She crossed to the high chair. She placed the bowl on the too-tight white tray. Plopped it down on a piece of congealed egg. I could hear the squishy, popping sound of yolk smooshing against the bowl.
My mother was dressed up. She had gloss on her lips, color on her cheeks. Her brown hair was freshly washed. She’d taken the time to brush it until it fell long and shiny halfway down her back, a waterfall of shimmering brown-red silk.
I wanted to touch that hair. Hold it in my fist. Feel this softer, shinier version of my mother.
My mother looked pretty. It both fascinated and terrified me.
“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” my mother singsonged. “Oh, but Charlie honey, nice girls finish last. You don’t want to be last. The world wants brave little girls, tough little girls. Sugar and spice and broken glass, that’s what little girls should be made of.”
She scooped up the first spoonful of peanut butter. “Here comes the airplane. Come on, Charlie. Be a good girl for your mommy. Open up. Here comes the airplane, into the hangar, vroom, vroom, vroom…”
LATER I VOMITED BLOOD. We went to the emergency room. The nurses rushed me in, fussed all over me. I was poked, prodded, the doctor flashed a light in my eyes. I held my stomach and whimpered. But I didn’t cry. Good girls were brave. Good girls were tough.
Pain. Wracking cramps, eye-rolling diarrhea, my face bursting with sweat, but I promise, promise, promise, no tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I just don’t know what to do,” my pretty, shiny mommy was telling the doctor. “I turned my back for only a moment, and next thing I knew, she was eating a lightbulb. I mean, really, Doctor, what kind of child eats a lightbulb?”
Good girls are brave. Good girls are tough.
“It’s just so hard, sometimes, being a single mom. I mean, I’d just popped into the kitchen to make her favorite peanut butter sandwich, and well, I was doing laundry and trying to pick up all the toys in the family room and clean the bathroom. And yes, a lightbulb had burned out, so I’d gotten one down to replace it, but I never thought for a second, never imagined…I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry. I just haven’t slept in so long. You have no idea how active she is and impulsive and…And now this and we don’t have insurance and, and…I’m sorry, can I just sit down for a minute?”
Good girls are brave. Good girls are tough.
The doctor patted my mother’s shoulder. The doctor told my mother everything would be all right. The doctor told my mother she was doing the best she could and he understood completely.
I rolled over, held my stomach, and vomited more blood.
Wanted to talk. Wanted to find my voice, but my tongue was swollen and my cheeks hurt and my throat burned.
Another nurse standing beside me. Wiping my mouth with a cool cloth, touching my forehead with gentle fingers. I stared at her. Dark eyes, dark hair. Kind face. Speak. I wanted to. I tried to open my mouth. Could feel the urgency of it, the desperate need to. Had to speak, had to speak.
Not about the lightbulb, not about the peanut butter.
Something else I had to say. If I could just say…
Good girls are brave. Good girls are tough.
I opened my mouth.
The nurse turned away. Across the room, as if sensing my intent, my mother glanced over the doctor’s shoulder, met my gaze, and triumphantly smiled.
*
I WOKE UP IN THE BLIND-DARKENED ROOM of my Cambridge rental. Pulse pounding. Hair damp. Gray tank top glued to my sweat-plastered skin.
Words were still on the tip of my tongue. The words I never got to say back then, the words it took me years to slowly but surely remember:
Baby’s crying.
That’s what I’d wanted to say. What I’d felt a desperate urge to tell the doctor, the nurse, someone. Except in theory, I didn’t remember a baby. In theory, my mother only had me.
Baby’s crying.
Down the hall, I thought now. And for a second, I could almost taste a name, feel it like a scent in the air, a ghost of a ghost of a memory. A baby girl. Down the hall. Crying.