What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera
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To Whit.
You and I have always shared a love of words.
But (always) there are only three words that matter.
You will leave behind everything you love
most dearly, and this is the arrow
the bow of exile first lets fly.
—DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy
Prologue
A child is nourished upon her mother’s blood. If it is a time of starvation in the village, the crops lean, the riverbed dry, a mother takes what food there is and gives it to her child. She denies herself, mortifies her flesh, suffers in silence rather than let her child feel the smallest discomfort. All creatures abide by this law. This is the way of nature. To be otherwise is to be unnatural, to be a monster, outside the pale.
In a region stretching from the Himalayas to Japan lives an animal called the moon bear. It is named for the luminous sickle moon glowing in the midst of its midnight chest. The moon bear is the genetic originator of every bear on the planet; it is the great ursine ancestor, content to wander within its secret realms. It lives in the treetops, climbing high to huff at that celestial orb by which it is claimed. It lives on a fairy diet of acorns, honey, termites, cherries, and mushrooms; it is a peaceable citizen of these wild and lonely places.
The moon bear is not just ancient and magnificent, it is also in possession of something treasured by humans. In Chinese medicine the moon bear’s bile is believed to remove heat from the body, curing tragic ailments of the liver and the eye. A kilogram of bear bile is valued at half the price of that other, shinier human obsession: gold.
Thousands of moon bears are captured and stuffed into small “crush cages.” In these devices they are unable to stand upright or turn around. They may be kept in this condition for decades. Periodically each bear’s stomach is slit and into the incision is inserted a tube that drains the precious health-giving liquid. Human beings ingest the bile and swear by this tonic for their various and painful afflictions.
Some years ago, at a Chinese bile farm, a mother moon bear did something thought to be outside the realm of her animal nature. Hearing her cub crying from inside a nearby crush cage, she broke through her own iron bars. The terrified men cowered, but she did not maul them. Instead, she reached for her cub, pulled it to her, and strangled it. Then she smashed her head against the wall until she died.
Why do I tell this story? Only because it tells us everything we need to know about the nature of love between a mother and a child.
Part One
One
The walls of my cell are painted an industrial white. They must think the color is soothing. Where I come from, it connotes absence, death, and loneliness.
People write to me. Mothers, mostly; they spew venom. That’s not surprising. I have done the unthinkable. I have parted the veil and crossed into that other unseen country. They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I am the bad mother.
But here’s a secret: in America there are no good mothers. They simply don’t exist. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who picks her child up late knows from the teacher’s cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child in the next room has failed just as spectacularly. They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven’t done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection.
Then too, motherhood is broken because in this place, to be a good mother is to give yourself completely. It is to erase yourself. This is what I refused to do. So they shudder when they hear my name, but inwardly they smile because they have not failed in the way I have.