My mother had stopped calling. She was no longer sending family emissaries, weather warnings, or a narrative history of my upbringing. Now what I received daily was a lone text. The text simply said: Hi.
On Friday it was: Hi.
Saturday: Hi.
Sunday: Hi.
Monday: I mailed you two coupons for Bed Bath & Beyond. 20% off WHOLE PURCHASE and 20% off one item!! Use in good health and prosperity!!!
Tuesday: Please make sure you use coupons fpr big item. Maybe a vacuum?? Do you have a cacuum??
Wednesday: Hi.
The Hi was alluring. I wanted desperately to respond to the Hi. What was wrong with writing back a little How are you? or Hey or even I miss you? The Hi was so simple, so casual. The Hi made it seem like I could have an easy relationship with my mother—as though it were not a trapdoor to an emotional onslaught, a bombardment, a PowerPoint presentation of guilt—as though my mother and I were friends, great friends, as though I were one of those daughters who said, Oh yeah, my mother is my best friend. Those women were upsetting.
Mothers who doted on their baby daughters also killed me. I couldn’t be involved in their attempts to get me to cosign a child’s cuteness. I’d see a mother walking down the street with her little toddler, the toddler babbling on about something or other, the mother smiling at the toddler, then looking at me, expecting me to celebrate her precious little one. I couldn’t smile back.
When I met Ana for teatime the day after the movies, I felt like weeping.
“I’m sorry,” I wanted to say as she handed me my hot cup of Harney & Sons, our fingers touching. “I’m sorry,” and also, “Please help me.”
I couldn’t not want it: the approval, that feeling at afternoon teas past when my stomach rumbled and I was proud of its rumbling, when I knew exactly what was in me. It seemed now that in those calculated hollows there had been total security, even though I knew I was never really safe. The hollows staved off another kind of emptiness, thick with terror and mystery. Now the unknown was sitting on me.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“About what?” I grinned.
I was hoping we were about to evaluate Andrew’s new haircut. The indie-rocker shag had sprouted bangs overnight.
“The tea,” she said. “Darjeeling. I usually do Earl Grey.”
I noticed that she said I and not We. I blew on the cup and took a sip, letting the warm liquid melt the piece of nicotine gum I had parked between my molar and my cheek.
“Great,” I said.
It was going to have to be me who initiated the shit-talk.
“So,” I said. “Having carefully read Ofer’s e-mail on internalized misogyny and safe spaces, I’ve reached the conclusion that no space is safe… from him.”
“Didn’t read it,” she said. “I saw sensitivity in the first line and deleted immediately.”
“Do you think it was your internalized misogyny that did the deleting?”
“It was my internalized something.”
“He’s become a real bro-choice activist,” I said.
“Mmmm.”
Was I losing her? Did she no longer like me? I could never tell how other people saw me. Most of the time I felt like I was riding around in a car with a fogged windshield that made it difficult to decipher the perceptions of others. They were all just kind of pantomiming outside, grunting, while I ran the wipers over and over. No matter how fast I wiped, I couldn’t clear the fog.
Still, I was pretty sure there was something about me that Ana was now rejecting. I was on the way out, no longer a fit for inclusion in her joyful exclusion of others. A them-ing had happened to our us. She could sense that I was becoming—what?
There was, growing within me, a great Fuck-You-ness. I didn’t know if this feeling was surrender, freedom, or a total delusion that was ultimately going to hurt me. Miriam had transmitted the feeling to me, like an infusion—or a disease. It was exciting. But at the same time, it scared me.
I googled How to stop the golem.
According to several Jewish tales, a golem came alive out of clay or soil when its creator walked around it reciting a combination of letters from the alphabet and god’s secret name. To stop the golem, its creator must circle it in the opposite direction and recite everything backward.
“Mairim Mairim Mairim Mairim,” I whispered. “Lehcar Lehcar Lehcar Lehcar. Ana Ana Ana Ana. Rehtom Rehtom Rehtom Rehtom.”
I felt no less gone.