Mother love

Frontiers, 1999 by Eason, Alethea

Mother walked the carnival the night before I was born, making up her mind about father. By the time she got to their trailer, water flowed between her thighs. I was born a huge baby girl, pulling her uterus down with my descent. She needed repair and pints of blood. I heard this story often as I grew up. The older I got, the more vivid her account became.

Mother left my father, who worked the ringtoss, shortly afterwards. She claimed he was unreliable and smelled of cigars. I don't know. Before I could remember him, the hook he used to take the prizes down with hit a live wire instead of the stuffed panda he was aiming for. "Big dumb Italian," Mother said when she spoke of him and their three unhappy years together.

Mother met Father in Clarksville, Arkansas. The carnival had put up its tents across the highway from the diner where she worked. Life on the road, even if it meant being dirt-poor, appeared for a time more romantic than serving the same buck-twenty-five breakfast special, day in, day out. Had she known what she was getting into, how hard living on the road would be, she would have listened to her mother and never married Mario Spinetti. I know the story by heart.

When I was ten we settled in Fresno. Mother had married Frank by then. She said he'd be stable, unlike you-know-who, and longed for the child Frank would have given her had it not been for the trauma of my birth.

I've imagined my baby sister, a child fair and calm, free from the swarthiness and big bones bestowed upon me. I grew to five foot eleven and one half inches, and with each inch Mother reminded me that I was my father's daughter.

When I was seventeen I bought a bus ticket to Denver and promised myself that if she couldn't accept my Sicilian skin and my size 18s, I would never come back and never ask for help. I've been able to do just that, at least until today.

Mother and Frank still live in Fresno. "In one of the whiter areas now," she's reminded me over the phone more than once. I knock on their door, Tommy's hand in mine. A man I don't know answers it, and then I see it's Frank, faded and shrunken. He holds a champagne-colored poodle who looks a lot like Lucille Ball. Like Frank, Lucy is old. She yips once and is quiet.

"Margo, Patrice is here," he says. He looks at Tommy, smiles, and says, "Hello, son." Frank's a bit washed out, but he's always been okay with me. "Hello, Patrice." I lean over to kiss his cheek.

I'm to spend three days here before I leave Tommy to drive to Stockton to meet my boyfriend. Sam repairs cooling towers, those squat buildings next to industrial plants. He's hired me as a laborer, but he knows I could be a decent carpenter. The carpenters are nonunion. Sam says they only make ten bucks an hour and thinks that's criminal, but I've never seen money like that.

Mother's velvet slippers snap on the foyer's tile as she runs in baby steps with her arms unfurled. The wash on her hair matches Lucy's coat. She looks fashionable in black harem pants and a red silk blouse, the same color as her lips.

She plants a waxy kiss on Tommy's forehead. "So this is your little boy. Shame on you, Patrice, for keeping him from me for so long."

Frank stands with his hands in his pockets. He sees our things and goes out to get them. Tommy's clothes are in grocery bags. Mother eyes them and asks, "Kentucky luggage, Patrice?"

I follow Frank into the living room. He turns the TV down and asks, "Want a drink?"

"Sure."

"Scotch?"

I've forgotten what having a drink means to Frank. I tell him water will do, and he heads for the kitchen. Mother walks in holding Tommy's hand. He stands mute as he sizes things up. I don't want to leave him here.

Tommy runs to one of the bags and pulls out a clay sculpture he made in his kindergarten in Denver. He walks back slowly and hands it to Mother, looking shyly up at her. "It's a bowl, not an ashtray," he says. When he first showed it to me, I made the mistake of calling it one.

Mother examines it closely and says, "Of course, it is."

I begin to breathe again.

When I enroll Tommy in school I find out there's a bus he can ride, but Frank says he'll be glad to take him. The two of them are in the backyard planting bulbs. Mother and I sit on the couch watching them through the picture window.

"Are you sure you can't stay longer, Patrice?" As she asks me this, her voice grows sugary sweet.

"The job starts the day after tomorrow."

"What is Tommy's daddy doing now?"

"I haven't a clue," I say, bracing myself for her to tell me I should have married him as she has countless times over the phone, but she changes the subject again.

"So, this Sam, he likes to travel? Like your daddy?" I want to scream that Sam couldn't be anything like him, but then I stop myself. Sam thrives on being on the road. He likes diesel fumes and truck stops and chugging down six-packs with his crew in motel rooms after work. He tried me out on grunt work on a job in Coalstrip, Montana, before we came to California, and I saw this side of him. I know he'll never settle down and marry me. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, afraid I have nothing better to do except follow Sam the way Mother followed my father. But, in the morning, I tell myself it's not like that at all. I'm going to earn a living.