White Oleander

Everything she knew about me, everything she walked around with in that thin skull case like a vault. I wanted to crack her open, eat her brain like a soft-boiled egg.

 

"Imagine my life, for a moment," she said, quietly, cupping her long ringers like a boat, like she was holding her life in a shell. "Imagine how unprepared I was to be the mother of a small child. The demand for the enactment of the archetype. The selfless eternal feminine. It couldn't have been more foreign. I was a woman accustomed to following a line of inquiry or inclination until it led to its logical conclusion. I was used to having time to think, freedom. I felt like a hostage. Can you understand how desperate I was?"

 

I didn't want to understand, but I remembered Caitlin, tugging, always tugging, Assi, juice!Juice! Her imperiousness. On the other side of the fence, past my mother's head, the young women in Reception watched one of them sweeping the concrete courtyard, sweeping, sweeping, like it was a penance. "That's what babies are like. What were you thinking, that I would amuse you? That you and I could exchange thoughts on Joseph Brodsky?"

 

She sat up, crossed her legs, and rested her hands on her knees. "I thought Klaus and I were going to live happily ever after. Adam and Eve in a vine-covered shack. I was walking the archetypes. I was out of my fucking mind." "You were in love with him."

 

"Yes, I was in love with him, all right?" she yelled at me. "I was in love with him and baby makes three and all that jazz, and then we had you and I woke up one morning married to a weak, selfish man, and I couldn't stand him. And you, you just wanted, wanted, wanted. Mommy Mommy Mommy until I thought I would throw you against the wall."

 

I felt sick. I had no trouble believing it, seeing it. I saw it all too clearly. And I understood why she never told me about this, had simply, kindly, refrained. "So you left me there."

 

"I hadn't really intended to. I dropped you at her house just for the afternoon, to go to the beach with some friends, and one thing led to another, they had some friends down in Ensenada, and I went, and it felt wonderful, Astrid. To be free! You can't imagine. To go to the bathroom by myself. To take a nap in the afternoon. To make love all day long if I wanted, and walk on the beach, and not to have to think, where's Astrid? What's Astrid doing? What's she going to get into? And not having you on me all the time, Mommy Mommy Mommy, clinging to me, like a spider..."

 

She shuddered. She still remembered my touch with revulsion. It made me dizzy with hatred. This was my mother. The woman who raised me. What chance could I ever have had.

 

"How long were you gone?" My voice sounded flat and dead in my own ears.

 

"A year," she said quietly. "Give or take a few months."

 

And I believed it. Everything in my body told me that was right. All those nights, waiting for her to come home, listening for her key in the lock. No wonder. No wonder they had to tear me away from her when I started school. No wonder I always worried she was going to leave me one night. She already had.

 

"But you're asking the wrong question," she said. "Don't ask me why I left. Ask me why I came back."

 

A truck with a four-horse trailer rattled up the road toward the highway. We could smell the horses, see their sleek rumps over the rear gate, and I thought about that day at the races, Medea's Pride.

 

"You should have been sterilized."

 

Suddenly she was up, pinning me by my shoulders to the tree trunk. Her eyes were a sea in fog. "I could have left you there, but I didn't. Don't you understand? For once, I did the right thing. For you."

 

I was supposed to forgive her now, but it was too late. I would not say my line. "Bully. For. You," I replied dryly.

 

She wanted to slap me, but she couldn't. They'd end the visit right now. I lifted my head, knowing the white scars were gleaming.

 

She dropped her grip on my arms. "You were never like this before," she said. "You're so hard. Susan told me, but I thought it was just a pose. You've lost yourself, your dreaminess, that tender quality."

 

I stared at her, not letting her look away. We were the same height, eye to eye, but I was bigger-boned, I probably could have beaten her in a fair fight. "I would have thought you'd approve. Wasn't that the thing you hated about Claire? Her tenderness? Be strong, you said. I despise weakness."

 

"I wanted you to be strong, but intact," she said. "Not this devastation. You're like a bomb site. You frighten me."

 

I smiled. I liked the idea that I frightened her. The tables were truly turned. "You, the great Ingrid Magnussen, goddess of September fires, Saint Santa Ana, ruler over life and death?"