Do you like that cereal?” she asked me. I nodded, but she saw the corn flakes getting soggy and drowning in the milk. “We can get another kind today, if you like.”
..........Then, in a whispered voice, as if we were sharing a very special secret, “maybe one with lots of sugar.” She smiled. I smiled.
..........The silence between us was palpable. The silence became our houseguest. Day after day, he joined us at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, and especially at night. We listened intently to his endless discourse.
..........And what’s the point of being a daughter whose mother won’t talk? Not real talk. Little fake talk. Your hair looks nice like that. How was school? I had a good day. Another day. You leave every morning at the breakfast table. The red breakfast table with the yellow chairs, matching the yellow-flowered linoleum, the window above the sink, open, white curtains billowing in the wind, falling and rising with the breeze. And you return every afternoon and she is in the same place at the same table only now it will become a dining table for dinner and the sun is in a different place now, not shining directly in her face anymore, but only in through the opposite window in the living room and her face is a bit in shadow, back lit and the blemishes and wrinkles and life and lies show on her face a little bit more. The wrinkles rise and fall as her smile rises and falls. And you think does she rise and fall? Have i ever seen her go to bed? Have i ever seen her in any place but this kitchen and this living room which are really the same room. The living room starts where the wood floor begins. You suppose she moves from the table to the fridge to the sink to the table to the couch. You sit with her on the couch watching tv, trying to stay up past her, but she can see you’re getting tired and she says go to bed and it’s too late and you protest and she says i’m the mother and i think my daughter should sleep.
..........Sometimes i tried to spy on her from my room, but it’s boring. She sat, front lit now by the light of the tv. It changed her skin to bright colors or dull, moody colors. My mother’s wrinkles rise and fall slightly, almost like a statue that had come to life for a short time and now was returning to inanimation. Re-inanimation. She wasn’t real, my mother. That was my conclusion from these late night stake-outs. She’s stone, marble, probably of the highest quality. Someone came upon her and fell in love with her, some magician whose spell did not work quite well enough and now she had the power to come to life, but not to live. She slowly de-animated as midnight approached until she froze again. She never slept; she just stopped. She stops, waiting for the sun to rise and reanimate her or whatever the terms of the contract with that magician were.
..........The stories we make up to make the truth seem less real. Stories. I say lies instead of stories. My mother is a lazy, scared woman who doesn’t want to leave the house and waits for me so she can become a mother again because you know i’m all she has and that’s all she is.
..........One morning, over frosted flakes, my mother began to feel that he had overstayed his welcome and in a mindless attempt to kick him out, she asked me, “Do you want to go to the zoo?”
..........Ah, the zoo. An animal prison run by high school drop-out wardens. It was full of land animals who, by a mistake of anatomy, couldn’t swim. I had never been, but my brother and my sister visited once in a school field trip. According to them and to all older brothers and sisters passing on urban myths to little brothers and sisters, most of the animals were half-dead. The ones that weren’t made a sport of eating little girls.
..........“Why?” i asked terrified.
..........My brother answered:“It’s because they’re so angry that they can’t swi-” my sister pinched him hard (he had a bruise the next day) before he could finish. I knew what he was going to say and my fear overtook me. It wasn’t my brother’s fault; it was just how the rumor went. I knew that my brother and my sister didn’t believe those kind of rumors, but i also knew that they believed the essence of them. Anything that sinks in the water, anything that won’t go in the water, was to be feared. Even those unfortunate humans born without legs or arms. They were pitied, but they were also suspected of having the seed of evil inside them. Why would God curse them with such a debilitating handicap if it weren’t so?
..........Fear breeds hate. Ignorance breeds fear.
..........My sister looked at me and i could see sorrow in her eyes, but what devastated me was the fear i saw in his eyes, my brother’s blue-like-the-ocean (made even bluer by his dark skin) eyes. If i didn’t learn to swim, if i couldn’t be normal, he would end up hating me. I cried and the tears sizzled and evaporated as they fell on the apples of my cheeks. I hid in the mouth of the tree-demon. I missed dinner. As the sun was setting, my brother brought me two pieces of pie - my dessert and his.
..........“Mom wants you to come in before it gets dark,” he said.
..........“OK.”
..........Pause. Pause. Pause.
..........“The animals don’t really eat little girls or anything. Not even the lions,” he retracted. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
..........He thought i was the one who was scared “I’m not.”
..........“They weren’t scary,” he went on. “They acted like they were sad.”
..........“Because they can’t swim?”
..........Pause again. “I think it’s because they were trapped.”
..........“I’m trapped, too,” i said.
..........My brother reached down and pulled me out of the trunk, but that wasn’t what i meant. “Will i have to go to the zoo when i’m in your grade?”
..........“Mom won’t make you if you don’t want to,” my brother said, holding my hand in his right hand, the pie in his left.
..........“Do you want me to take you to the zoo?” my mother asked me again as i relived this memory. “It’s so nice out today.”
..........Was she going to sell me to the zoo? Were the high school drop-outs going to lock me up? Were my classmates going to come and gawk at me? Would i be made an example of what happens when little girls and boys don’t learn how to swim? Would they spread rumors to their little brothers and sisters to make them run away and hide?
..........I thought: No, I don’t want you to take me to the zoo. I want you to jump into the ocean and get my brother and my sister and bring them back to me.
..........I said, “Yes.”
..........The blanket keeps elongating and my mother keeps pulling and the blanket keeps elongating and my mother keeps pulling. “Where’s the end?” she cries. She cries. She’s crying and pulling. “Where’s the end?” She doesn’t notice that she’s throwing the covers from the bed onto my burning body. There is so much blanket over me that i can’t move. I’m being suffocated. My mother’s voice is muffled under the weight. She must be very far away. I’m flailing under the endless blanket and struggling to come up for air, but my struggling attempts to free myself have only cocooned me inside the never-ending blanket. My arms and my legs are bound. I hear myself scream, “Mommy!”
..........Before my brother and my sister died, we had a big house and we had a big backyard. We had an oak tree who had a face formed by two knots and one big hole in its trunk. My sister used to stick her head and torso in the hole and begin kicking her legs frantically while my brother stood behind the tree and played the voice of the evil tree-demon. “LITTLE GIRLS ARE MY FAVORITE SNACK! HA! HA! HA! ” To the left of the oak tree was a path leading to the ocean. We were never more than 15 minutes from the beach.
We moved, my mom and i. Our new house was two hours away from the beach. I don’t know if my mother did that for my sake or for her own. She hid it from everyone, but i could tell that her love of the water, her worship of the water had become questionable and shaky at best. Our new home didn’t even have a bathtub.
..........“It’s so cozy here ” my extended family declared of our new home. Why can’t we say what we mean? They should have said, “it’s so small here ” But instead, it was, “this is just the perfect size for the two of you.” As if my mother had just escaped with her only child from an abusive relationship with a horrible man, as if it didn’t matter so long as “we were together.”
..........For months, our relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, visited us to make sure we were okay. My mother was not “okay.” She cried and cried and cried so hard that she often threw up. “You don’t have to hide anything in front of family, right?” said a distant aunt from a part of the family i didn’t know yet. I didn’t cry so i wasn’t comforted. I was barely fed.
..........I remember being very hungry and very forgotten. I stood in the middle of the kitchen wondering how i was going to reach the cupboards where i had seen taller people find food. The refrigerator was in reach, but i knew that the food in there had to be cooked and i wasn’t old enough to use the stove. I placed a chair about a foot in front of the kitchen counter below the desired cupboard. I tried to bring it closer, but it was heavy. I stood on the chair, but still couldn’t reach. I climbed down and found two telephone books to stack on the chair. Standing on the books and the chair, i was tall enough, but not close enough. My makeshift ladder wasn’t sturdy, but i leaned forward anyway trying to open the cupboard door. It was at that moment that a more familiar aunt walked into the kitchen. She gasped and raced toward me, picking me up from my unsteady perch. She dropped me because of the heat of my skin and i landed in a pile on the floor. She ignored this and began berating me: “What do you think you’re doing You could fall and break your head open. Are you trying to orphan your poor mother?”
..........“i’m HUN-gry,” i whined.
..........“There are plenty of adults here, “she scolded. “When you need something, you ask one of them.”
..........Then, she turned to leave the kitchen and me unfed. This is my first memory of anger.
..........The heat inside of me was unbearable. I knew not to scream. In a tight, low voice that was begging to be loose and high, i said, “are you going to feed me?” She sighed to let me know that i was nothing more than an inconsiderate bother and grabbed a box of animal crackers from the cupboard. As she bent down to give them to me, she said, “What do you say?”
..........The look i saw in her eyes told me that the look she saw in my eyes terrified her. I dropped the box and threw my fiery arms around her and cried, “thank you thank you thank you ” and crushed my feverish lips to her neck in a vicious kiss. She was on fire but frozen by my grip. Her breath came in little gasps that had no way out. I let go.
..........As she shakily came to standing, she said, “You’re welcome.”
..........She left me on the kitchen floor. i bit the heads off of the stale animal crackers.
..........Over time, the extended family came less and less often. Then, finally, one morning, my mother and i sat across from our sparkly, red kitchen table alone. She was afraid of me; i was afraid of being me. My mother wanted to be nice and comforting. She realized that i had been neglected. She realized that she had neglected me.
..........“Do you like that cereal?” she asked me. I nodded, but she saw the corn flakes getting soggy and drowning in the milk. “We can get another kind today, if you like.”
..........Then, in a whispered voice, as if we were sharing a very special secret, “maybe one with lots of sugar.” She smiled. I smiled.
..........The silence between us was palpable. The silence became our houseguest. Day after day, he joined us at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, and especially at night. We listened intently to his endless discourse.
..........And what’s the point of being a daughter whose mother won’t talk? Not real talk. Little fake talk. Your hair looks nice like that. How was school? I had a good day. Another day. You leave every morning at the breakfast table. The red breakfast table with the yellow chairs, matching the yellow-flowered linoleum, the window above the sink, open, white curtains billowing in the wind, falling and rising with the breeze. And you return every afternoon and she is in the same place at the same table only now it will become a dining table for dinner and the sun is in a different place now, not shining directly in her face anymore, but only in through the opposite window in the living room and her face is a bit in shadow, back lit and the blemishes and wrinkles and life and lies show on her face a little bit more. The wrinkles rise and fall as her smile rises and falls. And you think does she rise and fall? Have i ever seen her go to bed? Have i ever seen her in any place but this kitchen and this living room which are really the same room. The living room starts where the wood floor begins. You suppose she moves from the table to the fridge to the sink to the table to the couch. You sit with her on the couch watching tv, trying to stay up past her, but she can see you’re getting tired and she says go to bed and it’s too late and you protest and she says i’m the mother and i think my daughter should sleep.
..........Sometimes i tried to spy on her from my room, but it’s boring. She sat, front lit now by the light of the tv. It changed her skin to bright colors or dull, moody colors. My mother’s wrinkles rise and fall slightly, almost like a statue that had come to life for a short time and now was returning to inanimation. Re-inanimation. She wasn’t real, my mother. That was my conclusion from these late night stake-outs. She’s stone, marble, probably of the highest quality. Someone came upon her and fell in love with her, some magician whose spell did not work quite well enough and now she had the power to come to life, but not to live. She slowly de-animated as midnight approached until she froze again. She never slept; she just stopped. She stops, waiting for the sun to rise and reanimate her or whatever the terms of the contract with that magician were.
..........The stories we make up to make the truth seem less real. Stories. I say lies instead of stories. My mother is a lazy, scared woman who doesn’t want to leave the house and waits for me so she can become a mother again because you know i’m all she has and that’s all she is.
..........One morning, over frosted flakes, my mother began to feel that he had overstayed his welcome and in a mindless attempt to kick him out, she asked me, “Do you want to go to the zoo?”
..........Ah, the zoo. An animal prison run by high school drop-out wardens. It was full of land animals who, by a mistake of anatomy, couldn’t swim. I had never been, but my brother and my sister visited once in a school field trip. According to them and to all older brothers and sisters passing on urban myths to little brothers and sisters, most of the animals were half-dead. The ones that weren’t made a sport of eating little girls.
..........“Why?” i asked terrified.
..........My brother answered:“It’s because they’re so angry that they can’t swi-” my sister pinched him hard (he had a bruise the next day) before he could finish. I knew what he was going to say and my fear overtook me. It wasn’t my brother’s fault; it was just how the rumor went. I knew that my brother and my sister didn’t believe those kind of rumors, but i also knew that they believed the essence of them. Anything that sinks in the water, anything that won’t go in the water, was to be feared. Even those unfortunate humans born without legs or arms. They were pitied, but they were also suspected of having the seed of evil inside them. Why would God curse them with such a debilitating handicap if it weren’t so?
..........Fear breeds hate. Ignorance breeds fear.
..........My sister looked at me and i could see sorrow in her eyes, but what devastated me was the fear i saw in his eyes, my brother’s blue-like-the-ocean (made even bluer by his dark skin) eyes. If i didn’t learn to swim, if i couldn’t be normal, he would end up hating me. I cried and the tears sizzled and evaporated as they fell on the apples of my cheeks. I hid in the mouth of the tree-demon. I missed dinner. As the sun was setting, my brother brought me two pieces of pie - my dessert and his.
..........“Mom wants you to come in before it gets dark,” he said.
..........“OK.”
..........Pause. Pause. Pause.
..........“The animals don’t really eat little girls or anything. Not even the lions,” he retracted. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
..........He thought i was the one who was scared “I’m not.”
..........“They weren’t scary,” he went on. “They acted like they were sad.”
..........“Because they can’t swim?”
..........Pause again. “I think it’s because they were trapped.”
..........“I’m trapped, too,” i said.
..........My brother reached down and pulled me out of the trunk, but that wasn’t what i meant. “Will i have to go to the zoo when i’m in your grade?”
..........“Mom won’t make you if you don’t want to,” my brother said, holding my hand in his right hand, the pie in his left.
..........“Do you want me to take you to the zoo?” my mother asked me again as i relived this memory. “It’s so nice out today.”
..........Was she going to sell me to the zoo? Were the high school drop-outs going to lock me up? Were my classmates going to come and gawk at me? Would i be made an example of what happens when little girls and boys don’t learn how to swim? Would they spread rumors to their little brothers and sisters to make them run away and hide?
..........I thought: No, I don’t want you to take me to the zoo. I want you to jump into the ocean and get my brother and my sister and bring them back to me.
..........I said, “Yes.”
posted by yogagrrrl at 3:03 PM
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