Mother

Catherine, a light unkept, a heaving breath. Alone, sweet child of the desperate, wanting night.

The baby was gone by the time the sun had sunk low into the backwood brush, its final shadowy breaths seeping in through the tangled vines and fallen branches. Beyond the clearing, the riverbend, the hawthorns greying at the first signs of a vengeful winter. Beyond the widow’s house, where the light was left unkept, the porch lamp flickering through the night in quick, frantic bursts, stood the women in white—pale, saintly ghost.

Catherine wrangled the horses at twilight. She stood in the open field with her arms outstretched, her flaxen dress clinging to her thighs like cellophane. She waved and beckoned, calling out to each creature by name, her voice sweet and papery, buried underneath the sound of a violent wind. Her long, coiled hair rose from her back, billowing wildly behind her in tightly wound ringlets. Every night, she carried a blind and boundless faith that her children would answer her plea and return to her, where it was safe.

A mother has no favorite kin. She carried each of their animal hearts within her own beating chest, and they lived and breathed within every pulse of her aching body. To her devotion, they were tame. Pacified of every wild and innate urge, all three of her creatures knew how to recognize the longing beneath her soft-spoken voice, reciting their names in some form of prayer. And to her, they gathered, sisters, pearls.

I watched Catherine meld her forehead to the tender place between the eyes of each magical creature, one by one, as if they were communicating in some secret, unspoken language. Her silvery, tangled hair intertwined with each of their white, wild manes as she closed her eyes, whispering unintelligibly under her breath. She carried them as if through some invisible current, crossing the field, the evening light flitting across the patches of overgrown weeds and blades of grass.

I noticed a tremor in her left hand that I had not seen before. An unnerving twitch, a perpetual shake that seemed separate from the watery way she moved. I noticed the carefulness of her step and the reserved way she carried her weight on her left foot, as if she were unsure whether it could support her. Her movement was slow, and the animals were patient. They reached the top of the hill, beyond the fence that enclosed them within, and the earthly upwards curve obstructed my view.

I have been bound to the same, familiar place for as long as I can remember. Everything I see, I see from here. When everything around me darkens in the winter and warms in the spring, I remain confined to the river. Where the water pools in places, and rushes in others, making rain-like sounds, a constant static noise. Where the broken flower petals and fallen branches are submerged and then consumed, eaten away over time, and then lost within the current. I too, am submerged, but I am still waiting. Waiting to be consumed by the river. Waiting to be lost.

I am in up to my waist. My skin is covered in goosebumps, and I shake from the cold, clinging to my limbs, longing to feel warmth. I make guttural, wanting sounds through the night that are lost within the roaring wind and rushing river. I cry out through closed lips, echoing deep, desperate calls from somewhere in my chest. My devotion to stillness, to remaining stagnant in this place, overcomes me. I move easily in the river, bending to the water’s pull, swaying from one end to the other. I search for Catherine through the trees, and when I cannot find her, I close my eyes.

At first, I don’t hear the body that disrupts the water, sending ripples through my skin. I don’t turn at the unusual presence of another, or submerge myself entirely in an attempt to hide. It is only at the sound of the owl, unsettling and in harmony with my own pleading call, that I turn in the direction of the redwoods and see her.

She is barefoot and crouched, holding her knees, looking down at the river’s edge. The mud covers the skin up to her ankles, and the rest of her is coated in a film of dirt and dust. Even her dress, which appeared brilliantly white from afar, is yellowed and stained. Her thinning hair covers her face, tangled around her knees like straw. Leaving the raw skin on the crown of her head exposed, it sprouts in sparse, uneven patches across her scalp.

Her thin, bony hands clutch what appears to be a beaded necklace. Her fingernails are overgrown and yellow, and the skin surrounding them is infected and bleeding. She brings the beads up to her lips and touches the cross that hangs on one end to her mouth. Her lips are pale and tinged a deep purple. After touching the metallic silver to her skin, she whispers something quietly under her breath. She does not see me in the river, nor do her eyes trace her surroundings. She does not feel my presence.

From afar, she looked to me the same, as if taken from my fragmented memory and pieced together whole. Here, she looks older and ghost-like, drained of her humanity entirely. As if there is no blood left to move through her body and fill it with warmth, as if there is no pulse left in her heart at all. Still, she is quiet in prayer. A familiar, devoted calm I so easily remember. I softened at the hushed sounds of Our Father and Hail Mary. I wondered why she had returned to the river. Such time had passed between us; by now, bits of my remains had been scattered across the water, sinking to the bottom like a drowned silverfish.

She looked up for a moment, her watery eyes enveloping me in their piercing madness. Tears fell down her sunken cheeks, pooling in the hollowed-out parts of her face. I felt an overwhelming urge to call out to her, to say something, to have her see me. Her gaze flitted across the water’s surface for a moment, and I wondered if she could feel my presence, unmoving, unresolved. She had placed me here, all those years ago, defective at birth, the heart missing from my chest. The blood within me was uncirculated, unoxidized. A body to be mourned and returned to my maker, submerged in the river, and pacified by prayer.

I wanted her to see me. She was so small and childlike, her breaths jagged and labored, her shoulders trembling against the incessant wind. Her downward gaze created an impatience within me that only seemed to grow, and I felt myself succumb to panic. I wanted to drag her body down by her feet, to pull her into the river and make her see me. I wanted to beg her to teach me to swim, to lift myself up from the riverbed and piece whatever bits of myself she could find back together.

I flung toward her, wrapping myself tightly around her ankle, violently tugging on her bones and flailing. I could not see my own hands, and she showed no reaction to my tightening grip, her head remaining hidden between her knees, her eyes fixated on the earth. She could not feel me.

Mother

Can you see me?

Mother

I am hovering outside myself

I have been ripped from my body

I am begging to be returned.

Mother

I am pleading.

Mother

I draw closer

I reach further

I disappear somewhere within you.