L’amore di una Madre by Claire M Welton

When I am stressed, I sit on my bed and count five things. A booklight, melatonin tablets, black nail polish, faded jeans, and knitting needles. Name four things I feel: the dangling pillow tassel, the chilly windowpane, the geography textbook, my pinky toe. I cannot hear three things, because my uncle is working, and my mother is quiet. So I listen to the consistent hum of the heater three times as long as normal for good measure. I can smell the cheap air freshener and my soccer shoes. With the window open, my tongue catches the breeze and I taste cold.

When my mother is stressed, she slits her wrists in the bathtub.

Her blood looks fine really. When people say our blood is diseased, they must mean silently. Loud disease makes itself known and lumps grow and hair falls and wrists thin. I thought her blood might be thick like wool. Or yellow like pus. But it is normal: thin and red and coloring the water like t-shirt dye. She looks like she is holding cherry streamers.

My mother contracted HIV in Italy at twenty-two. Along with brown eyes and curly hair, she has given it to me. A birthright of malady. An inconvenience for the moral majority. I heard on television HIV was for addicts, sexual deviants, and homosexuals. I am not an addict, sexual deviant, or a homosexual. I am Margaret. I am fourteen. I like English. My mother went back to Florence, her homeland, to draw. My uncle says she studied Caravaggio. She met the man in a wine bar off Via Maggio. He said she looked like a Botticelli. He said he knew a place by the railway. “I need some stuff,” he said. Then he gave her to three dealers for methamphetamine. One of them is my father. That’s what my uncle says. My mother doesn’t draw anymore.

When I see her in the bathtub, I am not afraid. Her cuts are shallow. I feel awkward, embarrassed. I shift my weight from foot to foot, waiting for her to collect herself. I am convinced that one of these times she will scoop the blood back into her veins with her ladled fingers. She will wipe the glaze from her eyes and see me, standing like an ostrich, willing her to be a better actress. I am convinced of it. But for now, she is blind in her liquid crypt. And I call for my uncle who comes in, curses, holds his head, scrambles for his phone, screams at me to get out, don’t look, go to the other room Margaret.

My school day is a held breath. I sit in class and wait to hear that my mother has finally managed to kill herself. There will be a buzz from Miss Hill’s desk and that voice over the intercom. “MISS MARGARET ARANA YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD.” I have heard my name shouted so much in robotic monotone that I worry it will lose all its warmth by the time I’m twenty. “MISS MARGARET ARANA…YOU HAVE AN EXCUSED ABSENSE.” “MISS MARGARET ARANA…PLEASE MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE FRONT OFFICE.” “MISS MARGARET ARANA…YOUR UNCLE IS HERE TO PICK YOU UP.” In my dreams the disembodied voice informs my whole class I forgot to put on deodorant. Or that I sometimes still wet the bed. I can feel my classmate’s eyes as I walk out. Empty of malice. I am quiet and good-natured and they find my timidity endearing: a convenient screen for them to project empathy onto. So they watch me leave with all the useless pity of the detached. It makes me wants to scratch off my skin.  

My uncle waits for me in the front office. He stands awkwardly, twirling his keys and staring out the glass doors. When he sees me, he smiles softly and mouths “Hiya Mags,” and I give him a small wave before walking over to the desk to sign myself out.

We wait to speak until we are out of the school. I know he feels it too, the suffocation. Our unit, our clan of three, cannot breathe freely in such institutions. In schools, in churches, in grocery stores. We will always be connected to Florentine air and railway tracks. The transient and ephemeral. Everywhere else we are fugitives.

“The doctors called. I guess things took a slight turn for the worse. Nothing too serious, but I thought I’d come get you. She’s been asking for you a lot.”

He is lying, but I nod to show his effort is appreciated. She does not speak in the hospital. A selective muteness psychiatrists find irritating to deal with.

“Oh, and she’s been looking through her old sketchbook a bit. The doctors say that’s a really good sign. Showing interest.”

He unlocks the car, and I climb in the front seat. He lets me set the temperature. I am sweating.

“Seatbelt,” he says. He says that every time. It makes me feel good, cared for. I haven’t seen my uncle in a few days. He works afternoons and nights. We catch up over car radios and stale fruit loops.

“Doctor M. went okay yesterday, yeah? No problems with the bus or anything?”

He always asks about the bus when he wants to know about my blood. From what I can understand, my blood is okay.

“No problems,” I say. 

***

HIM: [gestures to his papers] This is actually—Margaret—actually this is great news. Your CD4 count—you see highlighted here—is really within the normal range.

ME: Oh.

HIM: And you’re keeping up okay with the medication?

ME: Yeah.

HIM: Every day?

ME: Yeah.

HIM: [skeptical] Because—you know—that’s really very important. You might want to—I know some patients find it helpful to set an alarm.

ME: Yeah.

HIM: [giving up] Okay. [slaps knees] Well Margaret… [nervous] I’m not going to lecture you or anything about your mom. Haha.

ME: Haha.

HIM: Just let her know I’d like to see her again whenever she feels—ummm—well enough to come in. Okay?

She is at my uncles’ feet. She is screaming she is a cheap whore, screaming to let her die. She is ripping out her hair; she is ripping out her skin. She is downing pills like breath mints or flushing them like bad appetizers at a fancy dinner. She is unwell in the deepest sense of the word. There is not a part of her untouched by this.

ME: Okay.

            It’s raining when I leave.

***

            My uncle is humming. He has a nervous hum. I try not to think about it. I see the traffic light, yellow imposed on green. I see a gas station, a bird flying overhead, a red Honda, an oak tree. I feel the worn seat, the seatbelt buckle, the smudged window, the cup holders. I hear my uncle humming, humming, humming that song. “Ninna nanna, ninna oh.” He sings it to my mother when she cries. He told me he’s done it since she was three and he was six. When she would trip and tumble on the hills of Fiesole. “Se lo dò alla Befana.” What else can I hear? The tires skimming the road. The wind whistling through the window. My mother, at three, crumpled in a ball, hearing “Se lo tiene un anno intero.” My mother, at thirty, still paralyzed in her fetal position, hearing “Ninna nanna, ninna oh.” I can smell the Tuscan green, verdant and anciently sacred. I can smell the Arno, whirling tides, watching Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo all ebb and flow and pass. I can taste the wine, Sicilian, rearing up babies like whole milk. “Il mio bimbo addormentate.” A homeland stolen from me. A miniature displacement. Italy, like a map my father spilled blood wine on, is ruined now for all of us. Irreversibly. I ask my uncle to stop humming. He does, surprised. I feel guilty in the silence.

            “How would you feel about taking a holiday? Getting away for a bit? It might be nice, don’t you think?”

            I agree. It might be nice.

            “I hear North Carolina is beautiful in the fall. Mountains.”

            Mountains are nice I say.

            “For your health too. People swear by it. Something in the air.”

            He wants to say more.

“Is group helping? I know it’s not an easy…condition. I want to make sure you have all the support you need.”  

***

HIM 3: She gives me a different set of silverware. I tell her she doesn’t need to. I tell her it doesn’t work like that. She says she knows. She says she’s just being careful. And I wouldn’t mind. It’s just…we eat with my grandson. And he notices things. He’s…in his mind he’s quarantining me. I can feel it.

HER 2: Oh god yeah and like they think they’re being nonchalant about it. Like they think we don’t notice when they give us our own dishes, or separate our laundry, or deep clean the shower. Like I get it okay? You think I’m dirty. You think I’m this—this blot contaminating your perfect fucking life with your perfect fucking kids and your perfect fucking job. I just wish she’d call me a slut to my face. It’s the scripted civility I can’t take. [pause] You know, I hated the men when they were fucking me though. I wanted to grow out my nails and claw their eyes out. Make them hurt like me. I think—I don’t know but I think we’re more connected by pain than by sex. [long pause] Sometimes I just feel like my purpose in life is to pollute things. Like things that are really beautiful and pure, when I get too close they just…wilt.

HIM 1: Margaret?

ME: Huh?

HIM 1: I’ve noticed you’ve been very quiet. I’d like to leave some space open for you to share any victories or stressors with the group.

ME: Oh. I have a paper due soon. On feudalism.

HER 1: Oh, interesting!

HIM 2: God, I remember when I was in school a big paper felt like the world was coming to an end!

HER 3: Well, they put too much pressure on students these days. There’s no time to just be a kid anymore.

HIM 1: [resigned] Well, good luck Margaret.

HER 4: Oh, she doesn’t need that! [winks] She’s one of the smart ones.

HER 5: Yes, you’ll do great, love!

HER 2: …

ME: …

The pointlessness feels heavy.

***

            His phone rings. He pulls over, careful. “Yeah,” he says. “Uh-huh,” he says. “Yeah, we’re on our way right now,” he says. “Thanks,” he says. He hangs up. He gets back on the road. He tightens his grip on the wheel. “Pray,” he says. He’s waiting for a confirmation. “Okay?” he says. “Okay,” I say.

***

My prayers always make their way back to my father. I wonder if he can sense me, knobby kneed on the alter. Did he feel strands of his DNA stripped off him that night, nestling into the womb of rib and clay? Each time he hears a little girl cry, does he straddle some threshold of revelation? I feel no shame in admitting I’ve prayed for his death. I can see him, sprawled out on the pavement, limbs akimbo like a circus contortionist. Or choking on his own diseased blood. Last night I dreamed he OD’ed by a train station. “Take me to the hospital,” he pleaded. Each cry a medal, a reclamation. “Please take me to a hospital.” I leave him on the tracks. If evil itself can feel abandoned, if a devil has the consciousness to know it’s been deserted, then I imagine he does. I cannot bring myself to feel guilty for this. So I go to confession to question.

ME: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is…four weeks since my last confession. I—I talked back to my mom. I didn’t help my uncle with dinner the other night. I forgot to study for a history test on manifest destiny. And—

HIM: Yes?

ME: I think I’m confused.

HIM: About? Confession brings clarity.

ME: I don’t understand—I keep thinking about the relationship between justice and forgiveness.

HIM: And what conclusions have you come to?

ME: That you must pick one—just one—and pursue it fully.

HIM: And which do you pick?

ME: I feel too much anger to forgive. I—I don’t know where to put it all.

HIM: Colossians tells us that the Lord has forgiven us, so we, His people, also must forgive.

ME: But what if…what if my anger is Biblical?

A cacophonous flood to swallow a fallen creation. All the water in the Nile, angels pouring down red pigment, a thousand open-veined suicides coloring the once limpid waves. From the safety of the high ground, Gomorrah must have looked like lady liberty’s light, a burning beacon of hope. To absolve, to vindicate, to acquit—leave the New Testament language to priests behind curtains. The wronged, the afflicted, the tyrannized—we cling to a Divine wrath.

HIM: Self-indulgent anger is not of the Lord. Your penance is to say two Our Fathers, four Hail Marys, and to reflect on and repent of your sins. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.

ME: His mercy endures forever.

HIM: The Lord has freed you from your sins. Go in peace.

***

            We arrive. A few stragglers in wheelchairs wait perched outside the sliding doors. A uniformed nurse smokes absentmindedly. A woman sobs uncontrollably into her phone. It is always this identical entourage to greet us; different faces fill in the same roles. We walk inside, say our names, and take the sticky visitor badges that tear at our shirt fabric. We follow the signs to the psychiatric unit. For whatever reason, we always insist on assimilating with the other lost and confused foreigners. We purposely set aside slices of time for wrong turns and asking directions. I do not think my uncle can face the fact that we could find our way with our eyes closed. Left, straight, right, up, right, straight, left. We are not foreigners here. These winding halls are more familiar, less alien, to us than our school, our work. We are natives of the east wing of Unit C. Left, straight, right, up, right, straight, left.

The nurses recognize us. They pat my uncle on the back, shake his hand, exchange sanitized words of encouragement. Around me, they are wary. They call me “sweet one” and give me chocolate hearts, but I make them nervous. I am too quiet. It is unwise to be too quiet in a psychiatric unit. Their awkward attempts to draw me out make me blush with embarrassment. They ask how old I am. What is my favorite school subject? Do I have a boyfriend yet? I answer with cold politeness. They do not ask to know.

            We take our seats in the waiting room. A mother bounces her daughter on her lap. The gesture is so commonplace, organic. Why does it seem so anomalous to me? A mother is hardwired to know. When her daughter is chilled, she is enveloped in sweaty arms. She is lost in a snowy blanket. The hot coco’s all set just turn on the microwave. When her daughter is hungry, she is brought to her bosom. She is fed by an airplane. There’s already a sandwich on the counter waiting. No words need to be spoken. A mother scoffs at the presumption she would require the articulation. “We are knit together, she and I,” a mother would say. “Her cold makes me shiver.” “Her hunger is mine.” It is woven into strands of her DNA. My mother somehow escaped our biological destiny; she always was an elusive spirit. She severed any psychic connection we had off with the umbilical cord. Once I was all out of her, I was all him. She woke up to his cries trapped in my crib. His glacier eyes shedding my tears. His suffocating hand attached to my pinky. The horror. Her revulsion was not reticent. She was disciplined, methodical as she detached every finger of my clenched fist from her marrow. Like a mad scientist dissecting herself, hacking off her natural instincts. I’ve been cold and hungry my whole life. But she has lost her way of knowing.

            “You guys can come on back now.”

The nurse is smiling, too cheerful. We follow her with our heads down, my uncle’s hand steady on my shoulder.

And we see her, draped over the hospital bed, pale and skeletal, like a character who has just emerged from between the pages of an archaic ghost story. Bandages encircle her wrists, and monitors buzz around her like mother bees. Her eyes are still vacant, unchanging when they land on us. But she is clutching something with unusual life. Her sketchbook. I am drawn to her, dislodging it carefully. Her illustrations. Glorious and unburdened. Her at twenty-two, hidden behind a sketchbook. But vibrant between the charcoaled lines I see her. I can wait. And when she is ready to come out and we meet for the first time, there will be nothing to forgive.

Claire M Welton

Image – Wikicommons – HIV virus being released from the surface of an infected cell