P: 9/27/02

Work Diary, 9/27/02

A friend I've known since the age of twelve visited yesterday. After he
left, it occurred to me that my mother has been dead for over twenty
years. The last time I saw her, she lay on her side on a hospital bed,
comatose, an inverted question mark against the white sheets. She was
far too tiny and thin to be my mother. We children were told to talk to
her, perhaps say, "I love you," then each of us was left alone in the
room. I spent most of my time in the bathroom, bleary-eyed but
surprisingly calm. In the end, I didn't say anything, because the woman
on the bed wasn't really my mother. I might as well have talked to the
image in the bathroom mirror.

So, who was she? This is a mystery. There are so few photos, and my
family lacks those stories that get passed down from one generation to
another. I know that on my mother's ninth birthday, her mother - my
grandmother - died during childbirth. My grandfather then dropped my
mother, aunts, and an uncle off at their grandmother's house to be
raised. From all accounts, this wasn't an easy childhood. Their
grandmother was not so much abusive as bitter and mean. She passed
those qualities on to her grandchildren, who - with the exception of my
mother - made much better use of them.

Before my father came along, my mother was engaged to a medical
student, who died from an aneurysm. I've been told she was "never the
same" after this. She seemed marked for death at any early age, an
observation that can be made only in hindsight. In her case, she was
thirty-seven years old, ridiculously young for terminal cancer - even
back then.

She went to college, and received love letters from my father, who
despite his later criminal acts was actually quite proficient in
English grammar (proof of which could be found in the bundles she had
hidden in our attic, the letters and unused stationery tucked away in a
cosmetic case just waiting for young, prying eyes). She became pregnant
without the benefit of marriage, though her siblings would hardly hold
this against her, considering. In any case, she made up for it by
getting married, a decision that would ultimately send her over the
edge and that still haunts my aunts to this day.

My mother was tall, large-chested, had brown hair that she would later
dye; she was thin-hipped, so not exactly voluptuous, and pretty in a
Waspish, even-featured way. She could walk in high heels with ease, and
liked expensive clothes well enough to risk wearing them once before
returning them to the store. She wore little makeup, and she favored
pinkish purples for the polish on her fingers and toes. Men would hold
open the door for her and then scowl as we children followed
along.

She read Gothic romance novels; the authors weren't important. The
floor around our couch was littered with those disposable paperbacks,
the covers so obviously similar with their shirtless heroes and
swooning heroines. She typed well over a hundred words per minute,
which is not surprising since typing was her job. On the very night she
made us pack up our clothes in plastic garbage bags so we could leave
my father one last time, she dropped us off at a motel and then left
for a date. The date was with her divorce attorney, a black man, which
sent ripples of excitement through the small clique of my sisters and
me.

For a long time, my father was a hazy memory as we moved from one
low-rent apartment to the next. My mother liked big, cheap American
cars. When one died, she simply bought another. I cannot remember my
mother ever cooking a meal; instead, we ate in restaurants almost
nightly, usually without her. Just as a child comes to expect his
mother's presence, we came to expect our mother's disappearances. It
wasn't long before we discovered that she wasn't coming home at night.
She might be on the couch when we got home from school, wearing an old
robe with her hair swirled up in a towel, but soon she'd hand us some
money and leave again.

Those were strange years, a mixture of absolute freedom and scary
uncertainty. We skipped school, shoplifted, navigated our way through
the city on buses; made friends, fought with neighbors, did our own
grocery shopping; held sleepovers, seances, and burned candles in the
empty Chianti bottles our mother left behind. To this day, my partner
and friends picture my mother as some type of party girl, but that
image is laughably inaccurate. My mother was shy, a bit clumsy, and
serially monogamous. The one time I challenged her abandonment of us,
she slammed the door behind her and then stood on the porch crying. I
know, because I watched her from a crack in the curtains. She left just
the same.

As her illness progressed, my mother was home more often than not. She
lied, saying she had pneumonia. There were promises to sue the hospital
for puncturing her lung; we'd be able to leave the slums, buy a house,
a new couch. I was curious about the long scar on her back, which I had
to apply lotion to each night before we went to bed. The mystery was
solved when I discovered two things: One, I'd grown taller than my
mother and, two, I could look down her shirt, where she had stuffed her
bra with crumpled up tissue paper.

My father sporadically re-entered the picture, a virtual elephant in
our tiny apartment. My younger sister was shipped off to a friend's
house; my older sister steadily became her mother's daughter,
disappearing and adding the extra excitement of drugs. Strange men
often walked out of my sister's bedroom, which short of using the
toilet became my mother's only enticement to get off the couch. I sold
frozen Kool-Aid to neighborhood kids from the window of our back door,
using the money to buy groceries and, I will admit, far too much candy.
I took the bus alone to visit my mother during her stays in the
hospital. The nurses were nice, and brought two trays of food. Her
boyfriend brought nothing, not even himself, but did send a card that
she kept with her for each stay.

The time came when my mother ended up in the hospital for the last
time. My aunts swooped in, completely unaware of her condition or our
situation; they'd been tipped off by my mother herself, who'd finally
admitted defeat. They found a roach-infested, filthy apartment and a
boy who'd never been taught that his underwear should be changed daily.
My sisters were rounded up - the oldest most unwilling to leave the new
world she'd made for herself - and my father fled the wrath of my
aunts, which was wise.

My mother was still alive when we children were moved to a different
state. She lingered, had good and bad days. When we called her in her
hospital room, my uncle would urge us to say, "I love you" before
passing the phone; only my youngest sister ever did. One day, in my new
school, I was called out of class and taken to the office, where my
aunt met me. My uncle drove all night, straight to the hospital, where
we each stood alone with my-mother-who-was-not-my-mother. We left the
hospital, and had barely arrived at another aunt's house before the
call came, telling us my mother had "passed."

Sometimes, when I'm digging through my garage or the closet under the
stairs, I come across my mother's driver's license. It's faded, and the
plastic edges are curled and sharp. It seems to have a knack for moving
about my house, popping up when I least expect it. I always pick up the
license, and each time I am surprised that it is not my mother I see,
but myself. The nose, the chin, the shape of the face - they are all
mine. The only difference is the eyes, which are mine, too, but not
quite. In the photograph, my mother stares off to the side. She looks a
bit angry, though her eyes appear blank, almost lifeless. I'd like to
say it's the lighting, or the technology of the time, but I know it's
not.

It is the way she always looked, really - not entirely there, her
vision focused on some internal or ethereal world that no one else
could see or, perhaps most importantly, violate. Current thinking tells
me I should hate my mother, or at least blame her for my problems, but
I can't. She was a product of her times and her circumstances, and
quite frankly, I'm surprised she held on as long as she did.

I've come dangerously close to becoming my mother, a struggle that will
probably be with me for the rest of my life. Still, her death left me
free to plot my own course. Sometimes she is there with me, just out of
sight, voiceless but influential. It is tempting to follow her, to do
things her way, perhaps even try to make her happy, but I resist.

I imagine that's much how she saw her children.