Look at her. Your daughter.
They wiped you off and brought you to my breast. You felt vaguely amphibian. I didn’t want to look at you yet. I wanted to savor the feeling. I wanted to delay the gratification because I knew I would keep living until I got it.
They would need to take you away, put you in an incubator and heat you. They were going to take me away, too. We were going in opposite directions. I want to tell you how bad that was for me. But I can’t describe it.
They said, Five minutes, take this time. You should have this time.
Finally I looked at you. And I gasped because I saw that you were her. You were the girl in all of my dreams. You were on the Grecian seaside looking out of portholes, you were in the fast-food parking lot waiting for me to come back. You were two and three and four and five. You were ten. You had been there since the beginning. And since the beginning someone has been trying to take you away.
I told the nurse closest to me that I wanted everybody out of the room. I didn’t want Alice to come in, though at that point they would have let her. I’d been waiting for a long time to meet the daughter of my father’s mistress. And I didn’t hate her. I loved her. But this hard life of mine was not meant to lead me to Alice. I didn’t come here for her. I came for you.
I waited until they were all gone and then I took your body in my hands and held you to my chest. I wanted to put you back inside of me. I ran my finger down the perfect slope of your nose and cried out the way I had after that first date with Big Sky. That primal, unlivable ecstasy. But this time the love was real.
I could already see you wouldn’t need much from anyone. Your mouth rooted around for seconds before your lips sealed around my nipple. Then your eyes slipped open and you looked at me. Your eyes! You have the teal eyes of a mermaid. Your face is indisputably stunning. Nobody will be able to look away from you. The way that I could not look away from you. Now that I’d seen you, I couldn’t bear never having you in front of me.
NO MATTER WHAT, AT SOME point I will not be there. I see you in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. You are getting out of the Dodge Stratus and cupping your hands over your eyes. You’re looking for me. I know I am here and you are there but still I strain my eyes trying to see inside the store, thinking there is no way I left you in the car. I wouldn’t do that. If I were there.
Please go into the store, I think. Go into the store and ask for me. Tell them I’m your mother. Tell them you can’t go to anyone else, even if I’m dead. You can eat some food if they give it to you, but you can’t go home with any of them. I go inside your ear and whisper, Not even Alice.
I have told you many things, but I have this other memory, it is the best one I have. I was five or six and sleeping in my parents’ bed, on the sheets with the print of the big fat cat. My mother didn’t like cats so I don’t know why she bought the sheets, probably they were on sale at Marshalls. I was sleeping in a butter-yellow dress with lace trim and I was very tan; we had just come back from Italy where I was outside in the sun all day with the boys and the farmers and the little goats and I suppose the most important part of this story is that I don’t have an actual memory of it; all I have is a picture. My mother took the photograph, with her cheap but reliable Minolta. Probably it is the early morning and she thought I looked beautiful. I did, with my dark hair about my face and my pink lips lightly parted and my smooth cheeks. Besides the jewelry and some of her finer dresses, the shower caps and soaps from hotels, and all of the good handbags he bought her, that was the only other item I kept from her things. That she kept it, that she took the photograph at all, was the thing that sustained me for so long. The past, you see, was all I had.
As much as I see myself gone, I can just as clearly see us in that fast-food parking lot. It’s close enough that I can feel the sunshine on the macadam and inhale the orange smell of the food inside. I look over and there you are. Staring at me, in this way. I can’t believe you’re really there. You’re more real than I dreamed you. And you’re looking at me like I’m your mother.
We will enter the drive-through and you’ll whisper your order to me. I’ll add two chocolate shakes and a box of fries to share. Then we’ll park. You’ll have my mother’s golden waves and my father’s astonishing blue eyes. We will drop shredded lettuce into the seams of our seats and laugh and you will tell me to chew with my mouth closed because suddenly I’ve reverted to one of my mother’s peasant habits. We
