I Was a Child in a Child's Body.
I Was a Child in a Child's Body.
But that child’s body was tucked inside the body of a mother, a ghost mother who would be my doorway to a new world
I was a child in a child’s body. But that child’s body was tucked inside the body of a mother, a ghost mother from the future whose dotted lines hovered just outside my own boundaries, beyond my uneven hips, my flat chest, my sturdy arms and legs.
What I wanted was to expand, fill in the shape of that ghost mother. I wanted to become her. She would be my doorway to a new world.
I would have two children, a girl and a boy—or maybe three—all lined up from biggest to smallest. I would take them into the deep green forest and toast cheese on sticks over an open fire, like in Heidi. I would give my children salty milk straight from country goats that would lick crushed corn from our open palms with their scratchy black tongues. In early winter, we would decorate a fir tree with pinecones dipped in peanut butter, slices of dried orange like round suns. We would hold hands in a lopsided circle around the tree’s wide branches and sing a blessing to safeguard the animals during the snowy months ahead. After, I would bake bread from wheat berries I ground myself, cutting thick slices off a loaf still steaming from the oven, slathering the bread with butter and raw honey all the way to the crust. Then, one day in the dark of winter, when I was wild-eyed and bloated from baby, baby, baby, my firstborn daughter would pull her little brother’s newly sprouted hair and push him headlong into the sharp edge of the banister, and before I knew what I was doing I would slap her—my palm print blooming like a hibiscus across her cheek.
For the longest time, I would believe that slap was cursed.
In fairytales, the most vulnerable women are old. Past the usefulness of childbearing and housework. They are the family storytellers, interpreting folklore in light of their own history and best interests. They try to sweeten up their youngest listeners, reminding them that however ugly and useless a crone may appear, she could also be a fairy in disguise.
She could be magic.
My mother is old now.
Tell me about Wyoming, I want to say as she stares out her window at the mean lake. Tell me about your beloved Mafia and your satin sheets, how long you knew. Tell me about when you were young, before you married my father, before your parents died when you were still a child. Tell me again about your aunt Tot, how you pretended to fall into the outhouse over and over and how she always came running, no matter how many times you played the same trick. Tell me about the chickens that lived upstairs, the time your uncles got drunk and sawed a house in half, how you went off to play in the forbidden woods and punctured your leg with a railroad spike. Tell me once more how you loved watching the blood spurt up in a perfect, pulsing arc.
My mother taught me that when small things went missing—her favorite hairbrush with its yellowed bristles, her wide black comb, her silver sewing scissors—you looked for those things until you find them. “Look harder,” she would say. “Use your goddamn eyes.” But when big things went missing—men, houses, dogs—you didn’t ask questions. You didn’t mention it again.
You simply moved on.
That’s the thing about doorways: once you step through, you’re through. That is to say, even if you are able to cross freely back over the threshold, you will never see the world the same way as before. It’s like looking through eyeglasses for the first time. You can take the glasses off again, but you will always know that cottonwood leaves shimmy singularly in the wind.
Someday, I will return to the Wyoming of my childhood. I will roam those familiar fields all the way to the foothills. Forget mountains. They’re too far out. I will smell the peppery dirt and rub sage into my palms, crumble it into my hair. I will rip a tumbleweed from the ground and feed it to the wind. I want to remember everything. I want to recall what I don’t know I’ve forgotten. How big is Casper Mountain? Was my bedroom ceiling truly slanted?
I will visit the town of Douglas on June 31 and walk in the moonlight between midnight and two a.m. I will cast a watchful eye. I will trace my fingers along the length of barbed wire that separates one plot from another.
I will feel in the dark for that particular point, sharp and exact, where I turned.
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Oh my, I am totally floored by your writing. Reading it, I feel like a small animal visiting your tree of sliced dried oranges. I am licking the peanut butter from pinecones, and tasting the whole forbidden forest of your characters lives through my fingertips. I am the old woman, and the tiny wee babe packaged inside a mother. I am the hand that slaps, and the red flower blooming across tender skin. Thank you for this gift.
Jeannine, what a wonderful piece. Reading your work reminds me of how much I still need to learn and how much I still need to implement. The visceral feel of this, the forest, the pinecones, the cheese sticks, the salty milk...gosh, so inviting...then blooming like a hibiscus...I love this so much. I did a rough draft of an essay last night and now I'm excited to give it a visceral revision. Thank you, Jeannine.