My mother never wanted children. She had me because my dad wanted a kid. And then she had another because my dad was worried I would be lonely. I remember her face whenever there were other screaming kids around, at the playground, at the school. Her face would tighten, and her eyes would become hard, her lips thinning out until they were almost gone.
She never looked at me or my brother that way. She would look at us and everything would be soft, as soft as she could be anyway. I asked her once, why she wanted to be a mom and she said,
“Oh sweetheart, I never did, but I’m glad I’m yours.” It blew my mind, every mom wanted to be a mom, right? They all dreamed of the day they could have their very own baby, right? Turns out, not really. It stung a little, actually a lot. It’s a hard thing for a kid to understand, my mom basically told me she never wanted me, didn’t she? I asked her if she liked kids, she said,
“No. Well. I like you and your brother. I love you both sweetheart. But I don’t care for other kids.”
That made sense to me. We were hers. She loved us. My mom was not the “lovey” mom you see on TV. She didn’t like to cuddle or to nurse wounds. She answered all our questions openly and truthfully but there was never a mother-daughter heart to heart thing going on. She had no patience for whining, for too many emotions. But she loved us in her way, she would cook our favorite meals, take us out for ice cream for good grades.
Trying to write it out is weird. I know how I felt about my mom, I know how she felt about me. In print it sounds standoffish and like she was absent. In life it sometimes felt like that, like she was going through the motions of a “good parent”. But when I got older, I learned that she was giving us what she could.
She wasn’t a warm person, but she gave whatever tenderness she had to our family. She was my rock and rocks aren’t good for cuddling, but rocks are good at weathering storms. Rocks are good to build a foundation on; rocks don’t let you down.
She was not an outgoing, loving mother, but she loved me, and my brother, and my dad. She loved us with whatever she could and as I got older, I learned to appreciate that. It’s much harder to give all the love you have to someone, when you have so little love to give, when it’s so hard to dig and dig for more, to give that extra hug when you hate touching, to soothe crying when you hate tears, to speak softly when you want to shriek.
Her love was not an overflowing fountain, I resented that when I was small. I wanted the mom who would grab me up from the school bus and swing me around, laughing. Then we would go inside and she would have cookies in the oven and we would talk about my day and eat cookies and then she would give me a kiss and tell me to go do homework at the table near her.
I got a mom that watched silently from the porch, so still the other kids joked she was a statue. Sometimes she remembered to ask me about my day.
One day, I had a horrible day, I came home miserable and sniffly. She was the same still mother and I started bawling. I told her I wanted a mom who loved me and made cookies and asked me questions. I screamed and cried the way only a small child can. When I was finally done, something had fractured in my mom’s eyes. She got down in front of me and took me by the arms,
“Oh sweetheart. I’m trying.” Her voice was low and tight, and it made me start crying again. I found notes around the house after that, “Ask Em how her day was”, “make cookies at 2:40 on Mondays”, “The kids like the orange mac and cheese”. Always up high (my mom was really tall), and always in a place she would see. Throughout the years the notes grew, and she never forgot a single one.
It’s not that my mom didn’t feel things. I know she felt things, anger, love, protectiveness, exasperation. It’s just that those things were deep and sometimes they would erupt like lava between the cracks in her rockiness.
I remember one day we had gone shopping, a man came up to me and started talking. He was pleasant, I remember being flattered that a grown up thought I was worth talking to, that a grownup was interested in all my mindless chatter. I don’t remember him being inappropriate. I’m not sure where my mom had gone, but then she was back. Her eyes had no wariness of the strange man, they were sharp, and they were angry. Her lips were thin again, but this time they were pulled over her teeth, it was somewhere between a smile and a snarl. They stared at each other, I don’t remember if they talked. The man left.
My brother and I sat in silence in the backseat on the way home. Her anger rolled through the car like a summer storm, the weight of it made me choke. We finally got home and my brother bolted from the car, I was moving to do the same.
“Oh sweetheart,” she said, “come sit up here with me.” I moved to the front seat, stomach sinking, tears already in my eyes. Have I mentioned that I wasn’t made in my mother’s image? I was soft through and through. I couldn’t stand the idea of being in trouble. She drummed her nails on the steering wheel, they were perfectly done, perfectly sharp.
“Sweetheart. You shouldn’t talk to strangers. They’re dangerous.” She was staring straight ahead, her nails were still drumming. I could see her anger moving under her skin, it was a roiling, writhing thing. She gave a jerk of her head and I ran for the house. My dad met me at the door, he shooed me inside and went to talk to my mom. I watched her from a window, still drumming, lips still thin and stretched. Later my dad told me something had happened to my mom a long time ago and that was why she got so mad. Later I learned that fear can make some people angry. I never asked what happened, but I have an idea.
I was 23 when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I never watched her waste away, never saw the life drain from her. The cancer was too fast for that. She was here and she wasn’t. And I was lost. I sobbed and wailed. I sank deeper and deeper down in loss and misery, there was no rock under my feet.
I wanted my mom.
I started dreaming of her after she died. She didn’t look like I remembered. Her skin was pale, her pupils had cracked like an egg and spread over parts of her eye, and when she looked at me, it was sad. I would cry and tell her I missed her, apologize for any time I was obnoxious, I didn’t listen, I didn’t call enough. She would sigh a heavy sigh, one that reached from me in my bed to wherever she was deep in the ground. She would sigh and say Oh sweetheart…I’m dead.
I dreamed of her less as time moved on but I still dreamed.
Oh sweetheart…I’m dead.
I was 27 when I moved into my first house. It was small and cozy and perfect for me. I loved the large windows and the friendly neighbors. I think what sold me though was the hardware. There were crystal doorknobs and porcelain faucet handles like my mom always insisted on. My dad said she hated the way metal felt on her hands. I loved that I felt my life was moving on and I was also guilty. I was leaving my mom behind.
I had been in the house for about eight months when I dreamed of her again. She wasn’t staring at me listening to me cry and apologize this time. She was standing over me, and she was angry.
“Oh sweetheart. How could you forget?? HOW DID YOU FORGET??” I was crying. Again. I had started to move on, I had started to forget her. Her lips were blue as they pulled back, her teeth looked too long.
“I TOLD YOU. I TOLD YOU OVER AND OVER. STRANGERS ARE DANGEROUS” She grabbed me, her nails perfect even as a corpse cut into my arms as she hauled me up.
I woke up when the bed dropped out from under me. I hit the floor with a slam. After that nightmare, rolling out of bed and waking up seemed like a godsend. I was freezing, my blankets were gone, and I thought my heart might be next the way it was beating. I tried to catch my breath and between the loudness of my breathing, I heard glass breaking. One of those lovely, large windows was now broken. I was up in a flash, sprinting towards the back door. She said strangers were dangerous, I was listening.
They caught me in the hallway, pulled me back to the bedroom, they grabbed my hair and my clothes. They complained about how cold it was in the house while they covered my mouth. And it was so cold, the air I could suck in was frigid. The burning made it harder to breathe. I was on the floor near the door, so close to freedom, they were standing over me. It was silence for a minute, two predators enjoying having caught prey.
We heard the creaks in the hallway first, they kept getting louder. Silence. The window started rattling.
Taptaptaptap.
Pause.
Taptaptaptap.
Pause.
TAPTAPTAPTAP
The taps started to roll together, the window was flailing in its frame by now. I heard the men above me asking What the fuck that was. I was shaking as bad as the window was, part fear, part cold, and part something else.
And then, everything stopped. Except the drumming. It was softer now, a smooth rolling tapping. And it wasn’t coming from the window anymore.
We all turned and saw her at the same time. She was in the doorway, drumming her nails on the frame. She took a step forward, they took a step back, I took their surprise and ran with it. I was out the door and in the hall, past the woman with the too long teeth and the sharp nails. I brushed against her and it burned, it felt like she had sucked all the heat in the world into her. I heard shouting, drumming. I bounced off the wall and kept going. I heard a bang behind me. They were shooting my mom. I started to turn around, they were SHOOTING my MOM. And then silence. Then more shouting, how could someone be standing after being shot so close.
And then I heard her. A chuckle? A snigger? That anger that moved under her skin came out in her voice,
“Ohhh. Sweetheart. I’m dead.”
I started to run. And I bet those men wish they did too.
The police said they must have gotten confused and attacked each other in the dark. They must have been on some serious drugs to do what they did to each other.
Edit: fixed a word