stillborn, or, my mom gave me this life once years ago and sometimes she has to save it
at 7 this morning i call my mom, i hope she’s on her way to work
but she’s already there, she says she can talk though
and in the morning her voice is soft and new sounding
ready to start the day, she asks me how i am
i can barely choke out the words, my tears strangling my throat
i’m feeling that same way again —
waking up in the middle of the night scared; can’t go back to sleep, diarrhea and sometimes dry heaving
christmas is next week but it doesn’t really feel like it in san francisco except for when we go to beeps burgers
over speakers in the parking lot they play the radio station with all the christmas music and the charlie brown christmas music plays
which is my favorite and all the palm trees on the sidewalk are wrapped with red foil bows but
i can barely enjoy it
my mind floating far away from this moment, from my body
flapping off like a flock of pigeons to someplace else
someplace where i’m not myself
my mom knows how i’ve been doing
she saw it with her own eyes a few weeks ago
when she visited before my birthday, before thanksgiving
she came to teach me how to sew curtains for the bedroom windows
and at target we try to pick out new towels (mine are almost ten years old)
but i can’t make up my mind on a color or pattern
the whole purpose of this visit is to pick out fabric and curtain rods
but i can’t do it, even this simple decision feels like too much pressure, how will i know that i’ll always like these towels
on the way home from the mall, no towels or curtain rods, i ask my mom about when she was younger, growing up
we exit the 280 freeway at ocean avenue, drive along the city college campus to formerly phelan avenue but recently renamed frida kahlo way
the k isn’t running these days (covid)
the traffic waits at the red light
my mom tells me about her old banking job, back when my parents were first married
before they moved to san diego and had my brother and me
they lived in la and they were expecting their first baby
but when my mom had him, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck
and he didn’t live
in the hospital they take his photo anyway
my mom debated about seeing the pictures until
one day she decided to mail in the receipt to get the images from the hospital
and when she walked to the post office over a freeway overpass
a gust of wind grabs the envelope from my mom’s hands, swoops it up over the fence
down among the cars rushing below, the white envelope floating along until gone
and my mom can’t follow it anymore with her eyes
but anyway the banking job
so my mom said she got back after maternity leave
and her coworkers all ask her about the baby
and my mom has to tell them what happened
and i don’t know how someone can pick themselves up after that
and in the car i don’t want my mom to see i’m crying
that night for dinner i bake us a yellow potato pizza with rosemary and gruyere, olive oil and garlic
we have a bottle of red wine and salad
after dinner we watch the joan didion documentary, but in the middle we pause it
to bake peanut butter cookies with reese’s cups like my mom used to make when i was a kid
you bake peanut butter cookies and while they’re in the oven
you rush to unwrap as many miniature reese’s cups as you can
to smush quickly into the center of the hot baked cookies
i cry as we gingerly unwrap each peanut butter cup
this simple task my mom has done so many times for my brother and me
for bake sales and the parish festival each fall when we were in catholic school
and once when i was in middle school, every trimester we had to write and give speeches in english (informative, persuasive, biographical, these types of speeches)
for one speech we had to teach something
so i taught everyone how to make these cookies
and my mom baked a huge batch for my class
i cry over the peanut butter cups, for the way my mom tenderly unwraps each one
so laborious and such love
i cry for my mom who picked herself up after such tragedy
and for the baby who was born and didn’t breathe
his initials on the calendar on february first — BLT
my eldest brother brian who i never got to meet
i dreamt about him once before my 13th birthday
which we celebrated at moonlight rollerway
in the dream we are in the skating rink
i know it’s him, he’s older than me with hair light like mine, brown eyes like my dad instead of blue like my brother and me
in my dream he tells me happy birthday, he’s proud of me
this morning on the phone, when i tell my mom i’m feeling the same
she reassures me that i’m okay, nothing is wrong with me
she says this is a weird time for everyone right now
though in her voice i hear one lick of worry
she says that probably i’m bored
i need to find something simple like dog walking
something to do each day to occupy my time, distract me
my mind unoccupied has nothing to do, reaching out to far corners
dusty rooms and old memories, feeling small and floating
once at some boy scout spaghetti dinner another mom asks if i want meatballs or sausage
i am eight or seven and can’t decide so i say i’ll have both
and she says not both, only one
and i cry humiliated, feeling greedy wanting two types of meat
why this memory?
mom suggests i delve into a craft project, making those curtains
or even going to target, getting a paint by numbers kit just to keep me busy
have you been writing she asks and i haven’t been
(because sometimes it’s hard to write about your life when you wake up at night
and feel like the only soul adrift in the pacific, one raft bobbing towards something
it’s too dark all around to know, new moon and the ocean reflects the sky like onyx)
she lists things i could write about:
write about grandma, all those horrible dinners she cooked (we laugh)
or my fourth grade teacher who pronounced so many words incorrectly
she said shepherds like shefferds and canoe she called canooey
remember she made you memorize the beatitudes mom asks
yes but she didn’t cover the poster hanging in class so on the test i cheated
and once in class i complained of a stomach ache so i could go to the nurse’s for a little while
but instead she prayed over my stomach in front of the virgin mary statue at the front of the room
she asked mary to relieve my belly pains and i felt so guilty for lying
i could write about the beatitudes, which jesus shared at the sermon on the mount
blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted; blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see god
in college i learned the beat writers — who i obsessed over in high school, they inspired me to move to san francisco, to write everything, obsessively, all the time, to capture something, some piece of life —
were called beats meaning tired or run down, but also from the word beatific
meaning blissfully happy coming from the latin ‘beatus’ meaning blessed
just like the word beatitude which means supreme blessedness
my mom says take care of yourself
she says right now you are a helium balloon and you have nothing to anchor you
so you’re floating around but i don’t want you to hit a powerline
maybe she means she’s worried she’s losing me or i’ll lose myself
i think of when i was fifteen and i couldn’t bear to be
i kept losing my breath
i told my mom and my dad from under the covers of her bed
that i couldn’t do it, i couldn’t keep going
and the next morning when she drove me to school, my mom said she called a doctor
she was too worried about me, the way i was talking
she scheduled an appointment for me to talk with a counselor
that day when i get home from school my mom says let’s get ice cream and rent movies
we leave for dairy queen and i have bare feet, i have to run back into the house for shoes
after that we pick up dvds at hollywood video
my brother hasn’t left for college yet and we watch the movies and eat skittles
the next day the counselor teaches me how to breathe slow, feel my belly and count
she says: there will be time to do it all
the day after that my brother and I take the metrolink train from our mom’s in rancho cucamonga
to union station where our dad will pick us up for the weekend
and on the train in my pocket i find one red skittle from two days before, a little symbol of hope
a month or so after that, after my brother moved away for college, leaving me at home alone with mom and her mom
my dad’s mother dies
she has a stroke or a heart attack and not enough oxygen to her brain so it was dead
they turn off the ventilator and babcia gasps one last big breath before she passes
and at the cemetery after we bury her
my dad takes my brother and me over to brian’s little grave
this part of the cemetery where all the babies are buried, everyone calls them angels
the tombstones depict angels in flowing robes, long tendrils of hair wafting
(at christmastime my mom hated how many angels my grandma decorated with
all these stupid angels my mom got instead of a real baby)
on the phone my mom says okay, stop crying now with a laugh, but i can hear the tears in the very back of her throat
when she tells me you are my whole world
i know she really means it
when my mom was pregnant with me, they thought i would be born breech
so they made an appointment for a c-section right after thanksgiving
but then right before, i flipped around and my mom delivered me fine
once i read that babies could be breech because of tension held in the lower part of the body
anxious and fearful women have a higher incidence of breech presentation(1)
i think about the first place i ever lived
inside my mom’s body, how brian lived there, then mitch
and then i came along upside down at first
a baby may be in the breech position
because it is trying to get closer
to its mother’s heartbeat —
to feel more connected to her
Northrup, Christiane. Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. New York, Bantam Books, 2010. 461.
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