There is a scar forever on your palm from the time you broke the rustic restroom mirror in Pennsylvania. A soothing trickle of sonic blood pouring out as you looked at me without explanation.
Just wanted to, you told me in the emergency room later that night, drinking from a little paper cup with pale flowers on the outside. Just had an idea.
You were nine at the time. Spindly and graceless, eating and unwrapping the silver tinsel of chocolate bars while we sat in the theatre. Ballet dancers always entranced you—the pale filet of their bodies, the girlish, obvious strength it took to leap across the stage like frightened swans—but you were never interested in classes. Instead, you wanted to swim in thunderstorms wearing blue panties and plastic goggles, watching the great, white fingertips of lightning cut the skies. You wanted to take drives to where the roads were made of dirt and the grass made your feet itch. You wanted to watch the men hang up the Christmas lights in town, the smallness of their work. The desired result. You wanted to eat sandy biscuits and trick me.
I was at home, tending to the telephone and cooking carrots and pork for when you came home. And the principal called and told me you were drunk in class. I laughed. Then stopped laughing. I went to pick you up and sure enough, you couldn’t walk in a straight line, had a cloudy look on your face, cheeks pink and giggling like an idiot. I took you home and questioned you for hours. It had been going on for a couple of months, you admitted in the bathtub where I washed you with cold water and fed you aspirin.
It took a couple of more instances—a nip in your pretty princess backpack, a wobbly fall on the playground—for me to understand. After that, I was forced to do something about you. I tried psychotherapy but you hated him and threw tantrums when I’d make you go, throwing books and cursing at me until I admitted defeat and let you watch cartoons while I chain smoked at the dining table. In the end, I put you with other girls, troubled young girls with daring tooth gaps and wild tales, in a group home. It was only going to be for a while, I promised on the drive there, bloated sun and the view of the homely building where a woman was waiting outside for our arrival. A cheery woman who gave me a tour of the place, a garden, a playground, dance classes, wooden desks and destroyed basketball hoops. I kissed you all over before I left. And twice a week, I’m there in the cafeteria with you, bringing treats and listening to what your newfound friends said and what you’d read in Life. Couldn’t I be a farmer? You ask in earnest. Yes. Taming stallions and making use of otherwise dead land. Yes.
I bring you sugar spice tea and lemon tea and magazines, a box of Chinese dominoes, bright sugar cookies and on your thirteenth birthday—a couple of cigarettes. We smoke together in the cold. I hug you and smell your sweat, your newness. My flaming princess. My green pea.
At home, I’m cracked. I go swimming for long hours, breaking water and counting laps so as not to think of you forgetting me. I do lines of delicate, white cocaine off the kitchen counter in the mornings. I go eat Vietnamese food and listen to the radio. I read newspapers. I carry your photo with me everywhere I go. I talk about you like a fanatic. I do crosswords for you. I buy cake for you. I live twice a week. On the drive back, I weep and comfort myself with the image of you at sixteen, clean and riding horseback, in a tank top and ruling your world, electric panties, hair dye staining the bathroom walls, running in the snow, catching butterflies, tanning in springtime, angel wings and orange slices. You, army unicorn. The counselor says your wires are a bit crossed. The drinking? The drinking was excess energies. The drinking was a way of speaking.
I drive home and remember bandaging your arm after an accident at school, careful and quiet as you cried, salt and guilt. No more, I said as I kissed your forehead. No more of this. Alright? I couldn’t have known what you were thinking. The restless in your chest at night when the house was devoid of light. The itch of your hands. The loud, screaming thirst. As you dug into the cupboards. As you had the first sip and your shoulders relaxed and the world came into view again. The hot shame. The pleasure overriding the shame. God is in this feeling, you thought. God is in the bottle. God is my mother asleep in the other room. God is oblivion.
God is the smallest thing you can see. In the wild beast of your tongue. In the nibbling black of your sick molars. In the sunlight that haunts the next day when you wake up and you’re still human.
