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Bravey(4)
Author: Alexi Pappas

   My mother had to be kept in a special place, locked up, safe from herself. But even there she was not entirely safe. According to her medical reports, she once lit her room and herself on fire. The orderlies caught her and she did not die that day. What do you need to feel inside to light yourself on fire? Do you feel fire inside that you need to get out, or do you feel nothing inside and so maybe lighting your hospital bed on fire and lying down in it is the only thing that can make you feel something? I was brought to visit her the way you’d visit someone in jail, in a highly controlled and scheduled way, but I don’t remember anything other than the sterile white walls and fluorescent lights.

   My mother was deeply mysterious to me. In my mind’s eye she was very tall, which is funny because I later learned she was well under five feet. I’m actually much taller now than she was, but even so, in all of my imagined scenarios where I meet her again she is still somehow taller than me. She used to wear swooshy nylon sweat suits with matching pants and a jacket. I cannot remember her ever wearing anything but these matching sweat suits. When I wear matching sweat suits now, it is a secret nod to her.

       Sometimes my mother was allowed to come home. This was a highly anticipated event in my family. It meant she had demonstrated enough outward-facing progress to be released from the asylum. Even as a toddler I could tell it was a very big deal, like when a dad buys fresh lobster for the entire family, one for everyone. It’s a special occasion! But when my mother came home it never felt like she belonged there. I remember knowing in theory how moms and daughters were supposed to embrace and feel at ease with each other, but I was never able to actually achieve this with my mother. I don’t remember ever hugging her. I’m sure she sensed this awkwardness, too, which must have made it even harder for her to come home—especially when it meant coming home to my brother and me, two little potatoes who were growing and transforming wildly, always one step more evolved than the last time she saw us. I imagine that she must have felt increasingly alienated from us and maybe even started thinking that it would be better if she were gone.

   Even though her goal with suicide might have been to disappear, there are things about her I will never be able to forget. I have four memories of my mother and three of them are bad. They sit in the back of my mind all the time, like a lady on a green velvet chaise longue who mostly blends into the background but will sometimes wink and wave at me to get my attention. I remember she is there at all the wrong times. I am learning, slowly, to simply wave back.

 

* * *

 

 

   In my earliest memory of my mother, she’s leaning against the doorframe of the office in our old house wearing a red edition of the nylon sweat suit and smoking a cigarette. I still think of her anytime I smell cigarette smoke. My dad never told her not to smoke inside the house, even though I could see it bothered him. I figured that she was allowed because she was special. She stood in the doorway staring into nowhere, totally motionless save for the cigarette. Her hair, which was short and curly, absorbed the smoke around her. She looked like a movie poster to me, grainy and glamorous and ethereal, not all the way there. In college, girls on drugs who smoked cigarettes in fraternity basements looked like my memory of my mother: tragic and theatrical, beautiful and standoffish. People have a certain demeanor when they’re smoking cigarettes, like they’re listening to a story they’ve heard before, as if they’d rather be out there, somewhere else. Their hands are occupied and so is their mouth; they are not able to hold your hand or kiss you.

   My mother and I were home alone—my dad tried to be there to supervise as much as he could, but sometimes he had to leave. This was always a roll of the dice for him, since he never knew what she was going to do next, ever. Her behavior ranged from compulsively buying things, like several life-size wooden parrot statuettes that she hung throughout the house, to totaling our family’s minivan (possibly on purpose). Thankfully, I was not in the car when she wrecked it, but they found the car seat dangling upside down because it had not been secured properly. She was like a natural disaster and my dad was on alert all the time, never sure when her next episode was coming and how severe it would be—all the while balancing a full-time job, taking care of my brother and me, and managing my mom’s care while keeping her condition a secret. Her stays at home always ended abruptly with her needing to be committed to some hospital, whether it was the psych ward or a rehab clinic or I don’t know where else.

       My mother was mesmerizing to me. I watched her smoke her cigarette and then I walked up next to her, almost close enough to touch her, though I don’t remember actually touching her, ever. She was like a mean house cat that occasionally and very randomly permits you to approach. When she was really still like this and in one of her very quiet moods, I could get close. I have always been so jealous of little girls who dangle from their moms’ thighs like jungle gyms. It still makes me ache in a way that is hard to admit when I see a little girl latched onto her mom like a snail on a leaf. I know that I would have loved this privilege and exercised it often.

   I inched closer to my mother, almost close enough to feel the swooshy nylon against my skin, and then all of a sudden she came to life. She looked down at me as though I were a problem she didn’t quite know how to solve. It wasn’t mean but it wasn’t nice. It was almost curious. She paused, took a drag of her cigarette, and then did something I don’t remember her ever having done before: She reached her arm out to me. The caramel-brown mouthpiece was inches from my lips, and just out of focus was the bright hot point with smoke tendrils curling up to the ceiling. I understood she was offering me a puff. She didn’t make a big deal of holding the cigarette in front of my mouth. It felt casual, almost like an accident—except it wasn’t. I immediately felt special. The rules did not apply to us. I was her daughter and she was sharing something with me that had touched her lips and soon would touch mine. I felt like I was included in an exclusive thing that I had only ever seen her doing alone.

       She held the cigarette to my mouth and I did what I had seen her do. I watched her as I did it, like how a baby might look into her mother’s eyes as she breast-feeds. I inhaled shyly. The smoke was curiously harsh, like nothing I’d ever tasted before. I was used to soft things like chocolate milk and macaroni and cheese. I sensed that what was happening was not normal, that we were breaking a rule, but still I did it. I wanted her to love me more than I wanted to be good. I wanted her to include me. Who behaves crazier, a mentally ill person or a four-year-old who desperately wants her mother’s love? When the most important person in your life is floating away like a ghost, you seize any opportunity you can to feel a connection with her. So of course I smoked the cigarette, even though I knew that smoking was B-A-D bad.

   This cigarette is the only gift I remember ever receiving from my mom. But when she was away at the hospital, I’d take things that were hers and “give” them to myself. I took her lipstick and tried it on, wanting to see if it would make me look more like the woman I imagined I might one day become. I had ideas from Disney movies about what I might look like when I grew up. These days I wear ball gowns and high heels and full makeup far less often than the Disney princesses I once idolized, but back then they were my only guideposts. I took my mother’s mink coat and wore it around the house with nothing else on because it made me feel fancy and womanly and queenlike. Nobody stopped me. My hair was very short, so when I think back I realize I must have looked more like the Little Prince than a princess as I paraded around the house with our two pet pugs, Mugsy and Sushi, as escorts. I was allowed to do these things because as long as I wasn’t actually in danger, there were no rules. I took my mother’s ashtrays and used them as plates for my doll tea parties. All of her things were nicer than mine—my things were made of plastic, hers were made of porcelain. All little girls like to have fancy things that belong to their mothers, and I was no exception. It is our right as daughters.

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