The Source
..........Passing out on my birthday had cut our celebrations short. We had presents, but not the cake. After i came to, i was fussed over by my mother and Luke’s grandmother. My aunts clucked their tongues like two hens nested on vinyl seat covers.
..........“You should tale her to THE DOCTOR,” Aunt Sarah advised.
..........“I don’t think she’s sick,” my mother said. “I think she just got a little upset.”
..........Luke’s grandmother brought me a glass of water. My mother asked her to bring my birthday cake in a to-go container. We gathered our things and headed to the door. Luke’s grandmother called for us to wait. She began singing “Happy Birthday,” and everyone in the diner sang along. My aunts begrudgingly so. All I could think was I wish Luke was here I wish Luke was here I wish Luke was here Luke Luke Luke.
..........At home, my mother sat by my bedside in a 10-year-old sized chair and patter a cold compress across my forehead. “Did you want to celebrate at the diner because of Luke?”
I didn’t want to lie and i didn’t want to tell the truth, either. I kept my mouth shut. My mother did, too. Silence had pulled up a chair.
..........The three of us rested in my tiny room. Silence sprawling himself out, legs wide open, belly hanging past his crotch. My mother edged closer to me to make more room for him. “Is this still cold?” she said, running the washcloth along my neck. She was whispering so Silence wouldn’t feel like he was being ignored.
..........“It doesn’t matter,” i whispered back. “Can you open the window?” She obliged.
It was my birthday, but as my mother held my small, long-fingered hand in both of her skinny, brown hands, i remembered waking up in the hospital after the accident. I imagined this might be the scene of my deathbed. My twin-size deathbed. My mother traded the chair for the floor and rested her arms and head by my pillow. I was too old to sleep with mommy, but we hadn’t been able to anyway since the accident.
..........I didn’t like dividing up my life into parts: before the accident |the accident|after the accident.
..........The wind eased itself into my room through the window. I didn’t have any blankets on my bed and my mother was shivering. My birthday brings the cold to everybody but me.
..........“You can go to you room if it’s too cold,” i released my mother from obligation.
..........“I’ll stay,” she was falling asleep. “I think it’s ok if you want to be friends with Luke.”
..........“I don’t think i want to.”
..........“I think that’s fine, too.”
..........Just before i fell asleep, the other man in my life came to my mind: my father.
..........This is what i knew about my father: he was dead; he wasn’t the father of my brother and sister; he hadn’t made an honest woman of my mother before he died; he was at my birth; he gave me his nose.
..........In my dream, my mother wakes and begins to tell me the story of my birth.
..........“Your aunts were both there,” and she appears behind my mother, but is 1000 miles away, “and your father,” and i see a man’s body. I try to look at his face, but i can’t focus my eyes to his.
..........“And the water was there.”
..........Water begins torise into the room. My mother is fat and pregant, wet from the ocean, and wet from labor. The man, my father is screaming, “NO NO NO NO NO NO!” My mother screams with pain and their screams circle around each other. My aunts dive under the water, under my bed. They resurface and hand my father a baby (me). He cradles me as if i am a ticking time bomb. I’m not crying. He reaches inside my mouth and pulls out a tiny, soft, white feather.
..........I woke up from my dream panting. I turned to the place my mother had laid her head and panicked when i didn’t see her. You said you would stay, i thought and i was about to scream out her name when i saw her small body on the floor, asleep.
At one point, she had gotten up and retrieved her white, down comforter from her room. She was wrapped up now like an angel nesting in a cloud. Her brown skin and almost black hair poked from the top of the cloud. her hair was like a swirly sea of chocolate. My heartbeat slowed down.
..........There is a picture of my mother when she was 16. She had fallen asleep on their couch. Her twin sisters took a picture. It turned out to be a beautiful photograph. My mother’s face is smooth and light and firm. The angles of her cheekbones and chin highlight the voluptuousness of her nose and chin. His skin is made bright by the pink sweater around her shoulders. A strand a pearls around her neck.
..........My mother was the youngest of three girls. Sarah was the oldest by ten-and-a-half minutes. The twins took after their mother, but my mother was all my grandfather. His masculine features were softened and tounded in her face in the most flattering way. He doted on his youngest daughter. It must be hard for parents not to play favorites.
..........When the twins began high school, the house was empty and slow. The family ate breakfast together. Their mother, my grandmother, stayed at home, housekeeping and sometimes doing hair for the neighbor ladies. In the evening, the 5 members of the family would dine and enjoy light conversation, shortly after retiring to bed.
..........Two years later, when my mother had entered high school, the dam that had been holding back a sea of teenagers looking for a leader broke. The house was flooded.
..........After my mother’s first day of high school, she called my grandmother to ask if some friends could come over. Three freshman girls arrived and took command. My grandmother made cookies and gave one of the girls a press and curl. They stayed for dinner. 2 of the guests had to sit in a rocking chair and a desk chair, respectively. The dinner table was crammed with impoliteness and loud laughter. What had once been a center of manners and decorum was soon to transform to a clubhouse for latchkey kids.
..........My mother was a hit. Her father couldn’t have been prouder.
..........My Aunt Sarah and Aunt Denise had friends in high school, but in genreal blended. This was the first year they were allowed to wear make-up and they tried to go noticed. They learned their make-up tips from women’s magazines and went to school at 8am looking ready for the evening wear competition. Just like all the other girls.
..........My mother was not yet allowed and two years later when she was she almost never took advantage of her mother’s permissiveness. My mother almost never thought of how she looked. Surrounded by a river of friends, carried thorugh the day, safe and protected.
..........My grandfather died the day after my mother graduated from high school. He had a heart attack. My grandmother couldn’t get to his pills because he was sitting on them. And it wasn’t common knowledge to use aspirin.
..........If her friends were a river that protected her, her father was the ocean from which they flowed. And the ocean bed had just dried up. Without a source of replenishment, the waters stagnated and my mtoher begin to sink. Barely keeping her head above water, she drowned in her friends and spurned the rest of her family. She left her father’s house and moved in with her boyfriend. A month later they got married. 7 months later, my brother and sister were born. Around a year after that, my mother must have met my father. Or may be they already knew each other. My mother and her first husband didn’t see much of each other after he left her to see the world.
..........My aunts cluck-cluck-clucked.
..........“You should tale her to THE DOCTOR,” Aunt Sarah advised.
..........“I don’t think she’s sick,” my mother said. “I think she just got a little upset.”
..........Luke’s grandmother brought me a glass of water. My mother asked her to bring my birthday cake in a to-go container. We gathered our things and headed to the door. Luke’s grandmother called for us to wait. She began singing “Happy Birthday,” and everyone in the diner sang along. My aunts begrudgingly so. All I could think was I wish Luke was here I wish Luke was here I wish Luke was here Luke Luke Luke.
..........At home, my mother sat by my bedside in a 10-year-old sized chair and patter a cold compress across my forehead. “Did you want to celebrate at the diner because of Luke?”
I didn’t want to lie and i didn’t want to tell the truth, either. I kept my mouth shut. My mother did, too. Silence had pulled up a chair.
..........The three of us rested in my tiny room. Silence sprawling himself out, legs wide open, belly hanging past his crotch. My mother edged closer to me to make more room for him. “Is this still cold?” she said, running the washcloth along my neck. She was whispering so Silence wouldn’t feel like he was being ignored.
..........“It doesn’t matter,” i whispered back. “Can you open the window?” She obliged.
It was my birthday, but as my mother held my small, long-fingered hand in both of her skinny, brown hands, i remembered waking up in the hospital after the accident. I imagined this might be the scene of my deathbed. My twin-size deathbed. My mother traded the chair for the floor and rested her arms and head by my pillow. I was too old to sleep with mommy, but we hadn’t been able to anyway since the accident.
..........I didn’t like dividing up my life into parts: before the accident |the accident|after the accident.
..........The wind eased itself into my room through the window. I didn’t have any blankets on my bed and my mother was shivering. My birthday brings the cold to everybody but me.
..........“You can go to you room if it’s too cold,” i released my mother from obligation.
..........“I’ll stay,” she was falling asleep. “I think it’s ok if you want to be friends with Luke.”
..........“I don’t think i want to.”
..........“I think that’s fine, too.”
..........Just before i fell asleep, the other man in my life came to my mind: my father.
..........This is what i knew about my father: he was dead; he wasn’t the father of my brother and sister; he hadn’t made an honest woman of my mother before he died; he was at my birth; he gave me his nose.
..........In my dream, my mother wakes and begins to tell me the story of my birth.
..........“Your aunts were both there,” and she appears behind my mother, but is 1000 miles away, “and your father,” and i see a man’s body. I try to look at his face, but i can’t focus my eyes to his.
..........“And the water was there.”
..........Water begins torise into the room. My mother is fat and pregant, wet from the ocean, and wet from labor. The man, my father is screaming, “NO NO NO NO NO NO!” My mother screams with pain and their screams circle around each other. My aunts dive under the water, under my bed. They resurface and hand my father a baby (me). He cradles me as if i am a ticking time bomb. I’m not crying. He reaches inside my mouth and pulls out a tiny, soft, white feather.
..........I woke up from my dream panting. I turned to the place my mother had laid her head and panicked when i didn’t see her. You said you would stay, i thought and i was about to scream out her name when i saw her small body on the floor, asleep.
At one point, she had gotten up and retrieved her white, down comforter from her room. She was wrapped up now like an angel nesting in a cloud. Her brown skin and almost black hair poked from the top of the cloud. her hair was like a swirly sea of chocolate. My heartbeat slowed down.
..........There is a picture of my mother when she was 16. She had fallen asleep on their couch. Her twin sisters took a picture. It turned out to be a beautiful photograph. My mother’s face is smooth and light and firm. The angles of her cheekbones and chin highlight the voluptuousness of her nose and chin. His skin is made bright by the pink sweater around her shoulders. A strand a pearls around her neck.
..........My mother was the youngest of three girls. Sarah was the oldest by ten-and-a-half minutes. The twins took after their mother, but my mother was all my grandfather. His masculine features were softened and tounded in her face in the most flattering way. He doted on his youngest daughter. It must be hard for parents not to play favorites.
..........When the twins began high school, the house was empty and slow. The family ate breakfast together. Their mother, my grandmother, stayed at home, housekeeping and sometimes doing hair for the neighbor ladies. In the evening, the 5 members of the family would dine and enjoy light conversation, shortly after retiring to bed.
..........Two years later, when my mother had entered high school, the dam that had been holding back a sea of teenagers looking for a leader broke. The house was flooded.
..........After my mother’s first day of high school, she called my grandmother to ask if some friends could come over. Three freshman girls arrived and took command. My grandmother made cookies and gave one of the girls a press and curl. They stayed for dinner. 2 of the guests had to sit in a rocking chair and a desk chair, respectively. The dinner table was crammed with impoliteness and loud laughter. What had once been a center of manners and decorum was soon to transform to a clubhouse for latchkey kids.
..........My mother was a hit. Her father couldn’t have been prouder.
..........My Aunt Sarah and Aunt Denise had friends in high school, but in genreal blended. This was the first year they were allowed to wear make-up and they tried to go noticed. They learned their make-up tips from women’s magazines and went to school at 8am looking ready for the evening wear competition. Just like all the other girls.
..........My mother was not yet allowed and two years later when she was she almost never took advantage of her mother’s permissiveness. My mother almost never thought of how she looked. Surrounded by a river of friends, carried thorugh the day, safe and protected.
..........My grandfather died the day after my mother graduated from high school. He had a heart attack. My grandmother couldn’t get to his pills because he was sitting on them. And it wasn’t common knowledge to use aspirin.
..........If her friends were a river that protected her, her father was the ocean from which they flowed. And the ocean bed had just dried up. Without a source of replenishment, the waters stagnated and my mtoher begin to sink. Barely keeping her head above water, she drowned in her friends and spurned the rest of her family. She left her father’s house and moved in with her boyfriend. A month later they got married. 7 months later, my brother and sister were born. Around a year after that, my mother must have met my father. Or may be they already knew each other. My mother and her first husband didn’t see much of each other after he left her to see the world.
..........My aunts cluck-cluck-clucked.
posted by yogagrrrl at 7:10 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home