I Love Them So!
AFTER MY MOTHER’S memorial service, my aunt and my grandmothers all called to wish me a happy Mother’s Day.
“I’m not a mother,” I said. I thought they had made a mistake—confused me with my sister and her son.
“No,” they said, “your sisters. You’re their mother now.”*
I HAVE NEVER wanted children; I am terrified of the thought of motherhood.
Sometimes, I fantasized about a little girl, three or four years old, who I held in a kitchen with yellow curtains. I hooked one arm around her waist and rested her on my hip as I stirred a pot on the stove, but that was as far as the fantasy went.
My grandmother always believed I would change my mind. As a high school graduation present, she crocheted me a blue baby blanket, though I was neither pregnant nor planning to be. Years later, I would fold it into a kind of cat bed. Still, anytime I called, she asked when I planned to get married, when I would have children, and I answered never. I never wanted, or would want, to be a mother.
SOME DAYS, I think I should not have meddled with my mother’s things. No bundle of sage could protect me. I am ghost-sick, possessed by every wrong thing she was unable to bring into balance in her life.
SOME DAYS, I believe I should have buried her suitcase in Dale’s garden—lost these histories forever in Florida’s black earth.
Most days, I do not believe I know how to care for my mother’s ghost.