On a whim, I call my cousin. As the phone rings, my thoughts drift. . . What was the first interaction that I had with her? My body knows before my mind remembers:
Abruptly, light from the fixture in the hallway slices the darkness of the room in which my sister and I sleep. We’d recently begun to share a space which had been mine since moving into this, newly built, house two years ago. “The baby” will need the crib and my sister’s old room. She is a big girl now, sleeping, next to me, in her big girl bed.
As the carpet on the floor next to the trundle where I lie is illuminated, my eyes blink open. My father, framed by the doorway is agitated. My body stiffens as my mind leaps to the cards under my mattress.
I’d been excited to give my mother store bought Valentines as they were far superior to the cards that I had been making with construction paper and crayon. I’d been gifting them to my mother for years and, especially, over the last several months. The cards my, futile, attempt to lift her spirit.
I was hopeful these fancier, shinier, REAL cards, would work something a kin to magic. My dad had purchased them on his way home from work. He’d told my sister and I that we could give them to her “first thing in the morning”.
At bedtime, Dad instructed me to put the cards on the floor under my bed but I had insisted on placing them between my mattress and the wiry springs of the bed frame. I wanted to keep them safe and to have them as close to me as possible.
When my constricting pupils registered my father’s posture, I scrambled to pull the cards from beneath the weight of my startled body. Unable to do so and too frightened to climb out of bed, I asked with the nervous grogginess of a child accustomed to aggression but never this early: “Is it time?!”
I cannot recall his exact response. I was numbed by anxiety and confusion as I digested the news.
It WAS time. . . but not for the valentines. My mother was in labor!
“Grandma B” and Virgil, would meet us. I remember the entrance to the hospital. Standing in the cold, thin pajama bottoms defeated by the winter gust. As I climbed in the back seat along the large, cold bench seat of Virgil’s, brown, late sixties sedan.
My sister, only two and a half, sat next to me without a car seat or even a seat belt; her chubby, comfortable weight against my boney scaffold. She’d likely fallen back to sleep. I felt her muscles relax as we pulled onto the expressway, heading east toward a sleeping sun and the house in which my father was raised.
As I looked out the unfamiliar window, I wondered whether my grandmother would, or could explain my father.
I acted cool, knowing that was what was needed from me. This, — whatever had just occurred — was NOT normal. And I understood that, in all likelihood, none of it would be discussed, certainly not explained. It COULDN’T be.
My role today – all days – was to be low-maintenance, to be strong and to set an example for my sister.
I did not want to burden my grandparents who – it was clear – were not accustomed to caring for young children and certainly not in the middle of the night. What I desperately wanted to know was whether my mother would be okay? And .. . given his actions, whether my father was truly the best person to leave with her at the hospital?
Just before we’d left for the hospital, I’d peered into my parent’s dark bedroom. By this time, at the age of five, I had cataloged my mother’s mannerisms and facial expressions. I knew the difference between fine and pretending to be fine. As I focused on her, sitting up in bed, I sensed fear. I registered her “I’m okay, really” expression.
Had he hurt her? I didn’t have time to investigate. My father rushed my sister and I to the car. As he did, he shouted agitated commands.
As father’s go, mine was angry, needy or indifferent. But Mom seemed excited. At least she seemed like she wanted me to think that the new baby was something that we should be excited about.
But it was still happening. The abuse I’d desperately hoped would stop once we moved to the “new house” (if I could add glitter and sparkles I would 😜) had continued – gotten worse in fact.
My father was often irate. He certainly was the morning my brother was born . . or night, I wasn’t sure about much, least of which, the time. I only knew that it was dark and that I had not slept nearly as long as my body was used to.
As I climbed into the backseat of our small car, aware that my father’s anger and anxiety was filling the cold, dark garage.
Mom was seated in the passenger seat in front of me and was – inexplicably – opening a small package which, I figured by the look of it, had come in the mail.
She must have retrieved the mail from the box along the cul de sac as she pulled into the driveway the evening prior. Presumably she’d left the mail on the passenger seat, remembering it only as she climbed in. The package that she’d opened was a framed photo of my newest cousin, born just over three months earlier.
My father was standing in the garage, just outside the car. As I strapped myself into the seat next to my sister, I heard my mom coo, “Oh, look!”.
Her tone surprised me. It didn’t match the mood. But I understood. It was a tactic. She was sweetly, naively, trying to ease the tension we all felt. This was (is!) her tactic: pretend things are fine.
She then took the extra step of handing the photo over the gear shift to my father, urging him to look at the photo of her brother’s first born. My father, who’d just buckled my sister into her car seat was in NO mood to pretend.
Abruptly and impatiently, my father grabbed the photo out of my mother’s hand and chucked it at her swollen, contracting belly.
I was stunned silent.
As he climbed into the driver’s seat he threw a bouquet of red carnations wrapped in crinkly clear plastic and sneared “Happy Valentine’s Day!” in response to my mother’s desperate coo.
He pulled out of the garage, backed down our steep driveway and continued, without a word, to the emergency entrance of the hospital where my baby brother would be born several hours later.
*carpe diem*
Collecting Pieces of Me 