It is like preparation for death, I think. Describing my mother—her entire life. Who she’s been as a person; who she is now. I am used to talking about my father this way—you would have loved him—but never my mother.
We fall asleep, one of us still talking, the other mumbling into the phone.
Are you still there? one of us will say.
Yes. Keep going, please, talk.
The relationship we have is nothing short of obsessive. Hannah is worried. She does not want me to have my heart broken. Careful, she says. She can already tell I am in love.
I just wonder, I say. What do you think she looks like naked? Do you think we have the same hips? The same legs? Are our breasts the same size and shape? Do you think hers are fake? Will I look like her in twelve years?
Why don’t you meet each other first?
How long should I wait before I tell her I love her?
Meet each other, she says.
My sister has had a flight booked for months. To New York, the following week. She owes her best friend a visit, she says. My mother has a flight booked to New York, the same week. She owes me a visit, she says.
I can’t tell Mom on the phone, I tell my sister. I’ll sit down with her. Explain. We’ll go from there. I’m sure she’ll want to meet you, too.
My sister says, Thank you, thank you, I’d like that, but I can tell she does not have her hopes up.
Marjorie’s profile photo, Ancestry.com. Account created January 2014.
WINTER, 1988
COCONUT GROVE, FLORIDA
My mother has skipped her period once, twice, three times by now. She was told after the first child that she had an ovarian obstruction, twists and bumps inside her, little chance to ever be pregnant again.
I thought there was no chance, she tells my father now. She is sitting on the floor of her living room. She is trying to tell him something.
What are you trying to tell me? You said it was impossible, he says. He is pacing the room. He pumps his fist inches from the wall of her canary-yellow apartment as if he will let it go, as if he will smash this entire wall down and expose the stars, but he does not.
Get rid of it, he says.
I will not get rid of it, says my mother. I won’t.
I’ll have nothing to do with it, he says. I have a family. Goddammit you know I have a family. I don’t have the money.
I’m keeping this baby, says my mother. Maybe you should have considered your family sometime in the past eight years, but I haven’t heard much about them till now.
She wants to tell him. She wants nothing more than to tell this man, my father, that her stomach has been stretched this way before. Her stomach had been stretched over a living, breathing heart. Her body molded to it. She was sent away to live in an apartment complex with her fourteen-year-old sister; she pumped this baby with her own blood, fed and nurtured it. Her stomach stretched, and then it was emptied, and ever since there has been a cave behind her ribs where her daughter once lived. She wants to tell him everything, to finally tell someone this secret, the way her father smashed a vase when she told him, the way he drove her to one group home, then the next, before settling her into that apartment where her baby would be born, then taken. She wants to be held like a child again, but instead my father is pacing, he is shaking his fist and he is saying, Goddamn it Goddamn you woman You did this to hurt me Goddamn this you must get rid of it, will you? Don’t be such a goddamn woman. Look at me when I’m talking to you I have a goddamn family I have a wife, two children, I don’t need a bastard child.
Then leave, says my mother. Don’t see me anymore.
What?
I’m keeping this child. I need this one thing. You can leave, she says.
She wanted to tell him. Thirty-five years together—she never did.
My mother moves back in with her sister while she is pregnant with me. The two of them watch horror movies, eat stacks of Saltine crackers (it’s the only thing my mother can stomach); they match up the grooves of puzzles on the living room floor; they tend to Tanya and Teagan. My Aunt Tao rubs lotion on my mother’s feet and they are girls again, young again, catching up, doing this very thing all over again. My mother is reading The Great Gatsby. Sometimes, she recites passages aloud.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, says my mother. I like the sound of that. The letter in front. Powerful, yeah?
You’re right, says my aunt. Those with the initial names.
I want a powerful child, says my mother. My child won’t be a coward. And I’m going to put a letter in front. No other name, no abbreviation, just the letter.
You’re crazy, says my aunt. You can’t just put a letter in front.
Maybe T, says my mother. You’re the one taking care of me, aren’t you? You and these girls. My baby may be fatherless but she’ll always have women. Yes, I’m gonna call her T.
Ao ?aumākua is a place in the afterworld in which all of one’s ancestors are waiting. I always liked this legend best, the idea of this place, where all family ties remain solid, intact, where nothing on Earth ever mattered. It is the place in which all family members are reunited, and I like to imagine that everyone shows up young, healthy, so much bright life in the face. In all the realms of heaven and hell, Ao ?aumākua is most desired among the people of Hawai?i.
Once the family is reunited, each spirit is encouraged to visit their own idea of home. Home can be in the depths of the sea, in the treetops. A spirit may choose their grandmother’s lap in her rocking chair, the sour smell of malasadas.
Ancient legend describes it as the place of your greatest responsibility.
Others define it as returning to one’s rightful place, or one’s greatest duty.
The Hawaiian word for this is Kuleana.
SPRING, 2016
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
My mother opens her bedroom door, walks out, chugs water in the kitchen, walks back in, shuts the door, opens the door, shuts the door, walks into the bathroom, shuts the door, opens the door, walks back to the kitchen, drinks more water, joins me in the living room, sits on the couch, opens and shuts her eyes, opens and shuts them, says things like Who, and What, and What will I tell your father?
He doesn’t know, she says. She is shaking. There’s so much—
He’s dead, I say. You don’t have to worry about that.
She’s not here, my mother. She’s somewhere else, I can tell, replaying something, reckoning with something; she’s in another time.
Don’t worry about Dad, I say, and don’t worry about me.
In the next five minutes my mother scrambles on in incomplete sentences: Where is she? The girl? Does she hate me? Do you hate? How can you even look at me? Where is? What does she look like? Her name? Where is she? How did? Did she? Who found whom? My daughter, does she hate me? It wasn’t me who let her go. I was scared. You have to understand. What happened was this. But where is she?
I break down the facts. I repeat them several times, until she is steady, until she can hold them. Her name. Where she lives. What she does. Here, look, I say, offering a photograph. She’s had a good life, I say.
I see, she says. The girl is beautiful, she says.
Your daughter, she’s beautiful, I agree. She looks like you. And like me.
Perhaps, one day, maybe we could meet her? says my mother. Maybe for the holidays?
The next day, we decide to meet in Washington Square Park. It’s two thirty P.M., New York University’s graduation day, so the entire park is bobbing with purple and silver balloons. Families grasp one another by the elbows—I’m so proud of you—the sun throwing stripes of light between them. I am holding my mother’s hand. A banjo player cries out and knocks his kick drum. We wait beneath the arc, circling, looking, my hand a visor over my eyes as my focus shifts from face to face. Will I know?