Motherland

When a volcano meets a glacier and it will not melt, which retreats?

In early years, eruptions blasted from my core. By this time, fury’s burning underground in lava lakes and lava rivers. I won’t know it’s there for years.

Lava seeks its level. When it surfaces, it rigidifies as it cools. All I feel is hurt and grief. I have no idea I’m angry. I just eat and hate myself and eat.

•••

In their long, slow inching over landscapes, glaciers rake terrain, pluck out boulders, leave holes gaping in the land. This is their nature.

They also create a blue beauty; fascinating for what’s caught inside. Their broken places don’t absorb light, but reflect, refract, bend it, throwing it back at the viewer. Some people, when love strikes their broken places, bend and throw it back as well.

What’s caught in Mom is early breakage.

•••

Let me go all the way back to you, Betty, at four, in Omaha, holding the hand of an unseen someone. You wear bows the size of Easter baskets on your head and a quizzical pout. This photograph is not casual. It was something to remember you by.

Your mother Grace is folding laundry, pairing little stockings, placing them in a basket, speaking with her younger sister.

“It’s wonderful how you get Betty to sleep, Irene.”

“She loves anything that rhymes.” Irene smoothes a little dress. “Pretty little frock.”

“I don’t have your ease with her. She will miss you terribly.”

“How can you think of leaving Omaha, Grace?”

“It’s John. He wants a new start.”

“But Mother’s not herself. It would kill her if you go. And should Betty travel when she’s not thriving? Harry thinks it’s her kidneys.”

“He told us. We’re blessed to have a pediatrician in the family. But John wants to live in Los Angeles.”

“Oh, Grace, that awful place? Bring up a child in that moral turpitude? Omaha is so civilized. We have real society now. Our dazzling new Hotel Fontenelle and its cultural events—”

“John won’t stay in Omaha another minute. We have just enough money to get to California.”

“Don’t be silly. Stay with us. Mother loves Betty. So do we.”

Grace sits next to Irene.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Sister. We don’t want to live off you or Mother, but since Betty’s unwell, we thought the best place for her—that is, until she’s better—would be with you and Harry. We’ll get settled in California and send for her. ”

“Grace, you can’t mean that. Why not just stay until she’s well?”

“John’s lawsuit failed. The Creightons won’t pay what they owed his mother.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When they sold the family farm, her brothers used the proceeds to build the Pacific Telegraph line. Promised their sister they’d settle up with her. They made a fortune, and she never saw a dime. When her last brother died, John should have received her share, but the court ruled against him.”

“That’s terrible. But surely there’s work here?”

“He can’t watch Creighton College being built with his inheritance.

“You’d leave your child behind?”

“I’d leave my child with you, which isn’t quite behind. We’ll save up money and send for her when Betty’s healthy.”

“Grace, how can you leave your firstborn child?!”

“With my sister who longs for a child. With a doctor who can make her well. With my mother, who is happier and sharper whenever she’s around. Please say yes, Irene. It’s best for everyone.”

Grace holds out the basket of Betty’s clothing. With a quaking hand Irene accepts it. Her dearest wish has just come true.

•••

That photograph of you was literally a parting shot, the image for your parents to remember you by. Years passed and Grace and John never sent for you. They led a new life in California, had three more children, and never sent for you.

There is speculation they made the request but that Aunt Irene and Uncle Harry didn’t want to give you back. They loved you as their own. You were growing up with social advantages. No one wanted to cast Betty’s grandmother into despair. You stayed with her during the week and Aunt Irene and Uncle Harry on the weekends.

Never spoken, the obvious truth: parents who truly wanted their child would have retrieved her.

All of them lavished attention on you, which earned you your nickname, “Queenie.” Here you are at nine, cavorting for the camera, devising entertainments, veils of Araby, a wreath of laurel ’round your brow for recitation.

Forsaken by your parents, robbed of your siblings, primal abandonment cracked your first blue unsealable fissure. Though your relatives meant well, their excessive praise (and sometimes excessive criticism) as well as their overindulgence could not fill that fissure. Instead, they unwittingly helped form your abscess of narcissism, which seeped throughout our childhood.