Wild Animals
She was mine and I was hers
Gambled hard and split the purse
A patient and her patient nurse
She was mine and I was hers
1
Wild Animal
Some of the damage
caused by my mother, Gloria, scorched the earth, and sometimes those who adored
her wished we’d never known her, wished we’d never even been born. I
adored her, but to adore her, one had to figuratively roll one’s eyes at about
half her declarations, especially when they were slurred. One had to figuratively shrug one’s shoulders
in a gesture like “That’s our Gloria,” though only in response to a benign
destruction. Only when she was just
telling white lies or asking to borrow money while joking that she’d never pay
it back.
“I never, ever imagined myself with kids,” she
said once. “I know, you hate it when I
talk about having you -- you think I sound too objective when I talk about how
much it hurt to give birth and all the drugs they had to give me and everything
like that. But just listen to me a sec
-- I didn’t want to have a kid because, when I
was a kid, I always thought I needed to grow up to do something; I thought I needed to be, like, some solitary woman
just living and breathing art all the time, no kids or anything else to
distract me from some lasting work. But
then I had you, and you are my
purpose. You’re what I did, Maria.”
She’d woken me up
to tell me this in the middle of the night, of course, because she’d gotten sad
watching some movie on TV or something and wanted the company. For much of my childhood we shared a bed (it
was always the perfect amount of warmth or coolness under those covers, always
the perfect firmness of my bottom pillow and soft lumpiness of the pillow I had
on top), and now she was climbing into our bed with all her clothes and even
her shoes and jewelry still on; she turned on the little tabletop lamp and the
light shone right in my eyes.
I was fully awake
by now, so she kept on:
“Remember that man
Jake who used to come into the bookstore?
Did I ever tell you he was a writer?
He had two novels published, and he was really great. He got everything just right on the page,
like, the most perfect way to
describe something. And he was really
handsome too, remember? But when we’d
talk sometimes he’d just sound so self-obsessed and depressed, and after a
while I couldn’t stand it – I’d just avoid him when he came into the
store. It was really sort of maddening
that he thought his ideas were so important.
Sometimes I’d hear him talking to George and I’d just want to go over
and shake him and tell him, ‘Stop thinking so much!’ I wanted to tell him he’d be happier if he
just gave up and had a kid.”
Now here I am
trying to painstakingly record the details of my upbringing. It seems that I’ve been saving up all these
details over the years, though I thought that I’d been throwing them all out or
forgetting them along the way, trying to keep my story spare and current, like Mom
tried. She spent so many unsuccessful years trying to teach me an unfettered
enjoyment of good sensations, like when you know you don’t have to record or
remember a significant moment later on, and you can just move beyond bad
experiences, no reflection necessary, the way a pet that gets lost outdoors
will accept the stranger who takes it in, with no apparent longing for its old
family. We’d taken in several stray cats
over the years – at least eleven -- and without exception, each animal eagerly
adapted to its new life. Or at least I
think so.
