My life is the same, I say to my mother who sat bored across from me at breakfast.
She likes to be entertained by problems, of which I recently have few but do not care to share.
I’ll go to Norway in May, she says.
She will fly into Amsterdam which indicates the cruise ought to be good. She chuckles, smiles, all knowingly. I follow her lead.
She reminds me breakfast is still being served and her desperation to please me makes me feel like crying.
My mother awkwardly stares across the table at me as we wait for our food. Luis takes our order, she was very friendly with him when he did so. She remembered manners but when he left she put her elbows on the table. I was careful not to. I thought it was a trap. Fifteen dollars each for two eggs and toast. I felt implored by her to get the healthy choice when all I wanted was a cinnamon roll and one egg, a la carte. I wanted to sound fancy and see how the words fit in my mouth. I wondered why she’d taken me to this restaurant that she always wanted to visit when I still lived at home. I remember one time in the middle of summer she woke me up and took me to get waffles on a Friday. I was getting over being sick. My brother was at school and my father was at work. I was in middle school and my mother sometimes told me she didn’t love me anymore. I stil wore hot pink track suits. I didn’t like to touch the fabric, it hurt my fingers. I wondered why she was being so nice. I left the table with a promise we could come again another time.
We’ll make a habit of it, she said, holding my tiny hand.
My mother hated me more after that, a final decision. It is only after driving away this morning I am realizing she wants to reconcile and keep her old promise to the little girl that devoured waffles with nutella at a time past normal breakfast.
She wants to know my plans for the summer, of which I tell her are sleeping and lesson planning. She says that’s all I ever answer with.
I’m telling the truth, I moan.
That is all the truth as for my summer plans because by then my best friend might have stopped talking to me. Or I may have beat them to it. She asks what I would do if I could do anything this summer.
I don’t know, I say.
If I could, I’d go somewhere East, all alone. Somewhere with new types of tall grasses which bloom in the summertime to make me sneeze. In the middle of a field while clad in purple hiking boots and a backpack that I stole from my father’s office, I’d throw my arms in the air. My clothes are light, I imagine I am naked. Humans were not meant to be clothed in such exhausting heat and I am all alone. There is nobody around me for miles, there never have been. My hands, tall above my shaved head, wiggle fingers and make wind. My knees buckle beneath me as I am pulled down to the ground. My hips move fluidly, my back arched, my arms still raised above my head. I can worship things beneath me without fear of being found out. Around me there is silence and sometimes when I am asleep at night in a bed that’s not my own I can hear the deep silence again. This brings me comfort and pleasurable pain. For dinner I eat a crab. For breakfast I have some broccoli with parmesan cheese.
I imagine I hike some more to a forest beyond the field where I find my mother’s broken body which wished to be naked and free like me. Neither she nor I were made to love anything more than our own child which looks mysteriously like we do.
I can’t remember what she looked like back then very well anymore.
