You asked about my memories- unspecific but demanding. It was a gesture of mercy that you allowed me to write them down.
And Fakir, with piercing blue eyes, whispers, "this is not about being stoic".
There was always something about this room, it chills me even now,
twenty three years later and the house has been sold. This room with
wood paneling, dusty trophies, vertical blinds, the heavy desk, the
stench of onions and my fathers childhood. This is the room she left us,
side by side tucked into a full bed. This is the room where I learned
to swallow my prayers, snot and screams. There was always something
about my mother leaving. It started before I can even really remember.
Back before my parents lost their house, the few times my mom ever left
for an evening out, I wouldn't just scream, I would wail. I would wrap
myself in one of the multicolored afghans she made and fall asleep next
to the window, hoping to know the minute she got home, the minute I
would be safe.There was always something unpredictable about my fathers
eyes. But this time was different, this time my mother wasn't coming
back. A month or two is an eternity to a seven year old especially left
in the care of a grandmother with different ideas concerning soap and
the multiplication tables.
This is the room, where as my mother lay in a hospital, I memorized
my "our fathers"and "hail Marys", on my knees- carpet worn but still
scratching through a thin floral night gown. This is the room where at
ten years old, only months after my mothers death, I had to tell my
grandmother about the blood in the bathroom- she clutched me to her
chest sobbing about the woman I had become and I was sobbing about the
woman I would never be, the shame on my cheeks matching the spot on my
underwear. This was also a moment meant for my mother, and even that was
taken from me.
This time, both of my parents stood awkwardly in the door frame- his
dark skin framed by her light, they promised she wasn't going to die,
promised that we would all be a family again. She was leaving for IV's,
nausea and hopefully more white blood cells. I sobbed, holding my pillow
to my chest- shaking and begging her to stay. Pleading- because my life
depended on it. Instead of focusing on my feelings, I focus on the
room- the ceiling- where I would lay on my back and stare for long
enough- shapes would twist and emerge like watching shapes come alive in
the clouds, or how at sixteen it was in this room my fathers brother
told me how my mother embezzled thousands of dollars- hundreds of
thousands. This room has become the coffin of my childhood, and this
memory it's first nail. The nail being my first understanding of loss-
the first time- I understood what it meant to be alone. Like the first
time when I lived on my own, and spent all night vomiting in a bathroom-
wishing to have someone to hold my non existent hair back- wishing to
be the sort of person that some one would want to hold my hair back.
Wishing for my mother.
My sister is just a wisp in this memory, perhaps too young to have
understood what was happening, to young to be a comfort to me- often she
was more of a chore, but in the end- it kept us both alive.
My
Mother did come back for us, some time in the end of March but in this
moment I knew she was going to die, even though it happened three years
later. This was my first taste of my life without her, that first kick
in the gut - that I never really recovered from. They say that you learn
to live with it- I still sleep holding a pillow to my chest.
