Me Too, Mom

There’s not much you don’t already know. I mean, before you died, there was so little we hadn’t already talked through, or cried over, or fought about. Or laughed at. There is the one thing, though. I never told you. I never told anyone. How do you tell your mom something like that? How do you tell anyone?

I thought about it once, telling you. It wouldn’t have really mattered ‘cause you wouldn’t have remembered. You were lying in your intravenous bed. This was just before the fairy butterflies that amazed you so. Before I watched your miracle life squeeze itself back into your cadaver face. I thought I might tell you then.

How like a ghoul you looked.

And there was this part of me, this wicked part that shouted, oh so quietly, silently, at you to die. And this other part, pale and cold, that almost plainly told you the truth of it all before you could exit your almost-corpse. Almost. Because another part of me, the rest of me, thought it would be cruel to send you away knowing.

I didn’t want to be cruel. I wanted to love you. I know you wanted to love me, but I don’t know if you ever knew how to love something. Someone. You learned how to hold onto things. Learned to be practical. You learn that on a farm. How to make things and mend things, clean things and cook things. And kill things.

You taught me how to fish and how to kill that fish after I caught it. How to clean it. Even how to use a Perch eye to catch another. And it’s not that you were removed as you simply pressed your thumb into the socket like so, just dispassionate. Like when you had me hold the chicken’s feet and head when you slit their throats to bleed them. “Don’t let go,” you said. “You’ll get blood everywhere and you’ll bruise the meat.” Chickens are stronger than they look. You gotta really hold on tight and turn your head away or the wings beat you in the face. You gave me your old motorcycle jacket to wear. Moth balls and leather. And your gloves. Gauntlets. We did nine that morning. I was eleven. I remember because there were eleven chickens. I never did catch the last two.

You taught me how to sew and patch. How to cook and can and plant. You knew my secret love of vacuuming and hospital corners. You knew so much, but you didn’t know, did you?

Because it was there, in the basement, where you and dad taught me to ride a bike. I wobbled back and forth between the two of you, passed to and fro like a Weeble. It was you who insisted on training wheels before I cracked my skull. There, in the basement, where you taught me to drink. Taught us all to drink. And didn’t we pay the price for it.

It was in the basement where Brian got to play with his toy bazooka and shoot pucks and break two windows, but not me. I wanted to say, “Me, too!” but I knew better. I didn’t know anything.

Remember when Shadow had her first litter and the kittens died? I was sleeping in the basement with Ricky. We were both under the pool table because there was a rug there. She had carried them, one by one, into the foot of my sleeping bag. They were cold. She was a good mom. She was doing her best, right? I mean, the cat can be forgiven. What’s to forgive, really?

I had this dream, later on. Rick was sleeping over again, and you don’t know about this dream and it’s not really important, but we were standing in the basement, in the dream, and he was standing in front of me looking behind me and he saw something so scary, so frightening that he passed out. Just like that. And I knew. I knew that something really bad was right behind me. So I faked passing out and collapsed right there, too. I didn't dare look to see what it was. It was the horror in his eyes that convinced me to pretend.

There, in that basement, where I leaned into the business of dad’s shoes, my left arm stuffed in, almost up to my elbow. Laces tucked in like he showed me. Swirling brushes and leather. My job. My responsibility. I stepped into both and tied them all by myself for the very first time, never looking back at all.

So, I’m glad I never told you, because you did not steal away to that otherworld and you might have heard me and remembered. To survive with that knowing? Brian knew all right, but he was thirty years gone. He killed himself just two years after dad crushed his own chest with a car. Good ol’ dad, he made it look like an accident.

In that Baby Blue basement where my big brother practiced on me and paid me not to tell. And I became very practiced at forgetting. And at blaming you. There was no one left, except a sister in her basement suite psych ward. You died a few months later and I forgot all about it, again. Years of practice.

But I remember now. The shame I felt. The shame I felt when I finally told a single soul. It’s easier now that I have finally told you.