I was angry with her, but God how I loved her. My need and hate were twins in my nervous belly. I stood in the doorway of her bedroom and watched her back and the digital clock that read 11:47 in electric red. It felt like the latest and most terrifying hour. Maybe she knew I was in there. Little by little I inched toward the bed. I can still recall the way I did it. There could be nothing worse in the world than being rejected by her, than her telling me I couldn’t sleep beside her.
It took perhaps three minutes for me to reach the bed. During that time I concentrated on the ridges of stucco in the ceiling. I gasped when I spotted a spiderweb in one corner. I was shocked my mother had missed it. She didn’t miss anything. She was the most diligent cleaner. The most observant woman in the world.
I spent another few minutes working up the courage to lift the cover and press one knee on the mattress. Even though I laid my weight down one teaspoon at a time, there was no way to do this perfectly. All of a sudden, she whipped around. I jumped back and nearly wet myself.
—What are you doing here? she said. I felt like something large and ungainly. My mother had the power to make me feel the opposite of a little girl.
I said, Mommy, please. I’m certain that I begged. I always begged with her. I felt safe enough to beg. I knew she would always be my mother. It wasn’t like the feeling I’ve had with some men, with ones like Big Sky where I thought any sign of need on my part would send him running in the other direction. But I’ve since realized that such fears stemmed from nights like that one, begging my mother, crying until I was heaving. But she stood her ground. I could not sleep with her that night. She wanted to be alone. And I needed to learn how to sleep by myself. Those were the reasons she gave. I couldn’t argue with the latter, but the former burned a hole in me. When I close my eyes, I can call up the exact pitch of her voice. The way her accent formed the word alone.
Alunn.
I was forced to slink back into my room, closest to the stairway. I lay on top of the covers because I still harbored the hope that she would come for me, scoop me into her smooth mother arms and carry me to her bed where we would cuddle and she would kiss my tears away. I would rear my butt back until it was tucked into the curve of her hips and thighs. She would hold me tighter than she ever had before.
I lay on top of the covers for hours like that. I imagined my grandmother’s rape. I imagined the man ripping her nude pantyhose off. I could hear her scream very clearly in my head.
By that time I was already obsessed with sex. It would only get worse. But by that evening in the Poconos I was preoccupied with it. Only recently have I been able to trace it back to a fuzzy memory from when I was five or six. I was sleeping in my parents’ bed, as I always did at that age. I had seen a movie about werewolves and was convinced they were going to come for me in my sleep. Every few months my mother tried something. New bedsheets, even a new bed. But nothing could get me into my own room. This one night they tried very hard. They began to prep me at dinner. Over pastina, naturally. My mother made it sound like I would be disappointing her very much if I didn’t at least try. And so I did. I tried for an hour and when I finally fell asleep I dreamed of a plush gray carpet in a room with a mirror, and I was looking in the mirror when suddenly the mirror cracked in half and I saw a stripe of black blood across the carpet. I heard the howl of a wolf. I woke in terror and ran into their room. My mother held me and I fell asleep easily. Hours later I woke again, this time to movement. It was a king-size bed and sometimes I would wake up not knowing where my mother was, and if she was in the bathroom, I would wait restlessly until she returned. This time she was not to my right, but she was on the bed. She was on my father’s side and he was moving on top of her. I turned slowly back to the other side of the bed and saw her bra and underwear and nightgown on the floor. I suppose I lay there until it was over and I fell back asleep, but I can’t remember. I blacked that part out. Though it definitely happened—my parents fucked in bed beside me.
That night in the Poconos my mother didn’t care if I slept or not. My grandmother had been raped and my father had gone home to be with her, perhaps to hunt the rapist in the streets of Orange, New Jersey. Yet there was something else my mother suspected my father of doing that was the reason he didn’t take us with him. Now that I know most of the story, everything makes sense.
All of that aside, I still don’t understand why my mother wanted to be alone in her bed that night, why my body beside her would be anything but helpful. To this day it’s the same chemical burn in my heart that I cannot cool.
23
THE TWO WOMEN SAT QUIETLY at my kitchen table. I asked if anyone wanted an iced tea. I wondered if Alice could tell I was trembling or whether she’d noticed
