Pieces
These are personal essays and literary nonfiction pieces spanning two decades of work.
Notes on Living w the Pink Elephant
Rub her back while you watch Johnny Carson's monologue since she allowed you to stay up late. Know that your house is too quiet and it scares her. Motion to your sister to come back over and sit. Eat popcorn very late. Drink copious amounts of ginger ale. Complain of tummy aches, but it is relieved by your mother's laughter. It comes in embarrassed rolls she lets gust out of her mouth. Every laugh gives her more pleasure and now maybe she won't be so sad. Take turns rubbing her back with your older sister. Mom will always claim how badly it hurts – and you trust it does – but somehow you know she needs the warmth. Snuggle up under heavy down blankets this summer evening. The house is kept at a mild 70 degrees. She lets you eat M and M's but makes you brush your teeth again. Mom never disappears from her true nature. Miss your father. You are six.
Look for her at a school awards banquet. Feel like one of those latch-key kids. Where is your mom, you think to yourself? Where are the camera flashes and encouraging smiles? She shows up late. Apologies fumble and you know that she didn't do it on purpose. Begin to hate what you don't understand. Your relationship is changing already. Eat cookies at home. Think you hear your mother sobbing in her bathroom. Pretend not to hear. Go away for a walk. Throw rocks at the beach, staring out at the ocean, wind howling at you. No one explains what is beginning. You learn to iron. You are eight.
Begin helping at home. Still act spoiled, irrelevant to other people's emotions. Fold laundry grudgingly. Do dishes sparingly. Get denied to be driven to friends' houses. Act like a brat, knowing the whole time she just can't. You are becoming angry. Lay in bed with her while she relaxes in her air-conditioned oasis. Her weight is increasing. Her wait. She cries in the morning when she brushes her hair. Do you notice? She doesn't want you to. You don't know what to do. Your father picks you up from your first victorious basketball game. The only game he attends. You are happy; you feel in control. You feel your age. He tells you on the way home, at the five corners intersection in St. Croix. You were just complimented on your blocked shot. Your defense. "I thought you knew she was getting worse." He explains the disease is manifesting itself finally. Five years or something. You don't know what you just heard. You hold back tears. Your stomach hurts. Your gut hurts. You ignore your gut from this moment on. You are twelve.
Get drunk for the first time at a reggae concert. You are driven home with your best friend. Two sets of legs dangling out of the back of a truck, staring up at the stars. Life is okay. Wind is ever present, cleansing you. You are thirteen.
Try on your Catholic school uniform. Try to enjoy the new smell of fall, but all of the gorgeous colors of leaves remind you of death. And you remember why you moved. Pretend to be excited about this new kind of suburban life. Cry desperately into your pillow at night. Call your father at work. "What do you need?" he'll always ask. You will blank and say nothing. "When will you be here?" and he'll have no definite response. Yell at your mother when the garbage spills over in the driveway. There are drug vials from steroids and other medicinal requirements all over the bottom of it. She'll look at you hurt and defenseless. You clean it up. You want no one to know. Begin this method of disguise for years. This method will haunt you and prevent you from seeing what is really there. Offer to rub her back. Find solace in your walkman which takes you back home. Ignore the people who ask why you move. Glance at her calendar occasionally. Notice the amount of doctor appointments. Pretend it's not unusual. Form a shell. Your stomach gets worse. Begin to take Prozac. You are fourteen.
Get into fights with doctors in emergency rooms. Stick up for your sobbing mother clutching her body. "Just give her something," you beg although you know how deeply the pain truly permeates. Your mother's eyes being to change when you look at them from this moment. She will begin dying. You will not realize the process has begun until it is too late. You are sixteen.
Needle doctors about waiting room time lengths. They respond with questions of why you are missing class. "Irrelevant, Doc!" you blast at them. Study for your biology test while she is having her own test done. You giggle in class. You act the ass. Take your test. Sob hysterically into your closet when you get home. Never let your friends know. Develop an ulcer. Stay out late and get drunk with the bad kids. Laugh hysterically when you get the chance. Fight with your father. You are seventeen.
Take your ACT's the morning after your birthday. You are slightly hung-over. Your parents don't notice. You try to be inconspicuous. You fill out college applications. Date boys your parents don't like. Musicians, mainly. Get a car. Smoke cigarettes wildly, all the while trying to never smell like smoke. They are beginning to notice. But she is sicker. Your father takes you on your college tours. Your mother doesn't go. Can't do the ride. Many uncomfortable moments with your father trying to talk about your mother. You shouldn't leave home. But you can't live with him there. Does she know this? Listen to angry punk music. Cry about a boy to your mother, who is usually lying in bed when you return home. She has a faraway look. She tries to have good days. She spends all day with your niece baking cookies. That night, she can barely walk. You go out for carry-out. Dinners become somber. She has to begin to choose how she will expend her energy. She has more bad days than good days. You are selfish and spend time with friends, anything to get away from the suffocation. You can't bear the thought. You drink Rolling Rock with your best friend. You will begin crying. You claim it's about a boy. She will nod sympathetically. She has no idea. You are eighteen.
You wear bright colors, overalls, pretend nothing is unusual about your freshman year going away. Your parents both take you. Your father moves you in; your mother checks everything out. She was the social parent, always making small talk. She helps smooth you out in these situations. You have never been so excited. Your father threatens you to not screw up. Your mother sobs hysterically. You tell her you'll be home Labor Day weekend. She clutches you and your heart finally falls. Did you really just leave your sick mother to go away to school? This guilt will haunt you. You are about to turn nineteen.
You will show up on random weekends. You will get high on the way home, listening to Bob Dylan and try to figure out why you don't fit in your family anymore. You feel shame every time you walk in the door. Your mother will hug you and pretend everything is okay. You find out she had gall bladder surgery. Surgery! No one called? She'll tell you no one wanted to worry you. You wonder what else you are missing. Who takes her to the doctor now? Well, Dad of course. You recoil your anger. Realize all it took for him to be around was for you to leave. Spend the night. Hang out with your mom. Smoke cigarettes outside with your dad. He'll pressure you so much about school you'll feel like you already screwed up your life. Steal nips off some rum. Go through old pictures. Wonder when home ceased to be that. Cry. Don't tell anyone you have fallen in love. Do tell your father you changed your major. He'll put his cigarette out and go inside the house. You'll feel lonelier than you ever have in your life. Leave the next day. Your mother will ask if anything is wrong. Lie your ass off. Ask her why he is so mad at you. She'll shake her head. "Honey…" I know, Mom, you'll say. It's my fault. Clutch her; hug her so hard you're afraid you hurt her. Chain smoke cigarettes. Stop at a shitty bar on the way back to school. Only woman in the place. Use your terrible fake ID and suck down a beer. Play, "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes" on the jukebox. Realize -- you left her. You are twenty.
She makes the drive down by herself for your birthday. This will be the last car ride down alone, without him. You had a flat tire, so she waits with you before dinner for the tow truck. You make your tasteful, gorgeous mother a cheap frozen pizza to tide yourselves over. You laugh. Gossip. Sit in your dirty apartment and she doesn't criticize. Go shopping. Feel guilty and she tells you no, you are my daughter and today is your birthday. Know that tomorrow she will not be able to get out of bed. Relish this night. Just for tonight, she has returned and you are united again. You don't want her to leave. Talk her into getting a hotel room or staying at your (extremely dirty) apartment. She has to leave. Promise to come home soon. Your heart breaks when she is gone. Your gut tries to tell you something, but you've turned off that feeling. Get drunk on gin. Throw up. Write a paper. Surround yourself with friends and feel completely alone. Congratulations, Miss 21.
Prepare. That is all you can do. Prepare for long lines and normal aggravations becoming huge moments of bombs exploding. Expect your father to forget to turn the water off and flood the downstairs condo. Know that being too young is not an excuse any more. Grow up. Expect eulogies and drunken meanderings. Follow stories but always drift and search for her on the walls, in the crown molding – hidden among her clothing in closets. Search for her shoes and look for clues to her true nature. How does a woman die with whom you spent 21 years with and you know nothing of her?
Listen to songs you know she liked. Search for meaning in the poppy lyrics. Realize she never discussed the past because it was painful. Get angry when you realize that her future was then just full of physical pain. Go to church. Kneel. Say a Hail Mary. Look around and try to smell her perfume. Get angry. See a mother with a child, glare and get up. Light a candle for her. Say "Fuck!" when you leave the church. Light a cigarette, breathe and cry.
Pop valium while you listen to the Rolling Stones at high decibels. Laugh uproariously to yourself. Figure the whole world is a place filled with this kind of hilarity and secretly you have been living out your hell on earth. Drink heartily. Smoke merrily. Say "Fuck presents" and throw bottles off your balcony. Merry Christmas, Miss 22.
Return to her on the anniversary. Obsess over moments. Try new religions. Make mix CD's. Finally, begin to go through pictures. When you find one picture, your world becomes turned upside down. She is smiling – openly caught in a moment – and you don't recognize this mother. Who was she before she decided to marry this man or the man before? What did she really want to do? Before the homemade fudge and lemon bars and wall papering, you try to remember the moments where she opened up to you right before it happened. The confessions about your father, secrets in your family, but you still can't remember who this woman was at your age. You delve into pictures to find out. Look for personal notes tucked away in her chest from college. You wear her jewelry around your neck, surround yourself with her pictures and keep a sweater of hers hidden under your bed. You will feel lonely. You will smell it and feel calm like you didn't fail her. And then, piece by piece, the pain will surrender and you will win yourself back. Forgiveness.
All of these slamming doors
Fighting
Yelling things that are unable to be taken back
To be forgiven
To be neglected
And now
Regret fills the air
A sticky subtance
Humidity in the air
Others on eggshells
Or full of hope
Those that have advised you
Now wish everything would return to normal
You’ll see music played
Implies heartbreak and regret
Guilt of uselessness
Wishing a letter could have been written
Forget the weepie songs
Trying to infer the meanings
Of heartbreak
What is love
Really
Just another bad habit
Been trying to quit
Your love was a savior and a devil
A war profiteer
Of emotional violence
Looking like a sad
Dependent girl
Wanting a friend to return
So far away
A different life was meant for me
A different one is where you have headed
The brain is a staunch competitor of the heart
A rational object trying to quench reasoning
It’s your thrist for reasoning
You are left in a puddle of regret
Embarrassment
Humiliation for doing well and regressing
Losing your sobriety chip of
Broken relationships.
I Already Own my Body of Water
I'm finally doing it. My brother-in-law, Shane has decided to take a walk down the pier and has started to peel off his shirt and kick off his sandals. I look at him like he is out of his mind. "Seriously, right now?"
"Why not? I'm burning up. Okay, watch my glasses," and he puts them on top of his messily folded shirt sitting on the ground. He stands on the edge of the concrete border and jumps off the edge. I gasp and look over just as he hits the water. 1…2…3…finally, he pops up. There are three local kids hanging out at the edge of the pier as well and I vaguely hear one of them say, "Wha, meh san. Dat white man crazy."
Shane climbs up the rusty ladder on the edge and is dripping. "So, are you going to do it?" he asks. I look at him like he's crazy. The local kids look at me like I have just been dared. And then suddenly, something takes over. Maybe it was the mama juana at the Domino Club or the two painkilling cocktails, but I suddenly find myself putting my camera down and kicking off my sandals. Fully clothed, I am standing on the edge. I look down into this giant abyss. Some people say it is 120 feet down due to the trenching for cruise ships and submarines that can only dock at this pier on the island. I look down again at the dark blue sea and the wind is whirling in my ear and as Shane is yelling at me to beware of the current, I jump.
I was, and my friend, Sara was right: in some aspects it was just better to know. We left the student clinic after they handed me all of my paperwork, which I told them was unnecessary – I had just finished an internship with Planned Parenthood and knew all of my "options." I was dropped off at my dorm where I went inside where I called my on-again boyfriend and did a shot of whiskey. Yes, I did a shot of whiskey and while it is not the most admirable or well heralded idea, sometimes your sanity becomes fleeting and you need a strong nip to keep it in check.
*
Looking back, I remember my boyfriend sitting on my bed as I smoked what would be one of my last cigarettes; my room began to close in and I started to hyperventilate. The only rational thing to do in my mind was to quickly throw everything in my car and run away – from the boyfriend, my father, my infertile sister and from all of the disapproving glares that would soon follow from friends. Either the boy-friend sensed this or was simply afraid of this, but he suddenly said, "Well, why don't we just get married then?" The actual words escape me to this day, but it was all so casually spoken that I simply turned my head and looked at him as if he were a crazy man. I think I declined the offer at first. The idea seemed preposterous at best and horribly bad, at worst. But I'll never forget the look on his face. He believed this could possibly be the thing that would return me to the living.
*
My sister, Kelly told me that when I chose the name "Max," I stole the name she was going to use for the new puppy she was acquiring. I didn't have the heart to remind her that during those months, she barely spoke to her just turned 23 year old knocked up sister. I felt that maybe one should just pretend that didn't happen. That she didn't reply "But you? You think you can raise a child? You're one of the most selfish people I know." I just said I was sorry for stealing "Max" and I would relay my "names" past her when we tried for our next one.
*
The first birthday party was a pirate party. Everyone teased me how I gone overboard – huge cake, a treasure chest piñata, balloons, ridiculous swords, hats and anything else I could find that was pirate oriented. Sure, I understood – he was only turning one, but that little boy saved my life and he could have anything he wanted.
*
My father now jokes how he didn't want to show up at my wedding and I should thank my new step-mother for making him go. I had met her once prior to marrying my new husband. My father stood to the right of my husband and brother-in-law as I said my vows. My father sobbed painfully during the ceremony – he looked over at me as I said "I do," and it appeared as if someone told him I had just died.
*
Max received a motorized truck from "Grandpa Bill" for his third birthday. My father commented on what an amazing kid Max is. I looked at my father incredulously and smiled. I pretended none of it had happened. I watched my father and my son playing in his bluegrass yard and as much as I tried to enjoy it, I remembered the response:
"So, you're getting married? Why do you have to get married?"
"But dad, I want to and we think it's a good idea. I'm pregnant."
"You don't have to keep saying it. Do whatever you want. Go ahead. Ruin your life."
"But dad,"
"Your mother would be so disappointed in you." And he hung up.
*
I married my husband on Thanksgiving weekend in 2003. I wore a purple dress in honor of my mother – her favorite color. It was the last thing I had seen her wearing as well -- the silk purple suit she was buried in that I had to pick out for her. Purple was her signature color – a sign of nobility, royalty and in my eyes, happiness.
Mom had been dead a little over a year when I married my husband while I was eight weeks pregnant. My god mother warned me this new life I was jumping into wouldn't bring my mother back.
"But something needs to bring me back, Lesli. I feel dead inside."
*
I was put into induced labor July 19th, 2004. 21 hours later, after two of pure pushing, our son Maxwell Keegan Birchfield was born. His name means "Great Spring of Fire" – a third generation red head, to boot. Lying in a hospital, with only my sister and husband, I brought my son into this world. And somehow, she was there.
*
I quit going to school full –time while I was pregnant. I couldn't stand the looks of disapproval from those who knew of my previous bad habits, who knew of my nervous breakdown, who questioned why a pro-choice club president would keep a baby while a senior in college. I gave up and hid. I wrote for six months, took a few part-time classes and disappeared. I would run into people while I baby shopped by myself and they would remember how cool I used to be or how "fun."
"Boy, what happened to you?" they would ask.
I would stare blankly and feel rejected. Only now do I know how to respond.
"I chose to live. I jumped."
*
When my father met my son, he held him uncomfortably and commented on his red hair, the result of my father's gene pool. He posed for pictures as my sister, Kristin acted as a buffer between us, and he asked for my plans.
"I don't know, Dad. My husband is going to grad school next year. I guess then I will go after that."
"Well, good luck. You're on your own now." And he drove away from my apartment in the ghetto off Versailles Road.
*
Before my son's third birthday, I returned to St. Croix to visit Kristin and Shane and to check out their new place. My husband claimed the trip to be a Mother's Day vacation and so I went by myself. Everywhere I went, people were disappointed not to see the baby, but happy to see our family doing well.
"We knew how hard your mother's death was on you. Oh and your poor father. We were afraid he wasn't going to make it after she died. Thank god he had you girls." I always smiled smugly and looked away. Yeah, it must have been hard to leave your daughters and live 2000 miles away. It must have been so difficult to send the one daughter cocktails of medicine to "fix" her and then to say, "Get your shit together."
I respond to these people, "Yes, thank god he met Annie, I guess." The woman he remarried a mere year and a half after the mother died.
*
Coming up from the ocean, I'm gasping for breath. My anxiety is creeping and then I hear Shane shout, "How does it feel? Great, isn't?"
I swim to the ladder and, still in the ocean, I look out at the abyss I just jumped into. The unknowing blue ocean that can either cushion or kill you. I climb up the ladder and respond, "I feel like a new woman."
And I really do. I jumped into the abyss and I survived.