her knees and smile up at him, whichever one it was. I will be yours,
she seemed to promise, then, he, whoever, this one or that one,
would be on top of her. afterward she would whisper just barely, I
am pregnant but you are the one I love, no, they would say. each one
would say no.
alone now in her room down south, refused over and over again,
her insides seeping blood, her insides coming out slowly, bit by bit.
then, she called him. I am pregnant, she said. I am in trouble, she
said, oh, he said. I am going to have this little Che, she said, trying to
tease, maybe I will die, she said. I am bleeding, she said, no, he said
coldly, you will not die. please let me call you, she asked in a whisper,
all right, he said.
she would work in the day, distracted, sick, bleeding, at night she
would hide away in her room, bleeding, nauseous, her heart dark
and sad, the taste in her mouth bitter without end.
she would call him at 7, before he went out for the evening, she
would call him after midnight when he returned, she could hear the
man or woman he had brought home with him mulling around,
touching his neck, holding his hand, he kept his voice low and their
conversations short. I have found a way into his life, she thought,
now I am back in his life.
then it stopped, she did not call him. she did not answer the phone,
she did not go to classes, she did not go to the doctor. I will die here
alone, she thought.
she sat in her room, not sleeping at all. she bled, then, it was over,
she had vomited and bled and gagged and then it was over, she was
weak and alone, her insides cast out. no more little Che.
now she was pregnant again, her cup runneth over.
this time she would come to term, this time there would be a man
beside her. this time she would have a baby and a man and a place.
she was almost 40, no longer young, her face was taut and bitter,
now there were deep wrinkles around her eyes, her mother had died
the year before, sad, bitter mother, I have not become you.
she had died alone in her bed-sitting-room, she had died, her hat
on the sofa, she had died never looking her daughter in the eye. who
had that woman been, they had not seen each other in nearly 15
years, there was nothing between them, nothing, tons of food cooked
in a pot, tons of laundry washed in a tub, nothing, pennies for candy,
nothing, had she too come out of a mothers body, who was that
mother, her mothers daughter.
her mothers daughter, that was her anguish, her curse, the foul
smell in the middle of her life, the bad memory in each and every
dream.
she saw her mothers face in her own, no, dont look there, she
stilled her mothers voice every time it entered her own, what was her
mothers voice, why did she know it so well, the voice of a woman who
had lived in silence, who was this mother, there was a memory like
