The Year My Mother Came Back

by Alice Eve Cohen

  After dinner, Julia slings her Princeton Crew bag over her shoulder (now that she’s an athlete, she’s got tons of swag). Eliana reaches up and Julia reaches down, folding her long arms around her little sister. They hold each other for a long time. “I gotta go, Eliana,” whispers Julia, gently.

  I ASK MY sisters about our childhood.

  “For the most part,” says Madeline, “I remember growing up being a pretty happy-go-lucky time.”

  I laugh.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Did you really say ‘happy-go-lucky’?”

  “Yes, that’s how I remember it.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way!”

  “I thought you were being ironic.” I stifle my laughter. I’m amazed.

  “But you know me—my credo is, avoid negative thoughts at all costs,” she adds, with a touch of self-mocking humor that I find reassuring. “It wasn’t all great. Dad and Mom argued a lot. And Mom had all those phobias. She was afraid of mountain roads and open windows and thunder and elevators and sharks and the ocean. There was a year when she was agoraphobic. And she was so indecisive and so overprotective that it drove me crazy. It was mortifying when she’d march into school in curlers and a raincoat over her nightgown, to give the principal a piece of her mind.”

  “Now that I remember exactly the same way.”

  “And there were all these race issues in our neighborhood. Starting in junior high, I was passionate about the civil rights movement. In eleventh grade I went to the prom with a black guy, and a few days later, I overheard a classmate saying, ‘Madeline went to the prom with a nigger.’ But I had already established myself as a marginal, lefty, high-achieving nerd, so I guess that insulated me. And I had my friends. So I stand by my statement. All in all, my childhood was happy-go-lucky.”

  (I guess I don’t have the happy-go-lucky gene.)

  “I wish I kept at least some of Mom’s writing,” I say. “Dad was in such a hurry to clear out the house after she died. I feel terrible that we dumped her papers. Boxes and boxes, thousands of pages. I can’t believe it’s all gone.”

  “I have her masters thesis from Columbia,” says Madeline.

  “Really?” I’m stunned.

  “Yeah,” she says, “You want it?”

  “Yes! Definitely. Thank you.”

  “I remember having a very happy childhood, being loved and cared for in a fun and happy home,” says Jennifer. “It’s hard for me to believe that you have those negative memories and feelings about Mom. I put her on a pedestal. She loved and protected us so intensely—she was like a mother bird who would peck the eyes out of anyone who hurt her babies, she loved us that much. And I saw how different and awful it could be for the other kids in our neighborhood. Rosalia’s father beat her and her siblings with a belt on a regular basis; in second grade I saw him throw his wife down the stairs. And it was just terrible the way my friend Emma’s mother told her she couldn’t play with me anymore, because all Jews had bedbugs. So, in contrast to my friends, whose parents were so cruel and violent, I felt safe and cared for. It was hard to compete with my big sisters for Mom and Dad’s attention, but I knew we would always be protected and loved by our parents.”

  Wow, okay. I remember all these awful things Jennifer described. And I, too, remember feeling loved and cared for in a fun, happy home—that is, when I was a little girl. In adolescence? Not so much. I’m perversely envious that the cruelty Jennifer observed in the neighborhood underscored for her how wonderful our family life was in contrast; whereas, from my camera angle, they reinforce my memory of our neighborhood as a hostile place.

  My sisters and I are best friends. We grew up in the same house, in the same neighborhood, with the same parents. But we perceived it all so differently while growing up, and we remember it so differently as adults. Why? Genetic predisposition? Birth order? Circumstance? Chance? How significant was it that Mom’s losing her breasts coincided with my breasts developing? Madeline was at college at that time, and Jennifer was still a little girl, so Mom’s illness didn’t affect them as dramatically. For me, it was a tectonic shift, which caused a tsunami of tension between me and Mom.

  SIX

  Dr. Giordano warned me that the last week of radiation was the worst, and that the symptoms would get progressively worse for a couple of weeks following treatment. I apologize to Eliana for not hugging her (because it hurts), and then regret mentioning it when she says, “That’s okay, Mom. It’s embarrassing when you hug me in front of my friends. I only do it because I know you like it.” Ouch and ouch.

  It takes them forever to position me. Reggie and Jamal push and prod my back and ribs, which hurts. I try to lie passively. I’m dead weight. They seem unable to move me. And the skin on my left breast is burning, burning.

  I can’t think about anything but breasts.

  When I was twelve and my breasts first started developing, they felt like apricots, and I loved touching them at night under the sheets.

  La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

  Still not over.

  A Short History of Breasts (my mother’s and mine): My mother didn’t breastfeed; it was out of fashion. When I gave birth, breastfeeding was back in fashion, but I was a flop. The whole freaking La Leche League couldn’t figure out how to get my leche to flow. The sublime utility of breasts, ever since the first mammal secreted milk, two hundred million years ago. The futility of mine—and of my mother’s. Our utter udder failure. Except as an erogenous zone. In that context, I have enjoyed outstanding form and function, for four decades and counting. Oh, yes. Yes. YES, GOD, YES!

  Ouch, ouch, ouch, poor left breast.

  I think about other women’s breasts. In the movies, in the locker room, roommates, friends, that nude beach. All varieties of beautiful. I picture women and their bare breasts in myriad shapes and sizes.

  Damn. I want to get this over with.

  How ’bout that time when my friend Hinda, the cofounder and president of JogBra, enlisted me as her model for “BigBra,” a new product for big-breasted joggers. I met her on the Lower East Side, where her tailor, Shlomo, fitted me, and together we designed a Nobel Prize – worthy bra that would enable buxom women the world over to jog in comfort.

  Longest ten minutes ever. Aarrgh!

  AS MY TREATMENTS are nearing the end, I meet with Eliana’s teacher, Cindy Swan, to line up our ducks.

  “How long will Eliana be out of school?”

  “It’s hard to predict. Depends how she deals with the pain. We think she’ll be home for about six weeks, till right after the New Year. When she goes back, will she have a paraprofessional to help her get around the school safely?”

  “It’s already in our system.”

  “She’s worried about returning to school using a walker. She’ll be self-conscious if other kids stare at her.”

  “She can always talk to me about it.”

  “This will be really hard for Eliana.” I fight back tears.

  She pushes the box of tissues toward me. “It’ll work out.”

  “ELIANA,” DR. CAMPBELL said cheerfully, when we met him almost a year ago, “you’re lucky that leg-lengthening is an option.” He grabbed a fake fractured femur from his windowsill display of artificial bones encased in metal scaffolding, and brandished it with manly brio, looking like a high-tech caveman. “Until recently, limb-lengthening was considered a medical impossibility, except in Siberia. After World War II, hidden behind the wall of the Cold War, Dr. Ilizarov discovered bone-lengthening, by accident.

  “Dr. Ilizarov instructed one of his patients to tighten a screw every day for two weeks, on a device meant to straighten his fractured knee. But the guy accidentally turned the screw the wrong way. Two weeks later, he was surprised to find that the patient had lengthened his own leg.

  “Fr
om this lucky accident—not so lucky for that fellow, but lucky for you, Eliana—Ilizarov discovered bone’s capacity to create new bone.

  “This is what your fixator will look like,” he said, handing Eliana another fractured femur—this one with a long metal rod screwed into it with six large bolts. “Do you have any questions?”

  Eliana stared at the impaled bone in her hands. “Um . . . Will my life be different, I mean, like on an everyday basis?”

  “Yes. You won’t be running around, jumping, skipping, or climbing for a few months.”

  “Can I go to gym class?”

  “No.”

  “Will I miss any school?”

  “Yes. Some kids go back to school a week after surgery. Other kids need a few weeks or a few months. Every child is different.”

  “Cool! I get to miss school! When will I be a hundred percent better?”

  “It takes eight months.”

  “Let’s just get it over with,” she said.

  Dr. Campbell was pleased that she was so agreeable. But the casual bravura of her “Let’s get it over with” told me that she envisioned this as a mere inconvenience. I’d heard from other parents about the months of pain and incapacitation. I didn’t want to rush into an irrevocable decision.

  Dr. Campbell countered my furrowed brow with a raised eyebrow, which I translated to mean, Unfurrow your brow, Mom! This is as much as we can tell an eight-year-old. We don’t want to scare her out of having surgery. She’s too young to imagine how painful this procedure really is. She said, ‘Let’s get it over with,’ and that’s as much as we can ask of her right now. Children are resilient. She’ll get through this. Trust me.

  Our eyebrow dialogue persuaded me to trust him. Until he added:

  “In my opinion, any parent who doesn’t have their child’s leg lengthened—when they have the option—is guilty of child abuse.”

  His statement had the opposite of its intended effect. It made me wonder if subjecting my child to this torturous procedure was a form of child abuse. I resented his damning insinuation about any parent who hesitates, who questions, who has the audacity to consider that surgery for a non-life-threatening condition may not be right for their child.

  The absolute certainty of his statement about parental guilt was even more infuriating, in light of the several times in my life when doctors have made declarations of absolute and unassailable truth—which have subsequently turned out to be absolutely and unassailably false. (Case in point: my pregnancy with Eliana, which three doctors and four radiologists misdiagnosed for six months as everything but a pregnancy.)

  “When modern medicine affords children this opportunity to improve the quality of their lives, parents who stand in the way . . .”

  The more he talked, the angrier I got. I began to feel like my mother, enraged on her daughter’s behalf at some real or imagined injustice. I pictured Mom storming into my high school in a raincoat over a nightgown, demanding “a word with the principal,” earning a reputation as “an irate parent” and “Alice’s crazy mother,” humiliating me in the process. I didn’t want to do that to Eliana. Maybe I was getting a little carried away. I had to believe that Dr. Campbell had Eliana’s best interests at heart.

  “I just want to get it over with,” Eliana repeated, handing the fake bone back to the surgeon and defusing our eyebrow standoff.

  SEVEN

  I finish reading Mom’s master’s thesis, written for her degree in Public Law and Government from Columbia University. Her study, The Politics of Housing in a Suburban Community, analyzes how the many factions within our town of Mamaroneck perceived a politically charged issue in entirely different ways: an urban renewal project, fought over for years, and ultimately rejected. After a fire ripped through a tenement building that was home to low-income immigrant and minority families, a housing project was proposed as a remedy for substandard housing in the town. The proposal inflamed tensions across the ideological spectrum.

  THE FLICKERING CANDLELIGHT bounces off the red and gold walls, casting a warm glow in the restaurant. The turbaned sitar player closes his eyes, while the tabla player takes a solo, synchronizing his drumming to intricate vocals, alternating seven-beat and eight-beat patterns, articulated at lightning speed—TakKiTa/TaKiTa/ TaKa, TakKiTa/TaKiTa/TaKa, TaKiTa/TaKa/DiMi, TaKiTa/ TaKa/DiMi, TaKa/TaKiTa/TaKa/TaKiTa/TaKa/DiMi, TaKa/ TaKiTa/TaKa/TaKiTa/TaKa/DiMi. His staccato syllables command attention. There’s a hush in the restaurant, until the sitar player starts up again, then the festive din of conversation resumes.

  Mom sits across the table from me, in one of her ethnic shmatas—that’s what she calls her loose-fitting Indian print dresses she’s taken to wearing—and a long, beaded necklace. “I’m in a good mood, and I’d like a beer,” she muses. The waiter instantly appears with two Kingfisher beers.

  “Cheers!” We clink bottles and drink.

  “Belated congratulations. I just read your master’s thesis, and it’s, well, kind of amazing.”

  “Goodness gracious, you read that? The whole kit and caboodle?”

  “Yup.”

  She blushes, puts her hands on her flushed cheeks. “I’m honored. It’s not exactly easy reading.”

  “No, but it’s fascinating.” I pull the hundred-page manuscript from my purse and lay it on the table in front of her.

  She puts on her bifocals and picks it up. “I haven’t seen this since—well, it’s dated 1965. I conducted the research from 1961 to 1965, from the time you were—seven to eleven years old.”

  “I heard your voice when I read it, and I want to talk to you about it tonight. I don’t know if we’ll see each other again.”

  “Of course we will,” Mom says, flipping through the pages. “Are these your pencil marks or mine?”

  “Mine. This is a photocopy. I wouldn’t write on the original.”

  “Pff, why not? It’s been gathering dust for half a century. How gratifying that someone has actually read it—that you’ve read it. I’m terribly flattered. Thank you, Sweetheart, this is a lot of fun for me. Let’s see what I wrote. I hope it’s not all drivel and nonsense.” She reads aloud. “ ‘It was a conflict on a small scale. But the particular issue of public housing acted with centrifugal force—whirling outward from the central question was a vast field of conflicting values, rights, and interests.’ That is precisely what it was like, Alice. Centrifugal force — a cyclone. ‘There is no precise beginning or end to the story’—Is there ever?” (She flips pages to the next highlighted passage, nodding in agreement with her own words.) “ ‘. . . It is difficult to precisely define social groups or classes. As a family’s income increases, as it moves upward and outward away from its former home, the life style changes. Class seems not so much a collective unity, but a suspension of attitudes, values, aspiration—linked to the past, listing to the future—where each family is perched in the community web, at a given point in time.’ ”

  I laugh. “Those are the same big words that went over my head when I was a kid. I underlined that section because it resonated with my confusion about our family’s social class while I was growing up.”

  “Well, of course it would. Our family existed in a volatile place in that community web, eluding easy class definition. What’s next? Ah. ‘The insulation of life in suburbia, in separate neighborhoods, would seem to be of a higher order than that in central city areas’—I’ll say it was insulated! Blah blah blah, skip that, skip that—‘In suburbia, one can function to a large extent within an orbit of one’s school, church, shopping area, social club, and train, without too often crossing another neighborhood or other ways of life.’ ”

  “Were you writing about your own frustration with suburban life?”

  “I wasn’t writing about myself. I’m a social scientist.”

  “I know that. Sorry if it seems—”

  “But God, yes, there were times when I thought I’d suffocate in our town. You’re wise to raise your family in the city—it’s good for you and it’s
good for your kids, and for your husband.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What did I write next? Blah blah blah . . . ‘The athletic and social societies of the well-to-do, the golf, beach, and yacht clubs, are separated quite precisely according to religion: Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish’—Did you know that your father was not allowed to join the yacht club? —‘The Negroes are conspicuously absent from these sports activities. . . . The number of associations is astounding. They whirl within the community like so many self-propelled satellites.’ My guess is that it still pertains today. Who knew my paper would hold up nearly fifty years later?”

  The waiter brings two more Kingfishers. We clink and drink.

  “I really like what you said about the theys in this next section. It’s completely relevant today. And it resonates with my childhood perception of racism and anti-Semitism in our neighborhood.”

  She nods to herself, while she reads aloud, and the tabla player matches her syllables and her nodding with his drumming. “ ‘. . . The community is fragmented into many small sub-groups whose views of each other are seen as if through a prism: a set of distortions, a mosaic of images of “they,” as perceived by those in the varying strata of the community. As you speak with individuals, there is a constant use of the personal referent ‘they.’ The ‘theys’ in the community are ranked in an intricate and precise patterning. And depending upon the position of the individual, the “they” may be ranked either above or below one. . . .“They” has an important function in camouflaging remarks that might otherwise be considered inflammatory and discriminatory. It also involves the listener in a conspiracy of silent acceptance of the “right” way of doing things. For example, no one in public speaks of the Negroes or Jews. What one can say is ‘they’ don’t live the same way you or I do.’ ”

  “In our neighborhood, our family was the they.”

  “Yes, Alice, that’s right. . . . I was a complete outsider, because I didn’t conform to the narrowly defined codes of behavior. Did you as a child ever feel like a they in our neighborhood?”