The Ordinary Daughter
J.P. Carr
Sara was born on a cold and nasty winter evening amidst the sounds of rattling the windows and the screams of her mother echoing off the walls. The nurse handed the infant to the new mother, a Polish immigrant with a loud voice and a boisterous laugh. The mother had a masculine chin that jutted out, dark hair matted to her forehead, and unsympathetic brown eyes that watched the child carefully. Her infant daughter had her father's pale colouring. She was an ordinary baby, average weight with ten fingers and ten toes. She was wrinkly and mostly bald with tiny wisps of blonde hair, emerald green eyes, and salmon pink lips. Sara's mother examined the ordinary child for a moment and motioned for the nurse to take the baby away.
Sara's mother took the infant home to a third floor apartment with two modest sized bedrooms. She had left Sara's father before the pregnancy became visible, certain that the baby was better off not knowing him. Sara's mother needed to have control over her own life as much as possible. She knew having a child with a man was worse than marrying him. A marriage you could escape. Having a child with a man meant you had to know him until one of you died.
Back in Poland Sara's mother dreamed of being a dancer. She used the money from her first job to sign up for dance classes but she lacked the talent and the slim, muscular body of a dancer. She was short and solid and built to work. The other dancers shunned and ridiculed her, laughing at the masculine girl with wild dreams. Several months into her lessons her dance teacher pulled her aside during class.
“Last day I dance, I was eighteen,” she would tell Sara when she was older. “I did not know it my last time. My teacher she grab me and she say it be good for you to find husband. Have babies. Be good mother. You are not dancer. But everyone need good mother.”
She thought the teacher was right. She knew she wasn't beautiful and she didn't move with the ease and grace of the other dancers. She decided it was time to be realistic about life. She would get married and become a mother although she doubted she would find a suitable man in Poland. She was arrogant and naive, believing that since Polish men were the problem perhaps men elsewhere would be more desirable.
“Polish men they want weak women,” Sara's mother would explain. “They want you to say yes sir yes sir like fool. They no listen to what women want.”
Jobless and loveless, Sara's mother immigrated to Canada at the age of twenty-one along with her sister and brother-in-law. She believed marrying a modern Western man was her ticket to a happy life. He would give her children and explain to her the customs of her new country. But she found Western men too weak, too docile. She resented a man who told her what to do, but she didn't respect a man who listened to everything she demanded either.
Sara didn't know much about her mother's life beyond this. The story would always abruptly end here. Her mother's face would fall and she would look at Sara, disappointed. “Then I have you. It is the end.”
During weekdays Sara's mother worked in a chicken factory skinning birds and on weekends she cleaned wealthy people's homes. The rest of the time she watched television at home in the apartment Sara had been brought home to as an infant. Most of their neighbours were friendly with Sara's mother. She was after all talkative, expressive, and handed out compliments regularly.
“You sick, but you never look more beautiful. I see the glow of motherhood on you,” she would tell the next door neighbour when she moaned about her morning sickness.
“Richard you old man, but you so strong. Every woman like strong man,” she would say to the
superintendent when she knew their rent might be late that month. Although the neighbours were friendly with her mother Sara noticed they kept their distance. Her mother had a reputation for being good-natured when it suited her, but it was well known that if she felt wronged she could be quick and mean.
At home when it was just the two of them it was unusual for Sara to witness the kind side of her mother. Sara suffered constant criticisms of her dress, behaviour, and overall quiet demeanour which was so different from that of her boisterous mother.
“You too quiet!” her mother would lament. “And you so messy. No grateful for your toys. In Poland you never have these things!”
Her mother always skated on the brink of an incoherent rage. Sara never knew what combination of words or actions would result in punishment as her rages often came out of nowhere. At five years old Sara did learn the topic of her father was off limits. During her first year at school the teacher had the class make Father's Day cards for their daddies or granddaddies or any other important man that played a parental role in their lives. Sara didn't know who her daddy or granddaddy were. She vaguely remembered an uncle, but she didn't know what happened to him. She made a card for superintendent Richard because he was the only man she knew other than a teacher.
“Mama who is my daddy?” she asked later that day after school while her mother scrubbed Sara's clothes in the kitchen sink. Her mother stopped scrubbing, pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand, then shook her head.
“Your clothes so dirty child. Everyone think I don't wash you.”
Sara continued to look up at her mother biting her nails in anticipation. Her mother looked over at her and sighed.
“He no good,” she said. “Best for you to forgetting.”
A few days later Sara was still curious. “Mama do I have a daddy?”
When her mother refused to answer Sara began to cry and scream. It was unfair for the other children to have fathers while Sara didn't know if she even had one. Despite her mother's own proclivity for throwing tantrums, she didn't take to them very well when Sara was the one throwing them. Her face turned tomato red and she bellowed out a frustrated scream. She grabbed Sara's arm, spanked her bottom once really hard, then flung her small body into the corner wall of the kitchen.
“Nobody want child like you! That's why he no stay! You go on knees until I say you to move!”
Sara whimpered and lowered herself down onto her knees facing the wall. She listened to her mother's thundering footsteps retreating into her bedroom, then the slam of her bedroom door, and the click of the television turning on.
Some time later Sara's mother came back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She noticed Sara in the corner still on her knees.
“Oh you still here! Get up stupid child. Go to your room.”
Sara quietly tip toed to her room.
This was Sara's last tantrum. She grew sullen and quiet as she got older. She spoke less and suppressed her laughter so she wouldn't catch her mother's attention. At school where she felt safe among the few friends she had, she would allow herself to laugh freely so that her face hurt from smiling so much. But at home she became like stone.
On Sara's tenth birthday her mother bought an inflatable pink chair for her bedroom. She knew it cost a lot of money and couldn't believe her mother had actually paid for it. She suppressed a giant grin on her face and the urge to shriek with joy. The only evidence of Sara's excitement was a slight shiver through her small body.
“Thank you Momma,” she said quietly.
“Why you child, you no grateful? Be happy! It's what you asking for. Smile big!”
She gave Sara a tentative hug which made Sara even happier, but still she steeled herself against the current of excitement that was running through her body. Extreme sadness or happiness was suspect and dangerous at home. Such feelings needed explaining and the explanations were never good enough for her mother.
By the time Sara was a teenager her body had grown lanky and awkward. Yet even as she was growing, every muscle retreated and every tendon was pulled taught. She walked with her arms crossed across her torso and she kept her constantly head hung down. Her back and shoulders curved inward making her body look as though it were caving in on itself.
“You look like the hunchback in the big church,” her mother commented. “What man will want you? I must care for you forever. But it's not fair Sara. You supposed to be taking care of me soon.”
Sara hated that she was growing taller and bigger, so she began practicing making herself smaller and less visible. She fit her body into smaller and smaller areas to see just how little space she could occupy. At home she experimented hiding underneath her bed first laying as flat as possible under the low bed, then curled into a ball in a corner against the wall. When her mother was working weekends Sara removed everything from underneath the kitchen sink and squeezed herself in under the drain pipe among the lingering smell of garbage. She began doing it in other people's houses as well. Once at a girlfriend's home she was asked to get some pasta sauce from a pantry in the basement. Opening it she found it was crammed with a variety of pasta noodles, sauces, canned vegetables and cereal. She moved around some items making a space for herself and packed herself into an open corner at the bottom of the pantry. She closed the door. She breathed in the smells of packaging, feeling safe and relieved until she heard her name called. She climbed out and reappeared with the pasta sauce explaining she had needed to use a washroom.
Her favourite spot though was in her own closet among things that smelled like her, a mixture of sweat, dandruff, and citrus body spray. She liked to tuck herself away at the bottom of the closet
covering her body with old stuffed animals and clothing that had fallen off the hangers. She found it exciting to hide in her closet on days she was home from school before her mother was back from work. She loved hearing the door unlock knowing she was safe in her closet and that today she wouldn't be found for a little while.
“Sara? Sara?” Her mother would walk into the room and look around. Sometimes she would open Sara's desk drawers and read the school papers sitting inside. There was never a diary if that's what she was looking for. Sara never allowed private thoughts to be documented in case her mother ever found them. Sometimes her mother made a tsk tsk sound and would close the drawer. Other times she sat in Sara's room for a long time looking very sad. Once her mother would leave the room she would sneak out of the closet and tip toe to the front door, opening and closing it, pretending she'd just come home herself.
When Sara was eighteen she applied and was accepted to a university several hours away from her home town. Finally she felt she would be free to be herself for the first time in her life. She realized she didn't really know who she was. Her entire life had been spent reacting to her mother. Now that she was free of her mother's clutches she could properly blossom. But she was surprised to learn she was just as quiet and guarded around new people in a strange new place as she was at home. Her mother's clutches did not disappear. Sara always feared what her mother would think if she found out what Sara was doing or saying to other people. She was jumpy and untrusting, hesitant to show too much emotion. She didn't make any friends during the first term except her roommate who took pity on her and invited her out with her other friends. The roommate's friends were polite but uninterested in a girl who seemed indifferent to everything and everyone.
At the end of the first term she unknowingly met her future husband who was quiet, shy, and taller than most men. Within a few months of their relationship her periods stopped, and that's how Sara realized she had a husband on her hands. Nobody taught her just how easy it was to grow a life. As the
reality of motherhood hit she realized she couldn't afford to go to school anymore. She and her soon-to-be husband decided she would take time off while he continued his classes, and when the baby was older they would find a way for Sara to go back to school.
Much to Sara's alarm her body expanded with the new life inside of her, life that ballooned without any way for Sara to control it. At six months she looked like she was ready to go into labour. She wrote letters to her mother giving excuses as to why a visit was impossible. She had too much school work, too many social engagements.
“Your mother is all alone and you're too busy for her,” she would lament.
Sara was in a constant state of stress and anxiety at the thought of explaining her pregnancy to her mother. Her doctor told her it wasn't good for the baby, but she couldn't help it.
Then one morning she received a phone call as she and her soon-to-be-husband ate a simple dinner of meat and potatoes. It was Richard, the superintendent at her mother's building.
“It's your mother, Sara. She's dead.”
It turned out Sara's mother died in a freak accident in the shoddy apartment building of Sara's youth. She has been exiting the elevator when it suddenly dropped while her mother was only halfway out. Her body was crushed in two, her top half laying motionless and bleeding out onto the brown rug in the third floor hallway, while the bottom half travelled down to the basement.
The funeral was a small affair consisting of Sara, her soon-to-be-husband, Richard, and several tenants from the building. Sara had requested a closed casket for the ceremony so she never saw her mother again. The tenants expressed shock, but agreed that the dramatic death fit the dramatic woman. Sara was horrified by the death, but she was instantly relieved as well. She would never have to explain her unborn child to her mother.
As her due date grew near Sara found herself struggling with unexpected crippling waves of grief, ones that made her tremble until she couldn't breathe. Her mother was mean, but she had loved
Sara in her own way.
Two weeks after Sara's due date, she gave birth to a nine pound boy whose largeness was marvelled at by the nurses. “It's unusual for a baby to be so big!” they remarked as she held him nervously in her thin arms. They approved of his size and commented on how he took after his father. It was true she had never actually seen any newborn babies in person, but she thought they must take up less space than her own. He had thin, brown hair and Sara's emerald eyes. Once they took him home the boy continued to grow effortlessly bigger. At the same time Sara tried to make herself smaller, exercising two hours each day during his naps between feedings. She watched the boy grow into a one year old, a two year old and so on. He didn't awaken what she thought must be a natural mother's love in her. She feared him and felt unsure of how to behave around him. She resented him his natural biology, the carefree freedom of his baby years. She resented her mother too whose death had freed her of anger and negativity. Why was everyone else's life so much easier than her own?
The boy continued to grow into a wide, big and handsome child. He began to look more like Sara's mother, his hair darkening each year, and his strong jaw becoming more prominent. He had his grandmother's mannerism's and Sara's eyes, except his face held a kindness that Sara had never seen in their family before. His eyes held a peace and understanding in them, which should have been comforting to Sara, but it only made her angry. Why should he get to be so peaceful?
Her unhappiness manifested itself into angry fits directed at the boy. She recognized this behaviour from her own mother, but she couldn't stop herself. She felt a perverse pleasure in watching the boy cower under her. For once she was the one with power. But she always felt guilty after her explosions and wondered if her mother had ever had the decency to feel the same. She would crawl into the closet she now shared with her husband, where nothing was her own anymore, not even her smell. She would allow herself deep sobs, wiping at her tears with one of her shirts.
One day when the boy was five years old, the closet door tentatively swung open and the boy stood there concerned.
“Momma,” he whispered. “I won't make you mad again.”
He then climbed in the closet beside her, his unusually large child's body pressed against her, and hugged her as she wept. She desperately hugged and kissed him, but she never apologized for having become just like her mother.
Sara found herself unable to forgive him his privilege as a boy. When she watched him drawing quietly or building imaginary cities in his sandbox she would imagine him getting married one day, attending college, getting a job, while his miserable wife stayed at home taking care of his children. She felt like the lowest person on earth holding a future that hadn't happened against the boy. But she couldn't push the thoughts away, they were always bubbling up. Did her own mother hold Sara's potential against her as well? Did that explain why Sara was made to feel like such a bad child? If so, her mother might be pleased to learn Sara hated her life.
The worst part was that Sara saw herself in the boy when she yelled at him. She saw herself in his silence, his solitary activities, his desire to please her. She desperately wanted to make him see how similar their lives were, but she didn't know how to talk to him. She wanted his sympathy and she wanted them to be real friends, but he was just a little boy. How could they possibly relate?
Sara began to believe he was a kinder and superior person to her. He too was growing up with a terrible mother yet he remained so understanding and loving even when she would holler and accuse him of things he didn't do. She decided that if she couldn't control her anger, her one act as a good mother would be to let him live his life without her in it. She couldn't hurt him if she just made herself invisible.
She started shutting herself in her room when he was home. She would quietly read books or watch television without speaking to him. She encouraged him to leave the house and gave him all the
freedom in the world, unknowingly teaching the boy that she didn't care about him. And though he seemed sad and hurt when she stopped paying him attention, he eventually grew older and began to fill his time with friends. They kept him seemingly happy and more importantly away from the house. Away from the poison of Sara's anger.
Her husband grew angry with Sara, not understanding how she could be so disinterested in her own son. Sara did not explain herself which contributed to the growing chasm between the couple. When the boy was a teenager her husband moved out. Sara was glad to see him gone. Her resentment had grown over the years as she watched him work at his career while she became a lonely mother.
Her relationship with the boy was hardly existent by the time he was a teenager. They only spoke when it was absolutely necessary. Though she thirsted to know about his life and how he spent his time, she kept her vow to stay out of his life if she couldn't control her venomous anger.
Sara was a shell of herself by this time, a prematurely aged and lonely woman. Time, anger, and regret had eroded the woman she thought she could've been when she had left her mother's house for good. She didn't have any friends so she took up volunteering, spending several hours a week with ladies thirty years older than her. They took to Sara as they were eager to talk about their grandchildren and holiday cruises with a quiet listener.
When the boy turned eighteen, she realized he was no longer a boy, but a young man. His hair was almost black which accentuated his bright eyes. He had a thick, neatly trimmed beard and a white toothed smile. Sara thought he was handsome and hoped that would help him in life.
Sara felt a sense of deja vu when he was accepted into every university he applied for, choosing like Sara once had, a school several hours away from his mother's home. When he told her his decision she curtly congratulated him then shut herself inside her room. She tucked herself away in the closet and cried. After some time she heard the creak of the bedroom door, soft footsteps, and then she saw the light as he opened the closet door. He fit as much of his body as he could beside Sara and stroked
her hair just like when he was a little boy.
“It's okay Momma. I'll come back to visit.”
Sara didn't say anything, just nodded her head to show she understood. He left her after that and she came out, patted her swollen eyes with cold water and made a celebratory dinner of chicken, roast potatoes, and truffle ice cream. The boy watched her as they ate. He opened his mouth a few times seemingly to say something, but then closed it and looked back down at his meal each time.
They spent the boy's last summer at home preparing him for school. They shopped for linens, furniture, and new clothes together. It was the most time they had spent together since the boy was little. Sara was heartbroken, but also relieved knowing he would be gone and safe from her.
The week before school began Sara and the boy packed up the last of his things into the car. They drove four hours to the school in complete silence. Sara watched the boy in her peripheral vision the entire time, convinced this would be the last time they would see each other. It was possible he might visit on the odd holiday, but she had always come up with excuses for her own mother and assumed the boy would do that same.
They stopped at the train station in town. The boy would keep the car and she would take the train back to her empty home. The mother and son looked at each other one final time.
He maintained her gaze for a second and gave her a small smile, then looked down at his sneakers instead. “Will you visit me Momma?” he asked, blushing and kicking at the weeds that lined the curb.
Sara breathed in sharply. She expected he would only feel relief from being freed of his oppressive childhood home as she had once been. She had let him go a long time ago believing the loss of him was inevitable one day.
Much to hers and the boy's surprise, she began to cry. Wild, strangled sounds came out of her throat as tears streamed down her face. The boy's kindness and desire to see his mother again broke
something in her. Those five words made her realize just how different she and the boy were and she couldn't be more proud of him. Perhaps he didn't feel the same about her as she had about her own mother. He still yearned for her and probably always had. And she had abandoned him. Yes, she realized now that is what she had done.
Her chest heaved up and down as she cried for the last 40 years of her life. People in the parking lot stared at them, but Sara didn't care. She hadn't allowed herself to express this much emotion since she was a very young child. She sank to the ground in her grief. She rocked back and forth, wailing.
The boy bent down and took his mother by the arms and lifted her up.
Sara stood only because she was supported by the boy's arms. She forced herself to stop crying and wiped her face with the back of her bare forearm. She stepped away from the boy unable to make eye contact with him. She took a deep breath and spoke.
“How did you do it, my son?” she asked. “How did you have such a bad mother and end up so good?”
He took her hand in his. She looked up at him now memorizing his features, her mother's features. Although where her mother's features had been cold and sharp, his were sympathetic and kind.
He didn't answer. Words were difficult to exchange with his mother. Words made her nervous so she didn't like to give or invite them easily. He pulled her towards him, enveloping her frail, curved body between his muscular arms and against his sturdy chest. It had been so long since she had felt another person's touch that she resisted at first. He held her firm, hugging her tighter. This was a new kind of love for her, warm and inviting, not cold and desperate like the love she felt between her and her mother. She relaxed her muscles allowing herself to sink into the cavernous space of her son's torso.
J.P. Carr
Sara was born on a cold and nasty winter evening amidst the sounds of rattling the windows and the screams of her mother echoing off the walls. The nurse handed the infant to the new mother, a Polish immigrant with a loud voice and a boisterous laugh. The mother had a masculine chin that jutted out, dark hair matted to her forehead, and unsympathetic brown eyes that watched the child carefully. Her infant daughter had her father's pale colouring. She was an ordinary baby, average weight with ten fingers and ten toes. She was wrinkly and mostly bald with tiny wisps of blonde hair, emerald green eyes, and salmon pink lips. Sara's mother examined the ordinary child for a moment and motioned for the nurse to take the baby away.
Sara's mother took the infant home to a third floor apartment with two modest sized bedrooms. She had left Sara's father before the pregnancy became visible, certain that the baby was better off not knowing him. Sara's mother needed to have control over her own life as much as possible. She knew having a child with a man was worse than marrying him. A marriage you could escape. Having a child with a man meant you had to know him until one of you died.
Back in Poland Sara's mother dreamed of being a dancer. She used the money from her first job to sign up for dance classes but she lacked the talent and the slim, muscular body of a dancer. She was short and solid and built to work. The other dancers shunned and ridiculed her, laughing at the masculine girl with wild dreams. Several months into her lessons her dance teacher pulled her aside during class.
“Last day I dance, I was eighteen,” she would tell Sara when she was older. “I did not know it my last time. My teacher she grab me and she say it be good for you to find husband. Have babies. Be good mother. You are not dancer. But everyone need good mother.”
She thought the teacher was right. She knew she wasn't beautiful and she didn't move with the ease and grace of the other dancers. She decided it was time to be realistic about life. She would get married and become a mother although she doubted she would find a suitable man in Poland. She was arrogant and naive, believing that since Polish men were the problem perhaps men elsewhere would be more desirable.
“Polish men they want weak women,” Sara's mother would explain. “They want you to say yes sir yes sir like fool. They no listen to what women want.”
Jobless and loveless, Sara's mother immigrated to Canada at the age of twenty-one along with her sister and brother-in-law. She believed marrying a modern Western man was her ticket to a happy life. He would give her children and explain to her the customs of her new country. But she found Western men too weak, too docile. She resented a man who told her what to do, but she didn't respect a man who listened to everything she demanded either.
Sara didn't know much about her mother's life beyond this. The story would always abruptly end here. Her mother's face would fall and she would look at Sara, disappointed. “Then I have you. It is the end.”
During weekdays Sara's mother worked in a chicken factory skinning birds and on weekends she cleaned wealthy people's homes. The rest of the time she watched television at home in the apartment Sara had been brought home to as an infant. Most of their neighbours were friendly with Sara's mother. She was after all talkative, expressive, and handed out compliments regularly.
“You sick, but you never look more beautiful. I see the glow of motherhood on you,” she would tell the next door neighbour when she moaned about her morning sickness.
“Richard you old man, but you so strong. Every woman like strong man,” she would say to the
superintendent when she knew their rent might be late that month. Although the neighbours were friendly with her mother Sara noticed they kept their distance. Her mother had a reputation for being good-natured when it suited her, but it was well known that if she felt wronged she could be quick and mean.
At home when it was just the two of them it was unusual for Sara to witness the kind side of her mother. Sara suffered constant criticisms of her dress, behaviour, and overall quiet demeanour which was so different from that of her boisterous mother.
“You too quiet!” her mother would lament. “And you so messy. No grateful for your toys. In Poland you never have these things!”
Her mother always skated on the brink of an incoherent rage. Sara never knew what combination of words or actions would result in punishment as her rages often came out of nowhere. At five years old Sara did learn the topic of her father was off limits. During her first year at school the teacher had the class make Father's Day cards for their daddies or granddaddies or any other important man that played a parental role in their lives. Sara didn't know who her daddy or granddaddy were. She vaguely remembered an uncle, but she didn't know what happened to him. She made a card for superintendent Richard because he was the only man she knew other than a teacher.
“Mama who is my daddy?” she asked later that day after school while her mother scrubbed Sara's clothes in the kitchen sink. Her mother stopped scrubbing, pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand, then shook her head.
“Your clothes so dirty child. Everyone think I don't wash you.”
Sara continued to look up at her mother biting her nails in anticipation. Her mother looked over at her and sighed.
“He no good,” she said. “Best for you to forgetting.”
A few days later Sara was still curious. “Mama do I have a daddy?”
When her mother refused to answer Sara began to cry and scream. It was unfair for the other children to have fathers while Sara didn't know if she even had one. Despite her mother's own proclivity for throwing tantrums, she didn't take to them very well when Sara was the one throwing them. Her face turned tomato red and she bellowed out a frustrated scream. She grabbed Sara's arm, spanked her bottom once really hard, then flung her small body into the corner wall of the kitchen.
“Nobody want child like you! That's why he no stay! You go on knees until I say you to move!”
Sara whimpered and lowered herself down onto her knees facing the wall. She listened to her mother's thundering footsteps retreating into her bedroom, then the slam of her bedroom door, and the click of the television turning on.
Some time later Sara's mother came back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She noticed Sara in the corner still on her knees.
“Oh you still here! Get up stupid child. Go to your room.”
Sara quietly tip toed to her room.
This was Sara's last tantrum. She grew sullen and quiet as she got older. She spoke less and suppressed her laughter so she wouldn't catch her mother's attention. At school where she felt safe among the few friends she had, she would allow herself to laugh freely so that her face hurt from smiling so much. But at home she became like stone.
On Sara's tenth birthday her mother bought an inflatable pink chair for her bedroom. She knew it cost a lot of money and couldn't believe her mother had actually paid for it. She suppressed a giant grin on her face and the urge to shriek with joy. The only evidence of Sara's excitement was a slight shiver through her small body.
“Thank you Momma,” she said quietly.
“Why you child, you no grateful? Be happy! It's what you asking for. Smile big!”
She gave Sara a tentative hug which made Sara even happier, but still she steeled herself against the current of excitement that was running through her body. Extreme sadness or happiness was suspect and dangerous at home. Such feelings needed explaining and the explanations were never good enough for her mother.
By the time Sara was a teenager her body had grown lanky and awkward. Yet even as she was growing, every muscle retreated and every tendon was pulled taught. She walked with her arms crossed across her torso and she kept her constantly head hung down. Her back and shoulders curved inward making her body look as though it were caving in on itself.
“You look like the hunchback in the big church,” her mother commented. “What man will want you? I must care for you forever. But it's not fair Sara. You supposed to be taking care of me soon.”
Sara hated that she was growing taller and bigger, so she began practicing making herself smaller and less visible. She fit her body into smaller and smaller areas to see just how little space she could occupy. At home she experimented hiding underneath her bed first laying as flat as possible under the low bed, then curled into a ball in a corner against the wall. When her mother was working weekends Sara removed everything from underneath the kitchen sink and squeezed herself in under the drain pipe among the lingering smell of garbage. She began doing it in other people's houses as well. Once at a girlfriend's home she was asked to get some pasta sauce from a pantry in the basement. Opening it she found it was crammed with a variety of pasta noodles, sauces, canned vegetables and cereal. She moved around some items making a space for herself and packed herself into an open corner at the bottom of the pantry. She closed the door. She breathed in the smells of packaging, feeling safe and relieved until she heard her name called. She climbed out and reappeared with the pasta sauce explaining she had needed to use a washroom.
Her favourite spot though was in her own closet among things that smelled like her, a mixture of sweat, dandruff, and citrus body spray. She liked to tuck herself away at the bottom of the closet
covering her body with old stuffed animals and clothing that had fallen off the hangers. She found it exciting to hide in her closet on days she was home from school before her mother was back from work. She loved hearing the door unlock knowing she was safe in her closet and that today she wouldn't be found for a little while.
“Sara? Sara?” Her mother would walk into the room and look around. Sometimes she would open Sara's desk drawers and read the school papers sitting inside. There was never a diary if that's what she was looking for. Sara never allowed private thoughts to be documented in case her mother ever found them. Sometimes her mother made a tsk tsk sound and would close the drawer. Other times she sat in Sara's room for a long time looking very sad. Once her mother would leave the room she would sneak out of the closet and tip toe to the front door, opening and closing it, pretending she'd just come home herself.
When Sara was eighteen she applied and was accepted to a university several hours away from her home town. Finally she felt she would be free to be herself for the first time in her life. She realized she didn't really know who she was. Her entire life had been spent reacting to her mother. Now that she was free of her mother's clutches she could properly blossom. But she was surprised to learn she was just as quiet and guarded around new people in a strange new place as she was at home. Her mother's clutches did not disappear. Sara always feared what her mother would think if she found out what Sara was doing or saying to other people. She was jumpy and untrusting, hesitant to show too much emotion. She didn't make any friends during the first term except her roommate who took pity on her and invited her out with her other friends. The roommate's friends were polite but uninterested in a girl who seemed indifferent to everything and everyone.
At the end of the first term she unknowingly met her future husband who was quiet, shy, and taller than most men. Within a few months of their relationship her periods stopped, and that's how Sara realized she had a husband on her hands. Nobody taught her just how easy it was to grow a life. As the
reality of motherhood hit she realized she couldn't afford to go to school anymore. She and her soon-to-be husband decided she would take time off while he continued his classes, and when the baby was older they would find a way for Sara to go back to school.
Much to Sara's alarm her body expanded with the new life inside of her, life that ballooned without any way for Sara to control it. At six months she looked like she was ready to go into labour. She wrote letters to her mother giving excuses as to why a visit was impossible. She had too much school work, too many social engagements.
“Your mother is all alone and you're too busy for her,” she would lament.
Sara was in a constant state of stress and anxiety at the thought of explaining her pregnancy to her mother. Her doctor told her it wasn't good for the baby, but she couldn't help it.
Then one morning she received a phone call as she and her soon-to-be-husband ate a simple dinner of meat and potatoes. It was Richard, the superintendent at her mother's building.
“It's your mother, Sara. She's dead.”
It turned out Sara's mother died in a freak accident in the shoddy apartment building of Sara's youth. She has been exiting the elevator when it suddenly dropped while her mother was only halfway out. Her body was crushed in two, her top half laying motionless and bleeding out onto the brown rug in the third floor hallway, while the bottom half travelled down to the basement.
The funeral was a small affair consisting of Sara, her soon-to-be-husband, Richard, and several tenants from the building. Sara had requested a closed casket for the ceremony so she never saw her mother again. The tenants expressed shock, but agreed that the dramatic death fit the dramatic woman. Sara was horrified by the death, but she was instantly relieved as well. She would never have to explain her unborn child to her mother.
As her due date grew near Sara found herself struggling with unexpected crippling waves of grief, ones that made her tremble until she couldn't breathe. Her mother was mean, but she had loved
Sara in her own way.
Two weeks after Sara's due date, she gave birth to a nine pound boy whose largeness was marvelled at by the nurses. “It's unusual for a baby to be so big!” they remarked as she held him nervously in her thin arms. They approved of his size and commented on how he took after his father. It was true she had never actually seen any newborn babies in person, but she thought they must take up less space than her own. He had thin, brown hair and Sara's emerald eyes. Once they took him home the boy continued to grow effortlessly bigger. At the same time Sara tried to make herself smaller, exercising two hours each day during his naps between feedings. She watched the boy grow into a one year old, a two year old and so on. He didn't awaken what she thought must be a natural mother's love in her. She feared him and felt unsure of how to behave around him. She resented him his natural biology, the carefree freedom of his baby years. She resented her mother too whose death had freed her of anger and negativity. Why was everyone else's life so much easier than her own?
The boy continued to grow into a wide, big and handsome child. He began to look more like Sara's mother, his hair darkening each year, and his strong jaw becoming more prominent. He had his grandmother's mannerism's and Sara's eyes, except his face held a kindness that Sara had never seen in their family before. His eyes held a peace and understanding in them, which should have been comforting to Sara, but it only made her angry. Why should he get to be so peaceful?
Her unhappiness manifested itself into angry fits directed at the boy. She recognized this behaviour from her own mother, but she couldn't stop herself. She felt a perverse pleasure in watching the boy cower under her. For once she was the one with power. But she always felt guilty after her explosions and wondered if her mother had ever had the decency to feel the same. She would crawl into the closet she now shared with her husband, where nothing was her own anymore, not even her smell. She would allow herself deep sobs, wiping at her tears with one of her shirts.
One day when the boy was five years old, the closet door tentatively swung open and the boy stood there concerned.
“Momma,” he whispered. “I won't make you mad again.”
He then climbed in the closet beside her, his unusually large child's body pressed against her, and hugged her as she wept. She desperately hugged and kissed him, but she never apologized for having become just like her mother.
Sara found herself unable to forgive him his privilege as a boy. When she watched him drawing quietly or building imaginary cities in his sandbox she would imagine him getting married one day, attending college, getting a job, while his miserable wife stayed at home taking care of his children. She felt like the lowest person on earth holding a future that hadn't happened against the boy. But she couldn't push the thoughts away, they were always bubbling up. Did her own mother hold Sara's potential against her as well? Did that explain why Sara was made to feel like such a bad child? If so, her mother might be pleased to learn Sara hated her life.
The worst part was that Sara saw herself in the boy when she yelled at him. She saw herself in his silence, his solitary activities, his desire to please her. She desperately wanted to make him see how similar their lives were, but she didn't know how to talk to him. She wanted his sympathy and she wanted them to be real friends, but he was just a little boy. How could they possibly relate?
Sara began to believe he was a kinder and superior person to her. He too was growing up with a terrible mother yet he remained so understanding and loving even when she would holler and accuse him of things he didn't do. She decided that if she couldn't control her anger, her one act as a good mother would be to let him live his life without her in it. She couldn't hurt him if she just made herself invisible.
She started shutting herself in her room when he was home. She would quietly read books or watch television without speaking to him. She encouraged him to leave the house and gave him all the
freedom in the world, unknowingly teaching the boy that she didn't care about him. And though he seemed sad and hurt when she stopped paying him attention, he eventually grew older and began to fill his time with friends. They kept him seemingly happy and more importantly away from the house. Away from the poison of Sara's anger.
Her husband grew angry with Sara, not understanding how she could be so disinterested in her own son. Sara did not explain herself which contributed to the growing chasm between the couple. When the boy was a teenager her husband moved out. Sara was glad to see him gone. Her resentment had grown over the years as she watched him work at his career while she became a lonely mother.
Her relationship with the boy was hardly existent by the time he was a teenager. They only spoke when it was absolutely necessary. Though she thirsted to know about his life and how he spent his time, she kept her vow to stay out of his life if she couldn't control her venomous anger.
Sara was a shell of herself by this time, a prematurely aged and lonely woman. Time, anger, and regret had eroded the woman she thought she could've been when she had left her mother's house for good. She didn't have any friends so she took up volunteering, spending several hours a week with ladies thirty years older than her. They took to Sara as they were eager to talk about their grandchildren and holiday cruises with a quiet listener.
When the boy turned eighteen, she realized he was no longer a boy, but a young man. His hair was almost black which accentuated his bright eyes. He had a thick, neatly trimmed beard and a white toothed smile. Sara thought he was handsome and hoped that would help him in life.
Sara felt a sense of deja vu when he was accepted into every university he applied for, choosing like Sara once had, a school several hours away from his mother's home. When he told her his decision she curtly congratulated him then shut herself inside her room. She tucked herself away in the closet and cried. After some time she heard the creak of the bedroom door, soft footsteps, and then she saw the light as he opened the closet door. He fit as much of his body as he could beside Sara and stroked
her hair just like when he was a little boy.
“It's okay Momma. I'll come back to visit.”
Sara didn't say anything, just nodded her head to show she understood. He left her after that and she came out, patted her swollen eyes with cold water and made a celebratory dinner of chicken, roast potatoes, and truffle ice cream. The boy watched her as they ate. He opened his mouth a few times seemingly to say something, but then closed it and looked back down at his meal each time.
They spent the boy's last summer at home preparing him for school. They shopped for linens, furniture, and new clothes together. It was the most time they had spent together since the boy was little. Sara was heartbroken, but also relieved knowing he would be gone and safe from her.
The week before school began Sara and the boy packed up the last of his things into the car. They drove four hours to the school in complete silence. Sara watched the boy in her peripheral vision the entire time, convinced this would be the last time they would see each other. It was possible he might visit on the odd holiday, but she had always come up with excuses for her own mother and assumed the boy would do that same.
They stopped at the train station in town. The boy would keep the car and she would take the train back to her empty home. The mother and son looked at each other one final time.
He maintained her gaze for a second and gave her a small smile, then looked down at his sneakers instead. “Will you visit me Momma?” he asked, blushing and kicking at the weeds that lined the curb.
Sara breathed in sharply. She expected he would only feel relief from being freed of his oppressive childhood home as she had once been. She had let him go a long time ago believing the loss of him was inevitable one day.
Much to hers and the boy's surprise, she began to cry. Wild, strangled sounds came out of her throat as tears streamed down her face. The boy's kindness and desire to see his mother again broke
something in her. Those five words made her realize just how different she and the boy were and she couldn't be more proud of him. Perhaps he didn't feel the same about her as she had about her own mother. He still yearned for her and probably always had. And she had abandoned him. Yes, she realized now that is what she had done.
Her chest heaved up and down as she cried for the last 40 years of her life. People in the parking lot stared at them, but Sara didn't care. She hadn't allowed herself to express this much emotion since she was a very young child. She sank to the ground in her grief. She rocked back and forth, wailing.
The boy bent down and took his mother by the arms and lifted her up.
Sara stood only because she was supported by the boy's arms. She forced herself to stop crying and wiped her face with the back of her bare forearm. She stepped away from the boy unable to make eye contact with him. She took a deep breath and spoke.
“How did you do it, my son?” she asked. “How did you have such a bad mother and end up so good?”
He took her hand in his. She looked up at him now memorizing his features, her mother's features. Although where her mother's features had been cold and sharp, his were sympathetic and kind.
He didn't answer. Words were difficult to exchange with his mother. Words made her nervous so she didn't like to give or invite them easily. He pulled her towards him, enveloping her frail, curved body between his muscular arms and against his sturdy chest. It had been so long since she had felt another person's touch that she resisted at first. He held her firm, hugging her tighter. This was a new kind of love for her, warm and inviting, not cold and desperate like the love she felt between her and her mother. She relaxed her muscles allowing herself to sink into the cavernous space of her son's torso.
