Pieces of My Mother

by Melissa Cistaro

  I picture my mom, a thousand miles away. She has always been a thousand or more miles away, except for the occasional visits. Each of us carried her leaving in different ways. When she left, it seemed she took all the colors with her. The world turned gray and itchy like a tight wool sweater pulled across my chest. In the early years, she didn’t call us or show up on our birthdays, which deeply upset my father. He hoped she would at least acknowledge us on those special occasions. Later, she began to drift in and out of our lives like our live-in sitters, always seeming just out of our reach. If we were lucky, we might see her once—occasionally twice—a year. And then we never knew when, or if, we would see her again. Perhaps she might have stayed to hold our small hands if she could have foreseen the directions our lives would go after that summer.

  How would my daughter thrive if I leaned down to kiss her good-night right now and told her that I couldn’t live with her and her brother anymore? And that I wasn’t sure when I’d visit next or if I’d come back? How will I ever be able to answer my daughter’s questions—or my own?

  I close my eyes, rearrange my unbearable thoughts, and tuck them away. I am a mother now. A good mother.

  I rest my lips against Bella’s shoulder and breathe her in like sweet, warm bread. I want my daughter to feel safe. Every day I rebuild a scaffold inside myself in hopes that she will have something sturdy to hang on to.

  It’s all I can do for now.

  NOW

  christmas day

  Four Years Later

  The telephone rings midmorning. Barefoot, I step outside before answering. It’s my mom’s sister.

  “Melissa, your mom’s stopped eating and she’s not very—well, cognizant.”

  “Stopped eating,” I repeat. “Okay.”

  No, this is not okay. I’ve been tracking my mom’s struggle with cirrhosis and liver cancer over the past few years. I’ve witnessed her health deteriorating during our occasional visits, which I reached out for more frequently since she’s been sick. All my fears surface. She is leaving again.

  “The hospice nurse doesn’t expect her to make it to the new year,” says my aunt.

  I bite down on my thumbnail until it snaps between my teeth and squint up at the December sun. The calculation is a simple one. New Year’s Eve is in six days. Her sixty-fifth birthday is in five. Los Angeles to Seattle. I can get there before the sun sets.

  I look through the window at my daughter, Bella, waving a wand in big circles inside the house. Bubbles scramble up in the air and then drift down toward her bare feet. She is almost nine now but still believes in Santa Claus and the magic of Christmas.

  “Should I come?” I ask my aunt.

  “I don’t know. It might be too hard,” she says.

  I feel an odd pang of jealousy, like she wants to be the only one with my mom when she dies. But I can’t explain why I need to be there either. I just know I need to see her one last time. I cannot bear the thought of her sneaking away before I arrive.

  “I’m coming,” I tell my aunt, acutely aware of how disappointed the kids are going to be that I’m leaving them on Christmas and also feeling that there isn’t a moment to waste.

  Bella pleads with me not to leave her on Christmas, “of all the days!”

  “It’s not fair, Mama. Can’t you go tomorrow instead?”

  I shake my head, unable to articulate my sense of urgency. My son, Dominic, thumbing through a deck of new playing cards, asks, “When are you coming back?”

  I look out the window as if the answer is somewhere in the row of yellow and pink roses still blooming in the December sun, or in the way the palm tree casts its slender shadow against the house. I add and subtract the hours, minutes, and seconds. I have to get there before she dies.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back for sure.” I hate that I can’t give a definite time. I swore I’d never do this to my own children.

  “You have to be back for New Year’s Eve,” cries Bella. “You have to promise this. Please, Mama?”

  “Okay, I promise,” I say as I gather a random assortment of clothes and toss them into a suitcase.

  • • •

  My seatmate on the flight to Seattle guzzles a ginger ale and organizes the peanuts on his tray in two neat lines. He looks to be in his early twenties, at most. I’m not usually one to engage in a conversation on a plane, but the ride is bumpy from turbulence and I can’t seem to quiet my mind. I need to talk to someone, anyone.

  “You live in Seattle?” I ask.

  “Just outside Tacoma. I’m stationed at Fort Lewis right now,” he says. “My wife is having a baby any day now.”

  I smile. “Ah, you must be so excited.”

  “Yeah.” He fills his mouth with the ice cubes from his plastic cup. “And nervous. Big responsibility.”

  “I know. I’ve got two kids.”

  “That’s cool. You going to have any more?” he asks.

  I laugh at the thought. “No, my kids are big now—nine and twelve.”

  “I can’t even imagine what that’s like,” he says.

  Talking to this stranger about to embark on the journey of raising a child briefly lifts my spirits. The potential of birth overriding death this Christmas night is a welcome thought. I can’t help but wonder if his child will be born before my mom dies—or after. Our conversation circles around until he finally asks me where I’m headed for the holidays.

  “I’m going to see my mom in Olympia. She’s sick. Liver cancer.”

  “That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

  I turn to the window, searching for signs of light in the distance. There’s nothing else to say. This opportunity to connect with my mom—at last, before she leaves—feels possible. This is what I know for sure: I want to be there when she dies. I want to hold her body. It’s pathetic, this fantasy of a good-bye. But I keep imagining myself holding her hand when her body finally surrenders. Only then will I be able to touch her face and allow myself to finally feel a handful of her hair—hair that I have not dared to touch since I was a little girl. I will not contain my grief any longer. It will echo through the house. Though the woods. Past the stars. I will hold her until the sky changes its color.

  Every time she left when I was a child, I had to believe in the promise of her return. I tried not to miss her, but I did. This time, my mom won’t be returning, and I am terrified of my own unraveling. What kind of courage will I need when I arrive in Olympia?

  As a girl, the story of Pandora—and the beautiful and dangerous box that Zeus warned her never to open—mesmerized me. I came to believe such a vessel could exist inside me, and if I dared to tip the lid, it would expose all my dark and ugly places. Throughout the years, it was safer to keep all the things I was fearful of locked inside. Now, on my way to say good-bye to my mom, I am afraid of what I’ve contained for so long.

  The overhead seat-belt sign dings and lights up. We are closer now. The plane wobbles through the winter sky and I close my eyes, longing for those days when my brothers and I were a tribe of three.

  THEN

  fire and sugar

  “Wanna learn how to light matches, Melissa?” asks my oldest brother, Jamie, busting into my room.

  “No.”

  “Come on. It’s really cool,” says Eden.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to,” I tell him.

  No one is home right now. We are four, five, and six.

  “Jamie and me are gonna do it anyway,” says Eden. “Besides, you better do it or we’ll stuff Rice Krispies in your ear again when you’re sleeping.”

  My skin itches when Eden says this. I don’t want to wake up to the sound of snap, crackle, pop in my ear again.

  “Well, okay,” I say.

  “You’re a good sister,” says Eden.

  I follow my big brothers in their boxer shorts and white T-sh
irts downstairs to where it is cool. We huddle on the green shag carpet, the three of us like crows hanging out on a grassy field. Jamie reaches up and pulls out a pack of matches that he’s hidden behind the owl painting on the fireplace. It’s a creepy owl with tangerine eyes that stares at us no matter where we are in the room.

  “Lemme go first,” says Eden.

  “No, I go first, you go second, Melissa goes third,” says Jamie.

  My brother pulls fire out of a matchstick so swiftly. He’s an expert at it from the times he studied our mom lighting her cigarettes. I stare at the little wisp of fire like it’s a lucky firefly that’s guiding me. A tiny blue heart pulses in its middle.

  “Now, you got to hold on to it ’til it burns to the bottom. That’s the rule, Melissa.”

  Then Jamie hollers and flings his match across the room.

  “Dang it!” he yells. The match lands on the shag carpet and he jumps on it fast. “Don’t worry. It usually goes out when you throw it.”

  We all stare at the black spot on the green rug but don’t say anything. I notice the owl staring at it too.

  Jamie glares at me. “Don’t tell anyone about this or you’ll get in big trouble. You got it?” We nod.

  The smell of smoke makes me sneeze two times in a row. I hope my dad gets home from work before it’s my turn. I don’t like this game.

  Eden grabs the pack and tries three times before his match lights. Then he smiles big. I can see the yellow light flickering in both his eyes. He loves the fire more than any of us. He lights one after another until Jamie grabs the pack from him and hands it to me.

  “You gotta tear off a match first. Then flip the cover over backward and place the match tip between the scratchy stripe and the cover, then squeeze—and pull hard,” he instructs me.

  I squeeze my paper match between the closed cover and pull, but drop it when the heat pushes through the paper and stings my fingertips.

  “Try a new one,” says Jamie.

  Again, I try but the burn between my fingers is quick and sharp like a cut. I can’t do it fast enough. I just get the burn, no fire, no flame. I concentrate, pull hard, throw my match, step on it—nothing.

  “You’re wasting all the matches, Lissa!” Eden yells and grabs the box from me.

  I crawl on top of the dark blue couch and start counting the little toffee-colored dots on the fabric. Jamie and Eden argue over who gets to light the last match. They throw off their shoes and start wrestling on the carpet. My fingers sting, but I don’t say a word. Maybe I should tell my dad that our new babysitter goes to see her boyfriend down the street and asks Jamie to be in charge. But Jamie says this is why she is such a good sitter.

  “She trusts me,” he says. “Besides, when Mom comes back to live with us, we won’t need any more stupid babysitters.”

  Jamie says this a lot, but I’ve stopped believing him. I listen to the rooster clock ticking in the next room. My feet have fallen asleep underneath me and are tingly, so I wiggle them back and forth.

  Then Jamie jumps up from the floor. “Hey, I know something even better than fire. You wanna get some cake, guys? I know where we can get some. Any flavor you want too.”

  “You better not be lying,” says Eden.

  “Where’s the cake, Jamie?” I ask.

  “Follow me, but you have to swear you won’t tell anyone about it, okay?”

  “Okay,” Eden and I say at once.

  “Jinx,” says Eden. And I’m glad we agree on cake.

  Barefoot and silent, we follow our big brother outside. We crouch down on our knees to crawl underneath the house where the dirt smells like rain and there’s hardly room to stand up. Jamie says he found this secret spot and the stash when he was playing hide-and-seek. He hunches over a big brown box pushed into the corner and rips open the cardboard flaps. He pulls out smaller boxes with photographs of fluffy, frosted cakes. First I see the all-white cake with matching white frosting. Then there’s a pink cake with layers of frosting the color of cotton candy. And there’s even chocolate frosting on chocolate cakes and tall yellow cakes with creamy brown frosting.

  “Dad gets all the free cake mix he wants ’cause he works for Duncan Hines and they are a cake-making factory,” explains Jamie. “And you don’t even have to cook them. They taste good right out of the box. Since you didn’t get to light a match, you get first pick, Melissa.”

  There is no question in my mind. “I want the white one with the white frosting.”

  “Yep. That one’s coconut.” He beams and hands me the box.

  Eden picks the strawberry-pink one. And Jamie smiles like he’s our dad at Christmas passing out the presents.

  I tear open the noisy wax bag, and white dust flies into my face. I look inside. “Where’s the frosting?”

  “I guess it doesn’t come with the frosting. It’s good without it anyway.” Jamie shrugs.

  I scoop my index finger deep into the bag and pull up a miniature mountain. It’s cool on my finger and about to fall off. I shove it into my mouth. It’s dry, white, and sugar sweet.

  We shove handfuls of the sweet powder into our mouths and laugh when it makes us cough. We tear open boxes and sample them all. We say, “Oh, try this one next” and “Oh, this one is the best.”

  My bare legs are coated with fine, white powder, and I draw a smiley face on top of my thigh. For a moment, I stop wishing my mom were still here. I’m glad there is no one to tell us not to light matches and not to sneak the boxes of cake mix. I like being here with my brothers. We’re a tribe of three making a pact in the cool dirt underneath the house. There are so many colors and flavors, and after a while the cake doesn’t even taste so good, but none of that matters. We’ve got sweet things. Fire and sugar.

  NOW

  arriving in olympia

  Snow falls, dusting the roadways and tall evergreens surrounding Seattle. It’s close to midnight by the time I pull into the gravel driveway at my mom’s house in Olympia. It’s a two-story farmhouse set off a rural road outside town. A pack of dogs all bark in unison and greet me with bodies and tails wagging.

  My aunt Joanna—an eccentric, lovely, and smart shrink who is intensely fascinated with botany and probably one of the most well-traveled people I know—appears in the front doorway. The creases around her mouth deepen into a smile of empathy. We hug. Of all the people who could be here, I’m most grateful for her presence. And I feel for her.

  When my mom dies, my aunt will have lost all of her immediate family. Their brother, David, was killed in an avalanche along with six other boys when he was fifteen in one of the most tragic climbing accidents of the century. Their mother (my grandmother Joan) drank herself to death within five years of the accident. My grandfather died some years later from lung cancer. Now, Joanna will watch her only sister die from the same alcohol-related complications as their mother.

  “Why don’t you pop in the bedroom and see your mom?” my aunt suggests.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s been asleep all day, but she smiled when I belted out a song we used to sing as kids.”

  I don’t feel prepared to see my mom. I’m still trying to keep my emotions intact, and I’m uncertain where to gather fortitude right now. Maybe leaving my family on Christmas wasn’t the right thing to do. Then I remind myself why I’m here and how quickly she could go.

  The hardwood floor squeaks beneath my feet as I enter the room where my mom is sleeping. She is a heap of blankets. A mop of sandy hair frames her face and open mouth. Her skin is yellow gray. The folds around her eyes are as delicate as crepe paper.

  Where is my beautiful mother?

  My mind retreats to another day when she was a Katherine Hepburn look-alike with her intense blue eyes, swept-up hair, and taut cheekbones. I recall her confident gaze in the mirror as she painted a line of frosty blue shadow across her lids—the strap o
f her red camisole dangling from her shoulder. Her arms were strong then from riding horses, tending gardens, or pushing dairy cows aside on the farm where she worked one summer.

  I sit next to her on the edge of the bed, keeping my voice low. “Hi, Mom. It’s me, Melissa. Merry Christmas.”

  She opens one eye at me, the other sealed shut. Her eye, a pale blue marble, lingers on me a bit longer, and then she makes a shallow, primitive sound from her throat. Uncertain of how to help, I call out for my aunt.

  She rushes in and lifts a cup of water with a thick straw to my mother’s dry lips. Her mouth can barely work around the straw, and most of the water travels into the crease of her neck.

  “Melissa is here to see you. She’s right here, you know,” my aunt attempts to explain.

  No response.

  “Hi, Mom, it’s me.” I wait. “It’s me,” I say again, and now I feel like a needy puppy jumping up and down, trying to get her attention. She doesn’t recognize me.

  “She’s pretty heavily medicated,” my aunt says gently. “Maybe she’ll come around in the morning.”

  My mom doesn’t recognize my face or my voice. I tell myself it’s okay, even though it’s not. What matters is that I’ve made it to Olympia. She’s still alive and just as mysterious as ever.

  • • •

  I drag my suitcase upstairs to the office bedroom in my mom’s house. There is a small bed, an old oak desk, a few hundred books, and an assortment of shells, torn butterfly wings, and small animal skulls. I sit at her work space, swivel around in the chair, and feel a rush of hopelessness in being surrounded by these bits and pieces of a life collected—a life I never really knew—and all the books she’s loved.

  Years ago, in an attempt to understand her, I began to put all my thoughts down in lined notebooks. Back home, I have forty-seven spiral notebooks stuffed underneath my desk. Every page circles back to my mom leaving—then and now. It’s not healthy, I know. It’s affecting who I am as a mother. Half of me wanders in the past, and the other half overcompensates by striving to be the perfect mother—the one who will never leave.