I watch my mother closely. She hasn’t said a word to me in a while now. All I’m doing is pretending to play with what I’m left with, all I’m doing, really, is observe her. I like using my hands when I play, so does she.
I don’t think that my mother’s name fits. Neither does her voice. Nothing matches. She has my brother in her belly right now. When she was still talking to me, she said that she would put everything into him, just like our father did with her. And that his birth would be truly hers and that something, on that day, would die. She told me that she had put stuff into me too. And now she’s just silent and takes up all the space.
I don’t know why, but I think my brother should stay inside. I don’t feel it’s safe to come out. He has nowhere to go. She talks to him so much, I think words can travel through skin. Her voice sounds sore when she looks at me and my hands play automatically. I watch her because I think I remember what I felt like inside of her, how her words reached me, how I couldn’t go back. I was born afraid and regretful.
She tells my brother how small he is and when I look at her belly she’s lying. She puts her hands on herself and keeps talking. I can’t see the images in her head. I can’t find them in my head anymore, but I know that they’ve been there before. My body feels them still. My mother pretends to be strong. And when my father plays she pretends, but she, and this was a while ago, came up with a plan and solution that brought life back into my father’s eyes.
My father has images in his head as well. He shows them to me because he trusts me. I know what to do with them. They belong to me, he always says, they are mine to keep, he says. My parents sound very soft, children that I can’t take on. My mother has very strong emotions inside of her, they have hollowed her out, her images reach my brother. He needs to understand quickly that she is in control, that he doesn’t matter without her, that he won’t be without her. I am useful and he will be too.
My mother knows how to drain the life from her face and forward it to him. The things she whispers to his body buried in hers are the same things my father repeats to me when all the lights are out. He brings me back into her and I can’t move much unless he takes my hand. I pretend to play. He watches me and I know that he can see in the darkness. I am imagined.
And I understand how close I am, still, to the death my mother was talking about. What goes through my mother’s mouth goes through my brother too. I’m waiting for him to find his way back.
Croque-Melpomene 