Oops — I’m sorry, I broke a promise today. It brought me right back to the time I snatched a fernwood twig from a bush, right back to when I stepped on and broke a lumber on our front porch, to the time I smashed the porcelain vase sitting on Mother’s nightstand. And the one on her windowsill.
We have many things of porcelain around our house, you see — fragile like our stories sometimes seem, dainty like the dangling conversations we used to have in front of the big TV. She almost always had her way; the living room was painted white, the kitchen counter white, the tiles a blinding white, wedged into the floor. Sometimes, on winter days and outside the windows, the snow was white on the ground. On the grass fields and garden hoes, on the creaking wooden swings.
The only one that wasn’t white was me.
***
I spent most of teenage years marooning around the house. I sat and close my eyes, upright in my heavily-cushioned bed, and felt the clotted blood in the front lobe of my brain disperse and run through the many veins of my body. Saturday mornings were no different from Sunday mornings, and Sunday mornings were no different from Monday mornings. Often times, there was nothing to look forward to, except for the fried eggs, milkshake, and cottage cheese on bread I occasionally got for breakfast; on days when Mother was home and we were happy to have each other’s company.
From what I’ve heard, I was born and raised on the south side of Louisiana, before I was two years old. From what I’ve heard, my parents and brother might not have wanted me anymore and gave me away to a white lady to care for. Mother. For what seemed like forever, I felt like Heidi, stripped from her hometown by a relative, except I didn’t have her high hopes and optimism for life. I was the master of endurance and silence, if it had not already become too unbearable.
I went to school, but had no feelings. I sat in classes, but had no feelings. I was glad that school didn’t require me to express myself as frequently as did home, because then I wouldn’t have to put up a smiling face for others to see. No one took enough notice of me to discover my deeply-buried sorrows, and I was glad. I was reluctant to reveal my true self, and avoided making friends and eye contact alike.
I liked it that way. If I were to exist in solicitude, I may as well stay consistent.
At home, I climbed stairs with my head drooped and eyes cast down. I didn’t know if the grandfather clock missed me when it chimed its usual “tick-tock.” Upstairs, it was a world of heavenly silence; the door of my bedroom wouldn’t even creak as I swished into the room. I lowered my backpack. And I sat. And stared. And sat. And stared. And sat. And stared. And thought about how boring my life was.
This was my happy hour before Mother came home. She’d come home exhausted, pulling off her scarf with a very long sigh, and quietly strode into the living room with the gingerness of a cat. Her shoes were not heels, yet they made a candid clacking noise, ornamenting the silence.
Her voice was what broke the hovering, icy indifference in the air; it pierced through the silence and its particles clamored to the ground.
“Marguerite, what would you like for dinner?”
*** I never had the nerve to tell her that I don’t care whatever the heck we had for dinner. I lived under her roof, yet I treated her like a guest. Her roof, her rules. Let’s have spaghetti for dinner, Mother.