She says, “Remember how you used to read to me?”
I remember our two bodies pressed together, the whisper of pages. Those nights when I was good.
I nod.
She says, “I really liked that, Mommy. It was nice. You were such a good mama.”
I hug her to me. I’ll never let her go.
Other times she is harder to please. She asks, “Why?”
My heart clenches. I say, “They were going to take you. I couldn’t keep you. They would have taken you.”
“Who?”
“Them. Your father and his people. You would have grown up without me.”
“So you did this thing instead?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It hurt! When I fell into the cold, it was so painful. I was just a little girl. I was so small.”
Her lips are suddenly blue, her eyes bloodshot, her hair dripping. The cell fills with the rush and roar of seawater. It smashes past my ankles and then my knees. I am flailing, thigh-high in the churn of an angry ocean. The water is reaching higher. It will rise above my head soon. She comes to grasp me in her drenched embrace, the scent of brine reaching deep into my head. She smiles her siren smile and her eyes are emerald again, her silver tail flashes. I must wrench myself away from her with a cry, and then I am again alone in my small bed.
*
I have committed the unimaginable sin. I am the one who makes all other mothers good mothers. In America, to be a mother is to be crucified in a million ways. There is no way to do this job perfectly. Each decision will be derided or decried. Beyond all that, I am the madwoman in the house, I am the maternal nightmare. But also consider this: this is a place that devours its young. Here there are so many other little ones destroyed by these who should love them most.
But I’ll say this also. If you had looked closely enough, you would have seen. Most of us were damaged long ago, hurt in some tender place long, long before we were mothers. Wounded flowers, bruised even in their tight closed bud, bear bitter fruit. The prisons are full of us.
*
My mother writes often. She begs for permission to come to America, to see me. I never answer her letters. I am coming to some sort of understanding. It had not been Samson, as she had revealed in that fateful phone call. It was that other that I still cannot bear to name. It had been too hard for my mother to see or speak the truth, and I had been the sacrifice.
And in turn, this is my inheritance: silence and shame. A silence around the body so complete that the idea of breaking it was worse than the specter of death. A shame so deep that it needed to be buried. And the soil this secret would be buried in, my flesh. I wonder what it would have meant if I could have spoken up in childhood. What would it have meant if I knew I would have been believed? This is not a justification. This is only my truth.
They say that family is the place of safety. But sometimes this is the greatest lie; family is not sanctuary, it is not safety and succor. For some of us, it is the secret wound. Sooner or later we pay for the woundings of our ancestors. This was the truth for me and for my beautiful bright-faced child.
*
People talk of forgiveness. They say that it’s merciful to forgive, that entire religions were founded on the concept. They say that I should be forgiven. They forget that I don’t want this. I should be locked in this cell for life.
If this was a fair world, the old machines that enacted retribution would be employed. The rack, the scavenger’s daughter, that coffin-like box you stepped into with long spikes that pierced your organs so that you bled out slowly over days. They used to burn witches and pull the hags half alive out of the flames, so that all could see the weight of justice before plunging them back into the flames.
On the island, the Kandyan kings used elephants. They secured the prisoner spread-eagled on the ground, then drove the elephant to plunge a thousand pounds onto his back. You could probably hear the snap of the man’s spine, the pop of his skin, the hissing escape of his blood. This is what I deserve; these are the retributions I long for.
*