Don't Call Me Mother (31 page)

Some of this will indeed come to pass, but life is never quite as we imagine it.

Don’t Call Me Mother

The sharp bite of wind off Lake Michigan initiates me to the city that deserves its nickname—the Windy City. All my life I have yearned to see Chicago, and here I am. I feel triumphant as I stride next to my mother, holding up my head, proud the way Joan of Arc might have felt leading her troops. The battle here is not religious, though it is spiritual: my search for the Holy Grail that is my mother is over. Finally, at the age of twenty, I am in her territory, in the city where I was born and where she’s lived all the years we were apart.

Crowds of intense Chicagoans hustle along with serious faces, heels clicking on sidewalks, wind plastering their clothes to their bodies like epoxy. My mother and I brave the wind, hunching over as a sharp gust bursts between buildings. We make our way slowly down the avenues between tall buildings that rise like mountains in this blustering city with its brilliant edges.

I sense my baby self as I walk here, imagining a little girl and her young mother living together in a small apartment on Armitage Street, before the severing of our bond when I was four, the event that broke our future and defined our lives. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if we had stayed here, if mother had not left me with Gram. Perhaps Gram raised me to make up for abandoning my mother so many years before. I shake my head to banish these thoughts. There are too many what ifs. Here I am now, eager to taste and feel all that I have missed.

I love the electricity of the city, the palpable energy coursing along its streets. I love the marble floors in skyscraper office buildings, the bustling cafés. People wear suits and stylish dresses, with an air about them of the big city, brisk and no-nonsense, talking with that nasal Chicago accent. This is nothing like plain-Jane Oklahoma where I grew up. I lift my head, hoping I don’t give off the scent of red dirt and buffalo, hoping I won’t embarrass myself or my mother.

My stomach trembles from the onslaught of new culture as I try to keep up with mother’s quick, brisk steps. The wind blows her dyed auburn hair awry. She clutches it against her head with one hand, an unlit cigarette held between gloved fingers of the other.

She leans toward me, lecturing. “Hold your shoulders up. Don’t slouch. A girl should always have the best posture and decorum. You don’t want men to think you’re dumpy, do you? And when you go into a restaurant, don’t smile all the time. Just look ahead and make them take you to the table. All that chit-chatting—it’s silly.”

“But Mama, that’s just being friendly.”

“This is a fine sophisticated city, not some dumb cow town. Don’t tell everything to everyone. Keep your own counsel. You talk too much.”

My irritation grows as I listen to her. She always hates it when I “argue”—which means saying anything back to her.

“I like being friendly. People are nice.”

“Don’t be silly. People are not always nice; you need to learn that.” Mother turns to face a brick building and ducks her head down to cup cigarette and match against the wind. She tries twice, frowns, then stands to take a deep drag when the tobacco finally catches. The wind sucks my breath away.

She blows out the smoke, her dark eyes fierce. “Besides, you have to listen to your mother. There’s a lot I haven’t had a chance to teach you.”

“I know, but I have to be myself, too.” Fearing I’ve spoken too boldly and will trigger her rage, I soften my tone. “I mean, I’m just a friendly person.”

She slaps me on the arm. “Quit talking back to me. Here’s the jewelry store.”

Like flotsam tumbling down Michigan Avenue, we are swept by the wind into the vestibule of a small store. Mother grabs my shoulder. “You stay by the door while I talk to the owner. Don’t talk to me or join me until I tell you to.”

“But Mother…”

“Shh… not so loud. And don’t call me that.” She smacks my arm harder, her face tight, angry.

Mother hauls open the door and we enter a quiet, brightly lit jewelry shop, display cases arranged up and down both sides. A middle-aged man stands behind a counter, inspecting something with a magnifying glass.

Mother starts her routine. “Oh, John, so wonderful to see you again.” Hips rolling a little, she turns on her high voice of tense attraction. The desire to be flirted with and admired exudes from her like heavy perfume.

I scrunch myself next to the door. Whips of wind driving through the gaps in the frame make me pull my coat close. I shrink into a ball of misery as the minutes pass and Mother ignores me completely. The man glances at me once, then quickly looks away. Why won’t Mother introduce me?

Scared of her anger and trying to be a good girl, I follow Mother’s instructions to the letter, standing there crumpled like an old leaf blown in by an unwelcome wind. The whole jewelry store becomes surreal like in some noir movie. My legs ache, and Mother’s flaunting, flirty cadence scrapes my nerves raw. Twenty minutes into my invisibility, she finally looks over. I open my hands as if to say, “What?” trying to convey polite impatience. It’s my usual dilemma—how can I be myself yet keep her from getting angry. Is it even possible?

Mother turns back to the jewelry man, juts her hip out, and says, “See that girl down there?”—I am the only other person in the shop—”She’s my daughter.”

The man laughs richly, deep in his belly. “That can’t be, Josephine. You’re much too young to have a daughter that age.”

Mother wriggles with pleasure and fixes her seductive eyes on the man. “Oh, really, do you think so?”

Smiling, I move forward a couple of steps to be introduced, eager to claim my status as her daughter. After all, she’s beautiful and desirable, unlike me, her ugly-duckling. After all, she is my mother. Mother turns her body away from me, huddling closer to the man, draping herself over the jewelry case, still swiveling her hips. I stand there, obediently, waiting for Mother to pick up the thread of conversation and return her attention to me. Thirty minutes pass, leaving me in a hell of isolation, feeling helpless and confused. Outraged. How dare she ignore me like this? My own mother is ashamed of me? I’m sick of watching her flirt with this greasy, cold man, his velvet voice calculated to make her buy more antique jewelry. I’m disgusted that she’s sucked into his fawning admiration.

I retreat back into the frigid pocket by the door, shamed by her snubbing and sick to my stomach over her outrageous flirting. The double fires of shame and anger temporarily warm me, simmering while Mother completes her performance and makes a purchase. Finally she leads me outside.

My shaking voice is gulped down whole by the wind. “Why didn’t you introduce me?”

Mother stops to light a cigarette, her body cupped against a brick wall. “Now, don’t you be like that. You have to understand—no one knows that I’ve been married. I’m ‘Miss Myers’ here. People are so nosy. If they knew I’d been married, they’d gossip horribly about my life; they wouldn’t respect me.”

“But I’m Miss Myers. That’s my father’s name.” The shock of her refusal to introduce me and her self-serving defense of herself leave me nearly speechless.

Her face grows stony with anger. “Be reasonable and keep your voice down. You should treat your mother with respect. When we got divorced it was easier to keep his name. I just said I was Miss, and that’s all there is to it.” Her hands twirl casually in the air as she leads me onward down the hard slabs of sidewalk.

There is a mighty roiling and misery in my stomach as I tumble into the deep, dark pit I know too well. I want my mother to save me, but I know she won’t. “You mean, no one in Chicago knows about me?” my small voice whispers from below.

Her voice is edgy with impatience. “I told you, they can’t know I have a daughter. They think I’m too young; you heard what John said. No one has any idea that I’m fifty. Besides, I can’t have a daughter if I’ve never been married, now can I? You’ve got to understand how it is for me. I have to live here, and I don’t want things disturbed.”

Her illogical logic burns all the way down, but I try to swallow it. For years when my mother came to see me in Oklahoma, I always sensed that she was eager to return to her city life as she boarded those trains in the middle of the Great Plains, but I never dreamed that in Chicago she’d erased me from her life.

Emotional shock waves send pinpricks all over my body. Here I am in Chicago with her, finally, after so many years of longing for my mother. I glance at her. Yes, the physically beautiful woman I yearned for, cried for, needed, imagined, rushed to hug and clung to despite her cool reception, stands beside me, but not the way I wanted her and imagined her all these years. Now that I’m in college three hours away, I could see her almost any time I want. I thought we’d do mother–daughter things together, to make up for those lonely childhood years. Didn’t Mommy want it as much as I did?

My dreams are crumbling as Mother rushes me along the gray streets, gum and cigarette wrappers flying at us like bats, people scurrying with frowns on their faces. Suddenly Chicago seems like a city of hard edges. In the café the waitress doesn’t care, splashes the coffee. Everyone is quick, curt, cold. My mother doesn’t see my disintegration. Tears pour down the inside of my body but don’t spill onto my cheeks. The fire of anger still burns in me, but I manage a fake smile.

The January day closes in as I try to comprehend how my mother can deny me, even when we’re together. My excitement has been spoiled by Mommy’s coldness. There is no way I can know now that her denial will follow me, haunt me through the coming decades, all the way up to her death—and beyond.

She sits across from me, flashing a quick smile. “Cheer up. No one wants to be with someone who has such a sour face. Don’t you think my new ring is beautiful?”

She lays her graceful hand across the table. I pause, caught up in my anger, then touch her hand. I’m surprised to find that the mere touch of her skin soothes the place in me that burns. I hold her hand, grateful for this flicker of warmth from her, ashamed of needing it, of accepting her on her own terms. The waitress returns to pour the coffee. This time she glances at both of us, her face flickering with a slight smile. I know she thinks we look alike, mother and daughter sitting oh-so-normally at a table in a café in Chicago, our secrets buried in each of us. My heart beats fast as I look at her, swallowing the hot coffee, swallowing everything.

Becoming a Mother

Four years later, I’ve finally entered an eagerly awaited stage of life—I’m pregnant with my first child. I focus on the doctor’s shiny bald head framed between my legs as I lie on the examination table. He removes his gloves and tells me to sit up. “You’re pregnant—about two months. The baby is growing nicely.”

Feelings of excitement and disbelief flood me. I sit up, a tingling like icicles all over my body. I’m ecstatic and Dennis, my husband, will be, too. Me, a mother? I never thought it could happen, figuring that because of my past I was destined to remain outside normal human experience. Yet now I am pregnant—a normal, pregnant woman.

The first time I feel the baby move, my life swerves into a cotton-candy dream. “Can this be real? I’m growing life inside me?” I feel powerful and awestricken all at once. My mother will become a grandmother, my grandmother will become a great-grandmother. I hope they will be thrilled by my news, but I’m not really surprised that their responses are less than enthusiastic. “You’re so young. Shouldn’t you have waited? Do you have enough money, with Dennis just getting out of grad school?” The subtext: Why are you making me feel so old by having a baby?

I try not to feel too disappointed by their letters. Reluctantly I’ve adjusted to their cynicism about me and about happiness in general. At least my father is excited and congratulatory. He actually looks forward to being a grandfather! I imagine frequent visits with him in Arizona, where he has retired. Daddy and I will make up for my lost childhood by playing with the baby, going to the zoo, doing all the things we never did together.

The day I first feel the baby move, I’m standing in the living room of our apartment in Portland, wearing a maternity dress that I made myself, a red print with a white cotton collar. My fingers gently search for the little protrusion, a leg or an arm, tiny round bumps rolling across my belly. I grab at one of them to say hello. The baby tucks in to escape my probing, as if to say, “Hey, that’s my leg! Be careful up there.”

I look in the mirror to check out my voluptuous new figure. Before pregnancy I was flat-chested and knobby and weighed less than one hundred pounds. Now I’m curvy everywhere and getting rounder every day.

Dennis and I have moved to Oregon, where he is an assistant professor. Though we’ve been married nearly two years, I’m still adjusting to being married and happy, no longer at the mercy of Gram and Mother bossing me around. I look up to Dennis and count on him to be the typical 1950s husband, despite our ’60s ideals. I kiss him good-bye when he goes to work each morning. For the first time in my life without work or school to concern myself with, I’m trying to fit myself into the identity of homemaker. It’s fun to throw myself into cooking, making fancy desserts that take hours, pouring over gourmet cookbooks, learning from the rulebooks of the ’50s how to win your man and keep him. I learn how to cook Italian cuisine from Mama Leone’s cookbook, spending hours making ravioli from flour and eggs, filling and crimping. I make sauce from scratch only to see my eight hours of labor disappear down the throats of our guests. We play pinochle late into the night, or attend professorial dinner parties, to which I bring more exotic dishes, holding onto my New Identity. I am Normal, how are you? My crazy childhood is a bad dream. I’m fine, thank you, content as can be in my happy, wifely bubble with Dennis.