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The Story of How I Saved Mama
The story of how I saved Mama feels as old as any story that's told over and over, especially to children up until they're not children anymore, and to me it has always had the mythic quality of existing prior to my existence—which is ridiculous since the story hinges on my being born and so is only as old as I am. "I fell like no one else will ever fall" Mama would whisper, the beginning dripping from her lips, wet and thick with admission. "Your father came home and said 'Patty, let's have a drink' and he handed me an unopened beer and told me he was leaving. And baby, my sweet bean, I cried and I cried when he walked out the door and everything turned blue with my sadness because it was bleeding out of me. And the world fell away and landed in little sharp pieces on my feet, and I stood on top of them swaying, not knowing, yet, which way I wanted to fall, because I felt like I would fall." I always looked scared at this point, first because Mama looked so far away when she said it and later because it became part of the story and the game to react that way. "But then," she would smile, "you started crying in the kitchen. And I went into the kitchen to hold you and I remembered I was your Mama and you were my baby. And instead of falling, I fell in love with you. And then we were both okay." Once Mama was gone I learned the real story, which was that she never even made it to the kitchen. First she picked up her clay pot of perennials (Mama was always strong when she got mad) and threw it at the wall behind my father's head. Then Mama chased him into the street screaming. She went straight from the street to her unopened beer, which she opened, and swallowed down with a full bottle of aspirin. The part about me crying in the kitchen was true. I cried loud and long, and in Whitefish Bay the houses were only four feet apart, so that a neighbor heard and, having seen my father drive away, got worried that I had been deserted. She came looking into the windows and saw Mama on the floor in front of the stairs and called the police saying that there was a baby still alive but that my father had already murdered Mama. Which I guess, in a way, was true, even though technically Mama ate the pills herself. Mama never really talked about my father except to mention him in her story of how I'd saved her. Some kids whose fathers leave obsess over fatherlessness. I knew a girl in elementary school who didn't have a father but pretended she did. She'd make up stories of how her father was an astronaut and was gone a lot and she would draw pictures of him when we had to do things like that for Father's Day even though everyone knew she had never even seen him. I never tried to pretend my father was around; when Father's Day came I just drew Mama. Once though, when I was four and learning how to answer phones, one of ours rang while Mama was upstairs about to get into the shower and it was him. I don't remember what he said, but he must have said, "This is your father" or something like that, because I remember knowing even before Mama came pounding down the stairs naked and screaming that the voice on the phone was him. I thought Mama was screaming at me because I had answered the phone, and her running at me like that got me scared enough that I bit into my tongue so deep that my mouth filled all the way up with blood. I remember Mama didn't even notice, not even when blood started to pour out over my teeth and lips. I remember her arm fat jiggling fast and that she kept screaming and hanging up the phone over and over and over again and again and again until the earpiece cracked open and her hand turned red. He never called again, which Mama said was because she had gotten a lawyer to go down over to Nevada where my father was living with some other woman, and the lawyer fixed things so that Mama wouldn't have to worry about my father trying to talk to me anymore. But even without the phone calls there were those times that Mama would scream so hot and painful that I thought she'd explode because it was like her pain was deep in her stomach and was clawing at her insides trying to pull Mama into herself. I'd have nightmares about her collapsing—her head and middle crumpling like an aluminum can and her feet and legs getting sucked upward—until she was just a little inside-out ball and then, poof, disappeared. But I was never really scared because I expected Mama to scream but I also expected that I was her everything, and that was also permanent.
Those memories of Mama being mad are the ones I know are true but don't feel like they really happened, because when I think hard about the things that went on with Mama before high school, I can remember, it's not like I've forgotten, but it's like thinking of something I've been told—like Mama's story—and there's no feeling and nothing settles. Now it seems like the only Mama and me that ever really happened was what we had during high school, which is all I remember when I get that pain in my chest and that is most of the time. My days are filled with this fluid kind of remembering. A kind that comes and goes without my wanting it to and even if it's changed it feels so real because it's all around me, flooding my lungs and chest like water. And this kind is the worst kind because it means always remembering high school—when I knew no matter how ugly I was to Mama, no matter how many times she saw me scream and cry and hurt in front of her and blame it on her even though there was nothing inside me but nameless and weightless and pointless pain, I knew she would take it from me and she would hold it. And I know I loved Mama in high school but there was no proof of that love—nothing to look back on and say, "that was good, I can be proud of that—she got to hear that or see that or feel that." There was only my taking—because I took and took and took from her. Love from me would have meant her love had gotten through and then she could have maybe rested instead of exhausting herself with demonstration and losing so much of herself. There were nights where all I would do would be to cry and slam doors and she would follow me around and just hold me at every juncture and I would push her away and she'd follow me some more and finally she'd be crying because she wanted so badly for me to feel better and that's when I stopped: when I finally saw her face crumpled and urgent and yet with so much hope. But, the thing is, is that no one else saw me the way Mama did, which I think is the only reason I had any friends. With my friends I was funny—they never saw me hurling insults and screaming and crying and so I was always just easy and no one thought I was too complicated. One weekend, though, my friends and I took four cases of beer to this house on the lake we went to sometimes, and I drank until the sky looked so stuffed with stars it seemed as if it were sagging and until my friends had to carry me to the sofa to put me to sleep because I couldn't walk. The next morning someone said something about how I had been a problem the night before. I heard the word and I could see the way they were seeing me and so I said, "My mother's an alcoholic," and I'd never said the word before or thought it, I don't think, but I said it anyway. I started to cry, which is so wrong because I was always fine when Mama went into her room and put a hat on the door, which meant not to come in because she was taking a break. I'd take care of myself calmly and explain away the phone calls that were for her and I was just fine and the tantrums that were so otherwise regular were gone because I knew there was no one there to listen and there was nothing I could do about that. And when the hat came off I'd get excited because I could go into Mama's bathroom to use her full-length mirror to look at myself before school. The empty wine bottles would be there in the bathroom but I never cared like it seemed I did when I cried for my friends. After Mama took her breaks I would just pick up the empty bottles and put them in the middle of her bedroom floor where she'd see them and then she'd throw them away. So, I said "alcoholic" and my friends just held me and Denny said "we're here for you" and it was decided that maybe I'd go live with one of them for a while until "things got better." And that was something new: to be taken care of by someone other than Mama. And so I just moved out and I called Mama an alcoholic to her face. She didn't even yell, she just sobbed "no don't leave baby I love you I need you" and "please I love you," and I said, I actually said this, "Mama, if you loved me you'd take care of me." Which was almost as big and empty a mistake as calling her an alcoholic because she was always taking care of me with the kind of raw energy that would leave anyone paralyzed for a couple of days. It was her right to retreat into her room and put a hat on her door. No one could love anyone with that much strength and not need a break. But all I knew was how my friends looked at me when I said "alcoholic". I left my Mama sobbing on our kitchen floor and I drove to my friend's house to sleep on a couch and ignore Mama's calls, which came every couple of hours even through the night and into the morning so I knew Mama couldn't have been sleeping very much.
On the third night on my friend's couch I heard my friend's Mother tell someone on the phone that her daughter's "best girlfriend is staying at our house. Yes, we're taking care of her because her mother is sick in the head ." And I felt so good about myself and, nobody knows about this part yet, but I actually answered the phone that night the next time Mama called and listened to her say, "baby please, please come home. Don't you see all I need is to see you just one time because I have a present for you—just a little silly something. I got you earrings bean, oh my bean. You'll love them they're just your style" she started sobbing then, "I'm just not doing so well and I'm feeling mighty blue, but I know that if you just come home to me I'll snap out of it." She paused, breathing heavy, "Oh bean!" She screamed and I could tell she was frantic, "don't you miss me?! Oh bean, my bean please." Even though now the pain in my chest is so heavy and awful, somehow I felt nothing then and I could tell she was probably a little drunk and I decided to be mean and that's when I said it: "Mama, let's put a hat on this conversation." And she hung up. Even though I thought I had been pretty clever I started to feel unsteady and when Mama didn't call for the entire next day I think that's when my wanting to celebrate having a problem started fall away a little because I remember, even before I arrived back at my house to check on her, I remember knowing that Mama was dead. I remember driving home because it was so cold outside but I didn't turn the heat on in my car and I drove with my fingertips numb and speeding and feeling such an emptiness inflate like a bubble in my stomach. My hands were too frozen when I got home to handle a key but it didn't matter because the door was open, which made me think Mama had worried that I might come back and but then leave again because maybe I'd forgotten my key. There were groceries on the counter—all sweets and cookies and soda that I like—and I saw unwrapped presents on the table—a sound machine, a box of earrings, stuffed animals. My heart started beating fast and I started to cry a little because I could imagine Mama sitting up with the phone surrounded by her presents and groceries and calling me again and again while I slept. I had never come home and had to find Mama because Mama had always been in the kitchen and sitting there and smiling and wanting a hug even if she thought I would only stand there stiffly in her hands, which happened a lot. There were times that she wasn't there because she would be in her room with a hat on the door but in that case I would never go looking for her because those were Mama's only rules. "When the hat is on the door, just leave me be, bean," she'd say sounding so tired and the only day I ever had to go looking for her was that day I came home, too late, from four dangerous days of borrowed sympathy and found Mama on the floor of her bathroom. She was on her tummy wearing one of her nightgowns and her hair was matted in the back and the skin on the backs of her legs looked really white and loafy under the lights. I saw her like that and all I did was fall down and swear under my breath. I didn't even scream it. That's the worst part because she might have still been able to hear me because there was no mess, just empty wine bottles and an empty pill bottle on its side but, what I mean is there was no blood, and I wish I would have said something else like "Mama," or at least cried so loud and sad so that maybe, even at that point, she would have heard and would have known that I really did love her. And now I know what Mama meant when she told me everything turned blue, because after I found Mama in the bathroom all the color of things bled and evaporated and my world was left in a kind of grey-blue haze that anyone will see if they look outside right before the world gets dark.
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