It is easy to believe you never loved me when I think of my childhood and all the moments someone else's hands held me--easier still during the holidays when memories pull me back through the folds of time.
* * *
It is Mother's Day, and I am sitting in a classroom full of small desks and cubbies where classmates cut construction paper, bend over bins of crayons, and write love poems to their mothers. I stare hard at their cards as tears cook the backs of my eyes. I have nothing to say that feels true. Even the heart I've cut is a lie. When I think of you, I smell the rush of your perfume, feel your lips brush my sleeping cheek on your way out the door or back through it. How can I thank you for leaving me? Or for coming home only when I'm asleep? Is it enough for you to be close when I dream?
Roses are red, violets are blue, the other children write.
I used to have nightmares of you and Dad dying in a horrific car accident. I'd be crying so hard, I'd cough myself awake. When I'd sit up to breathe, tears would roll down my cheeks and neck, soaking the fabric over my racing heart. I wanted that damp patch to be love, but even then I knew I wasn't crying for you.
Roses are red, the kids write, violets...
I pick up the scissors, clip some lace, paste it around the edges of the pink paper, and resolve to find your lipstick when I get home. I'll color my lips red, press them to the center, and hand the card to you like I am handing you my own heart.
* * *
When you and Dad both had to work, you left me with women who were nice but who were not you. They watched me run and pushed me on the swings so high, I'd close my eyes, feel the wind parting the down on my arms, and dream I was a bird touching the clouds. Had you been there, you would have seen me fly.
When Dad watched us, I watched his hands. They were always reaching. When we'd play tag, his fingers would graze my skin. At night after my shower, he'd lift the towel from my shoulders, spread it on the carpet, point me onto my stomach. His hands would run over my back, would run over my calves, would run over. Roses are red, I'd think, filling my head with paper and lace, my hands pinned beneath my body.
Even now I can feel his palms circling like hawks.
* * *
I gave up on you so long ago I don't even hate you anymore.
Do you remember when I used to scream that word at you, over and over, hoping to tear back inside so I could warm myself on the heart that beat my first lullabies?
But you just laughed, a paper crane with no color and no song. I hate you hate you hate you hate you, I trilled, wanting to unmake you. But you were my maker, and you had given me hands like yours that folded in on themselves and could not open or hold.
I hate you! I screamed, my hands balled into useless fists. I hate you, I hate you, I screamed until you stopped laughing, until your fingers knit so tightly in your lap, I knew I'd never get in on my own.
* * *
For years, even after you divorced Dad, you flitted around behind the scenes, Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny, invisible and distant. The Tooth Fairy gave me quarters, but she never sat down and colored with me. Santa left toys but didn't bake cookies with me. And the Easter Bunny preferred Solitaire over tag.
You decorated my birthday cake, blew up balloons, purchased themed plates and banners, laughed as I blew wishes on trick candles. You never asked me what I wished, not even to hear me say I didn't want to ruin the magic by telling. You hung the piñata, snugged a blindfold over my eyes, and spun me round and round, your hands barely brushing my shoulders before fluttering free.
* * *
You bought us a house with a swimming pool and showed me how to do a swan dive. I dog-paddled in the deep end and watched you leap off the board, your arms spread as if to hug the whole world, and for a moment I was inside them. I spent all summer growing wings.
It wasn't long before you met another man, this one with a span so large he could cover the bruises he left on all of us and still have ample reach to plug our mouths. I flew off that diving board again and again, building my strength, but I wasn't strong enough to keep you from following him to another state and giving him your hand in marriage.
We no longer had a pool, but that didn't stop anyone from diving. The night he pushed you from the top of the staircase, we dove deeper in our beds and remembered how you'd looked suspended over us--like a woman who had found grace.
* * *
The summer after you separated from my step-dad, you finally gave me permission to get a pet chicken. But it needed a coop, you said, and you suggested we build it together. I remembered the playhouse you'd built for us when we were younger, how sturdy the monkey bars had been, how you'd thought to cut windows and make shutters.
We spent the summer drafting and measuring; clipping yards of green chicken wire; sawing, sanding, and staining; stapling and nailing. But we never put anything inside the cage, and eventually the wind pushed it into the woods where the ivy went to work taking it apart.
* * *
When I was a teenager, you sought me in quiet moments, your hands alighting on my shoulders and head like pigeons on a windowsill. I brushed you off for years until I was old enough to fly away.
But I took your hands with me; how could I not? They carried me into the world, and I couldn't ignore them, not forever.
If I let you in, Mom, will I have to spend the rest of my life defending you? Can I fly home this Christmas and press my face against your neck and not hate you for the space you left for my father's hands? For my stepfather's? Can I return to the fold with no expectations so that if you cannot hold me, if you can only fold my feelings into a songless laugh, I can trace the spaces between your fingers where the feathers go and accept you with grace?
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