I
My mother’s face is thin and ghostly. The skin clings tightly to the structure of her skull. Her face is gaunt with hollow cheeks, a symbol of years of starvation. Her body, a skeleton; I watch the bones rotate in their joints. Her hips stab outwards from beneath her characteristic, floral dress. The bottom swishes about the air, falls above her knees which look like russet potatoes.
“There are 55 calories in a green apple. When I turn 55, if I am not beautiful, I will be certain to leave you something nice in my will.”
I am too young to know if I am supposed to laugh at this. She is sitting and I reach upwards to touch the bottom of her long auburn hair.
II
His mother did not birth me, but I call her “Mom” when I reach into her fridge and ask if I can have the last glass of orange juice. She smiles at me and tells me that I can. She always smiles at me and smells like warm perfume. My mother cries a lot and reeks of the smoke of cigarettes.
His mother is not married. She is a doctor at the hospital a few miles east. When our knees get scraped from the stiff, dry summer hay she scolds me while rubbing medicine into them.
“You guys should be playing in the grass out back, not in the Thompson’s field across the street. I charge my patients’ insurance company for this, do you have insurance?” she says and smiles kindly.
We don’t have any cream for scrapes in the medicine cabinet at my house. It is filled with orange plastic bottles with white caps that I’m not allowed to open. Most of the labels have my father’s name on them. The rest have my mother’s name. My father is angry a lot. My mother often complains of feeling dizzy.
In our fridge there is never orange juice.
III
I am the age my mother was when I was born. I am in high school and wish boys liked me how they liked my mother when she was my age. Sometimes I sit in class and imagine what it would feel like to have a baby in my own stomach. I push my belly outwards and hold it delicately. My history teacher catches me not paying attention and says my name firmly. I look at him and wonder if his mother was my age when he was born.
“If not,” I think, “then she must already be dead since he is so old.”
IV
She yells at me so much that it makes me hate her. She tells me she only wants the best for me. She wants me to get accepted into an Ivy League college with enough scholarship money so that we won’t have to plunge into debt for it. I am only allowed to see my friends on Saturday; the rest of the week is for homework and studying. My mother makes me write practice college essays so that when I graduate in three years I will be able to send out the perfect ones.
My father never stands up for me when I get into fights with my mother. She doesn’t understand that I want to do the things that popular kids do, like sit in the mall parking lot and watch the boys skateboard. When my mother has grown tired of yelling at me, she stomps down the hallway into her bedroom and locks the door. My father hugs me and tells me that my mother only wants what is best for my future.
When the three of us are in the car or at the dinner table I am not allowed to mention the time my mother slapped me across the face for getting an A- in advanced chemistry. I am also not allowed to mention the rough draft to a suicide letter my mother once found hidden under my bed.
“Please pass the salt,” or, “turn up the radio,” we say, and we discuss which school I am most likely to get into.
V
“Wake up! Hurry! Come look!” She is shaking me in my bed and her eyes stare at me with delirious excitement.
“What is it?” I ask, bewildered.
“The moon! You have to come see the moon! It is so beautiful tonight and blue-orange and it looks like it is resting in a bed of clouds!”
She grabs my hand and tugs me out of bed. I almost trip on the long legs of my pajamas as we run down the stairs and then outside, onto the back porch through the kitchen. She gestures and giggles, leaping onto the grass with bare feet. Her bathrobe remains securely tied at her waist as she spins in circles in the damp grass. Her hair is short and blonde, it looks silver in the moonlight. I run towards her, opening my arms and jumping into her, hugging her ribs. We fall onto the ground laughing, and then we are still. We lay on our backs and she asks me if I will paint this exact moon for her, someday.
“I will paint it for you in the morning when I wake up,” I whisper like it is somehow a secret.
