The End of Eve (24 page)

Cloud peeked around the door frame just then. “Ronaldo's here,” he said.

And my mother gasped. “ Tiniest, My hair –”

“Give us a minute,” I whispered to Cloud.

“Sure thing.”

I BRUSHED MY
mother's gray hair, fastened a silver comb to keep it from her face. I filed her nails, took the blush from her make-up bag and dusted her cheeks.

“I just need to look alive,” she whispered.

“Lipstick?”

She smiled at me. “That would just look fake, Tiniest. I want to look natural for Ronaldo.”

32.

Seven Swords

I LET MAXITO SLEEP IN
.

It must have been after 9 a.m. when he finally tip-toed into the kitchen of the little adobe, rosy-cheeked and rubbing his eyes. “Good morning,” he said. “I want a sandwich.” He squinted against the morning sun. “And let's make you some coffee, Mama.”

He stood up on his wooden step stool and I watched his little hands as he pressed the button to grind the coffee beans for me.

I remembered when I was pregnant with Maia how terrified I felt that I would abuse her. That I would torment her. And I remembered the flood of relief when I realized unabusive motherhood wasn't so very hard. That sure – it took a diligence, probably more diligence when emotional violence was my first language. But that in the end it isn't so hard not to ruin everything we love. It meant deferring to my child when I felt that wit's-end rage bubble up, meant stepping back to remind myself that she was the baby here, that I was the grown-up. It meant reminding myself to behave in a way I would be proud of. It meant not always needing to be right, apologizing when I was wrong. It meant a lot of pause-taking. But it wasn't so very hard.

I made Maxito a banana sandwich.

We sat outside. The first warm morning in March.

He fed his bread crusts to the chickens, climbed the
branches of the plum tree he called his own. A blossom. “It's getting springtime,” he said. “I love being in a tree.”

I should have had him at daycare two hours earlier, but I liked it here in the late warm morning. Just feeding the chickens. Pretending we didn't have anyone else to care for.

MY BUDDHIST FRIEND
in Albuquerque texted me the name of a gym she knew in Santa Fe. She wanted me to start lifting weights, she said. She wanted me to stay strong. And have you tried going to the dump and breaking plates? It might be a good way to get any anger out of your body without hurting anyone. She was meditating, she said, on swords that cut through delusions and into the heart of things.

I texted my Buddhist friend back:
I think I'm learning something about those swords.

And now the chef texted:
I want to get my African violets colored in. Tattoo date?

My stars had healed.

Yes. I wanted more.

What was a tattoo anyway, but a visual reminder of pain and healing. The memoir inked into our skin. Some symbolic way to integrate the enormity of everything.

I grabbed one of the three copies of the new Clarissa Pinkola Estés' book I'd gotten for Christmas, remembered an image of the pierced heart of Mary somewhere in those pages. “The swords through your heart are not the ones that caused your wounds, but rather, these swords of strength were earned by your struggle through hard times.”

Here it was, “the unruined heart” pierced by seven swords. I didn't think I'd earned all those swords yet, but maybe the pierced/unruined heart could become some self-fulfilling prophecy. Like
right now I insist that right now some beautiful girl is sitting on the bank of a river with a copy of this book in her hands and right now she has a rose in her hair.

I texted the chef back:
Yes, please. Tattoo date.

MY MOTHERS
'
ESTRANGED
best friend's daughter was flying in that night. Karin. She would sit by my mother's hospice bed, read her Mary Oliver poetry. She would sing to her. She would pour me a glass of wine in the custom kitchen, shake her head, and say, “this is intense – dark and spirit-filled work – I don't know how you're doing it.”

I didn't know if I was doing it.

MAIA ARRIVED FOR
a long weekend.

My mother wept at the sight of her, pointed to the crow painting on her wall, “my crow,” she told Maia. “It makes me cry.”

Maia sat with her, read her passages from a book by the painting-artist about that crow until my mother fell asleep.

A FACEBOOK MESSAGE
from my old friend Teagan:
What does it mean for life to bear witness to death?

I didn't answer her, didn't want to answer her. Even Baba Yaga said that not all questions cry out to be answered. I just messaged back:
You're gonna start quoting Freud on me now?

What did it mean for life to bear witness to death? My oracle back in Portland had said I could ask questions after a year, but it occurred to me now that it didn't promise any good answers.

IN THE YARD
behind the former duplex, the living crows had started to gather. Five of them on the back fence. The snow fell. Ten of them now. It kept falling. There must have been thirty crows in the trees and on that back fence come first day of spring.

“Are there always so many crows in your backyard?” my Buddhist friend from Albuquerque asked when she stopped by to paint my fingernails purple.

“No. They've been gathering.”

And now here was my mother on the new caregiver Octavio's arm. She hadn't been out of bed in a month. She wrinkled her nose at the bottles of nail polish on the dining room table. “Are you trying to kill me? With those fumes?”

“I can't believe you're up, Mom. That's great.”

She stood unsteady, leaned into Octavio, said, “Do you know what I want? I want a pumpkin chiffon pie. Just like Madre used to make.”

Madre. My Gammie. Her pumpkin chiffon pie.

I actually had the recipe. “You got it,” I said. “Pumpkin chiffon pie.”

THE NEXT DAY
I stepped into my mother's room, carrying my ugly little pumpkin chiffon pie. I couldn't find the right ginger snaps at Healthy Wealthy for the crust, had been too impatient to let the pumpkin and egg white mixture cool properly. That pie smelled perfect, but it didn't look like anything Gammie would have served.

“I hate you!” my mother shrieked.

I set the pie down on her desk, between the TV stand and the painting of the crow. “Okay, Mom. I give up, why do you hate me?”

“I'm not ready to die,” she screamed. “Who does that? Who doesn't get ready to die? Do you want to know why I hate you, Tiniest?”

“Sure.” I was so tired.

“You've got everything and I've got nothing, all right? There you have it. You have a life and I don't have a life.”

I shook my head, wanted to take a handful of that pie and cram it down her throat.

“You've always had a life, all right?” my mother seethed. “I'm a jealous bitch. That's the truth about your mother. Your mother's a jealous bitch. Are you happy now?”

“Yes, Mom,” I said. “I'm bubbling over with glee. This is exactly the kind of conversation I always dreamed of having with you on your deathbed.” I left her with her pie.

“Tiniest?” she called after me. I didn't answer.

“Is that a pie?” she yelled.

I didn't answer.

“Oh my God, Tiniest,” my mother cried. “You made me the pie.”

I GRABBED A
pile of white dishes from my mother's kitchen, texted the chef from the driveway:
Can we get out of town for a couple of days?

Maxito would be with Sol anyway.

The chef texted back:
Yes, definitely.

On the way home to my little adobe, I stopped at the dump, stood at the edge of the garbage pit and held each plate, one by one, smooth in my hands, before I raised it above my head and hurled it into the pit. The sound of the ceramic hitting concrete.

AT HOME I
packed fast. The chef picked me up in her gold Jeep and we drove south down Highway 25, drove toward the lithium hot springs in Truth or Consequences.

We'd hole up in a room with a hot plate and a private mineral bath through April Fools' Day.

“My mother is never going to die,” I mumbled.

It had been two months since her release from the hospital.

My friends on Facebook threw virtual confetti.
Death is beautiful!
they insisted, and
This is your time with her!

How could I explain the depth of my exhaustion? I knew I should be living in the present, in these ugly and sacred moments. I thought of the little girl clinging to her father as he held her over the fire, clinging because he was all she had. But I was glad my mother wasn't all I had.

IN
THE TIBETAN
Book of Living and Dying
, Sogyal Rinpoche recalls the death of a spiritual master. He was just seven years old when he witnessed it: The old man beckoned one of his students to his side. “A-mi,” he called her, my child. “Come here,” he said. “It's happening now. I've no further advice for you. You are fine as you are: I am happy with you.”

WE KEPT DRIVING
fast south in the chef's Jeep. I never thought my mother would die with the grace of a master, but now I made quick peace with the possibility that my last conversation with her might have been the one about how much she hated me.

My phone buzzed with a call. I wanted to ignore it. My mother's landline. “Hello?”

“Tiniest?” she whispered, anxious. “You have to come here now.”

“I can't, Mom.” I watched out the Jeep window. Citizen Cope on the car stereo. I watched all that dry red earth, watched the dry river beds as we crossed over each bridge.

My mother's voice, frantic: “Someone put a Post-it Note on the faux finished cabinets in the kitchen, Tiniest.”

This was her problem. A Post-it Note.

I'd seen it, actually. The note. A missive about which organic beans my mother liked better. (Pinto, not black).

“They've
ruined
the paint job, Tiniest. A person who would put a Post-it on my faux finishing would do
anything
,” my mother cried. “You have to find out who's done this.” Her voice cracked. “You have to fire whoever's done this. Don't let them anywhere near me. Please. Don't let
anyone
who would do
anything
like this anywhere
near
me.”

“All right,” I promised on the phone, clicked it off. The low desert shrubs. I texted all the caregivers:
Don't anyone admit to putting the Post-it Note on the faux finishing.

33.

The Heart Sutra

MY CELLPHONE RANG TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING. A
number I only vaguely recognized. I let it go to voicemail, crawled out from under the quilts of my bedroll, crept into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee.

Outside the kitchen window, a dusting of snow. The snow still coming down.

Abra had fallen asleep on the couch.

My kitchen lights flickered off. On again.

The sound of the kettle whistle.

Abra sat up, tired. “How will we look back on these days, Lady Yaga?”

I glanced up at the painting of the winged house. “With relief that they're over and some odd wish we could go back and do it all better.”

I liked the way that Abra was still young enough to think of me as an oracle.

I grabbed a blanket, took my coffee out onto the front porch, dialed voicemail for the message.

A shaky voice. Lara. One of the newer caregivers from Milagro. “Ariel, you need to come up to the house right now.” A silence. “Your mother is passing today. All the signs are here.”

I didn't call Lara back, just finished my coffee, ducked back inside, threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, pulled on my boots, didn't tell Abra the why of my sudden hurry.

I made an egg sandwich for Maxito, stuffed his clothes into
my purse, lifted him out of his bed in his pajamas, whispered, “we have to go to daycare a little bit early today, sweetie.”

As I buckled him into his car seat, he smiled sleepy.

I handed over the egg sandwich, drove toward town, drove into the building blizzard, tried not to drive too fast, probably drove too fast.

Your mother is passing today.
Most of me knew I didn't have to be there when she passed, but the world seemed to want me there.
You need to come up to the house right now.

I dropped Maxito off at his new daycare, helped him brush his teeth in the school bathroom before circle time, made my way to the house. Lara hugged me when I stepped into the entry-way, hugged me for so long I wondered if my mother had already died.