Go.
In.
Sit beside.
Your mother.
Perform actions of attachment.
Act tender and maybe real tenderness will follow.
Here sits Barbara cross-legged on my bed. I am dripping wet in a small towel—shower steam still thick behind me. At a standstill in my bedroom door, I try to call off the many memories of her materializing everywhere all the time, of growing up overwhelmed by her pervasive presence, her disregard for privacy. Or her flip side, her talent for ignoring me for weeks on end—usually timed with new romances or with break-ups. Always one extreme or the other, like having two different mothers, neither of them family-sitcom nurturing.
She’s always at her apex in the morning before she begins her routine. Jovially caffeinated, sing-song bright, still robed in her chiffon nightgown. Her huge breasts beached on top of her belly make her look like some sort of a magnificent mermaid. Maybe she came from the lake? And I am a human child she stole? Will she devour me one day, like Lamia? Don’t demonize her, you terrible daughter, I scold myself. My familial bonds are defective.
The right thing is to say, “Good morning,” and, “Did you sleep well?” What stops me is the sight of one of my suitcases unzipped on the floor. In her hand is my red and white framed lenticular print by Barbara Kruger, number three in a series of only six. “Help I’m locked inside this picture,” the caption declares in Kruger’s signature Futura Bold Oblique font. Barbara’s fingers better not be greased up with her bogus Avon Pearls and Lace hand lotion.
“I bought that in New York,” I take a deep breath and say. “At the Annina Nosei Gallery.” My mother shifts over on my bed, making room for me. I pull the bath towel tightly around my chest and sit beside her. “Four years ago, I guess, five? I took the Greyhound bus. I was so nervous to go to SoHo my first time. Before that, I’d never ventured from Museum Mile, you know, Fifth Avenue. SoHo was branching out, big time. I dressed for the occasion. Well, my dress was a cut-up, oversized black T-shirt from Zellers. But my shoes were Vivienne Westwood stilettos, late ’70s, black leather, and those heavy metal details that tell-tale Westwood. Anyone who knows shoes would recognize those Westwoods, you know? I found them at the Good fucking Will in Newmarket. Twenty-five dollars! Twenty-five dollars to feel like I could march on into the Barbara Kruger show.”
Barbara stares at me blankly.
“It’s almost as good as that time we saw the identical rocking chair to Nonno’s selling for eight hundred dollars at that antique store,” I explain. “Eight hundred dollars, but Nonno got his for ten.” Barbara half-smiles in recognition, nods her head. We can have a conversation, I encourage myself. She’s listening.
“I remember the gallery being ridiculously quiet—a mid-afternoon on a weekday,” I continue. “The silence made the Krugers seem so amped up. She, um, works with all these consumer messages, you see? Like, she says stuff like, ‘Money can buy you love’ and ‘Buy me I’ll change your life’ and ‘When I hear the word culture I take out my check book.’ That piece really got me. The photo was of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Not the body, just the strange grinning face, with the blown up text, ‘When I hear the word culture I take out my check book.’ Like the art itself is making fun of the buyer who can afford the art.”
“Like you?” asks Barbara.
“I guess so.” I pause. “Sure, like the joke is totally on me, on all of us.”
Barbara’s facial expression appears to be neutral as I recount the story, so I keep going. My mother knows capitalism is bullshit, right? She was a hippie. She’s a single mother. And so I admit to her, “I wish I would have thought of that first. Standing in that gallery, I felt like Kruger and I are alike, or, like, we all think alike. We’re all in this rat race, right?” I ask, using one of her hippie expressions, rat race. “We’re all force-fed the same dumbed-down ideology. I understood then how clearly the tyranny and the irony of life are totally interchangeable, you know? In another time or place I could be Barbara Kruger, showing at the Whitney, at the Met. If I just was braver. More ambitious. If I just turned these brainwashed messages into art at exactly the right time. I could be a Barbara Kruger or somebody. We all could. It’s timing, really. Timing and the will to just go for it.”
My mother hands the print to me. The bath towel starts to inch down my bare torso as I hold it in my hands.
“You think I don’t know who Barbara Kruger is?” asks my mother. “You think only snot-nosed college flunkies like you read Art in America.”
“Ma?”
“You think the town library is a joke. How many times did I have to hear that bullshit? Well, Miss La Fucking Da, we carry Art in America and Fuse Magazine and another one … I can’t remember it’s name because you’re pissing me off right now.”
“Great.” I’m sure I sound sarcastic. “Congratulations.”
“You think you’re so much smarter than your hick mother?”
“No. I never said that.” She gets up from my bed; her throat flushes pink. What is happening? I replay the conversation to pinpoint when exactly I pissed her off. Barbara drops the Kruger onto the bed beside me. I raise my voice as she stands over me, “Come on, we’re going to fight over art?”
“We’re going to fight over art,” she mocks me in an odd attempt at a British accent.
“You’re the one who went snooping in my suitcase.” My pulse chimes in my temples with anger. “How about we fight over, I dunno, the fact that you’re a relentless busybody who always goes through my stuff?”
“I was looking for your address book. You should call a friend. You get strange when you don’t have anyone to talk to.”
“No, Ma, I get strange when I’m forced into these ludicrous conversations with you.”
“How much money did you spend to prove you’re better than your hick mother? Never mind. I don’t want to know about your stuff. I don’t give a goddamn.” She slams my bedroom door behind her.
The Kruger only cost $300. It was a lesser piece in 1985 when I purchased it. It’s gone up in value since. More then double. But I’ll never let it go. “Help I’m locked inside this picture” is mine mine mine.