Mother’s Daughter

They laid my mother on the table, a sheet to cover her face from seeing the belly once kissed by men on warm, tropical nights. It looked so different now, sterile. The freckles dotting her pale round belly looked like an infection rather than the constellations. The doctors inserted a scalpel and held plastic buckets on either side, careful to not let the blood spill onto the floor.

As the doctor held up the baby, he mouthed “Oh no.”

I was born curled up, half black and blue. Withered and decayed before I was able to take my first breath.

My mother was unaware of what was going on, drugged with a stomach split in two. I want to cry for her, not me, when I think of the pain. All the immense pain, then nothing to hold to your empty chest after.

But I cry for myself, too. A tiny newborn in unimaginable pain, cold and surrounded by sterile plastic aliens in masks, made of paper and rubber.

My father had been released from the psych ward before my birth. He later told me stories of the vision he had the day I was born. I had two beautiful hands. Elegantly long fingers gliding over ivory keys at a grand piano, on a stage in front of hundreds. He believed this was from God, not an expected break in his feeble mental state. He prayed for decades over this impossible dream, seemingly unaware of the shame and sadness his reminiscence brought. I’d never be the daughter he dreamed of.

My mom blames herself for what happened to me, the fighting, the stress. It put strain on her womb. My father blames God for what happened. Original sin; a test of faith; a punishment for his weak spirit.

My uncle Kevin died of complications from HIV the day after I was born.

My father’s family decided not to tell him that Kevin had died until I had left the NICU, nearly a month later. They didn’t want him to have another psychotic break.

To my father, his brother’s loss was simple. God punished him for his sins.

#

I often wonder what happens to limbs after they are amputated.

Was my hand put in a Ziploc bag, sealed tightly, and thrown in the trash like I do with the excess parts of chicken to squelch the smell? A small, shriveled, unrecognizable hand in a sandwich bag, thrown out like a school kid's discarded lunch. Along with the sandwich crusts, used condoms, dirty diapers, wedding invitations, beheaded barbies, onion peels. We all lay together, glistening in the morning dew as the bright sun rose over the beautiful landfill.

I read somewhere that the hospital keeps amputated limbs for 28 days in the mortuary. Wrapped and sealed “respectfully,” like a present. My hand was a few floors below the rest of my body, still connected to me somehow.

I like to think my amputated hand was near Uncle Kevin, resting beside each other. I hope there was some type of comfort, some type of contact. Us both lamenting our families who we missed so dearly. Maybe he whispered stories to me in that dark, cold locker. Of my grandfather’s bar, littered with peanut shells and reeking of cheap beer. My grandmother’s temperament, her Marlboro Lights, how the sound of her small TV with the antenna blaring John Madden’s voice became a lullaby to him. I hope Kevin told me about his three brothers, shooting out the neighbors’ windows with BB guns, jumping into the Missouri river when the ice had just melted, proving which of them really had what it took to be a man. Maybe he told me to take care of my dad. Maybe he said a prayer over me, the two outcasts of the family, so different from the rest. Maybe Kevin wanted me to live boldly and unafraid, unlike he had.

My hand was probably incinerated, like the rest of my body will someday be too, laid out in the chamber and inserted into the hottest fire I’ll never feel.

There must’ve been others in there too. I wonder who they were, what parts of them remained. An army vet’s missing leg, covered in tattoos and scars. A tiny blue baby. A diabetic’s swollen foot. A hairless mother, shriveled but strong. We were passengers on a late-night bus, keeping our distance, but offering each other silent sympathies—we were all just on our way home.

#

I wonder what it was like for my mother, leaving the hospital, still bruised, bloodied, with fresh stitches, hobbling out to her car without a baby in her arms.

Did she come home, microwave herself a soup and try to fall asleep? Did she have to bathe her other children? Was the house dark and empty when she arrived?

And what of me, among the babies all lined up in their own plastic incubators? Newborns of all colors and sizes, hooked up to machines with feet of tubes and wires, the constant beeping of monitors that became our song. I wonder if the nurses choose a favorite, if they ever wonder what became of those twisted, tiny bodies fighting for another breath.

I guess I’ll never know them and they’ll never know me.

How was it when I finally met my mom? She was freckled flesh and warmth, an unfamiliar, but comforting scent. Lilacs and instant coffee. I felt her soft arms envelop me as I lay on her chest, rising and falling in tandem with her breath. She wasn’t sterile or plastic, there were no pricks in my arms or tubes from my nose. Her heartbeat was a song that I couldn’t remember the words to.

I must have felt strange—new—in her arms. She cradled me with the care of a bomb squad, sure not to jostle any of the wires. She prayed that I would remember her, that I would feel like her other children did. Had it been too long? Was the separation too great?

As I began to cry, she did too. Repeating over and over to me like a lullaby, “You are your mother’s daughter. You are your mother’s daughter. You are your mother’s daughter.”