Schrödinger’s Mother
by Shinelle L. Espaillat
“You’re always tired.” They are almost pouting when they say this.
You have heard this phrase from four different people this week. Your tiredness would likely baffle your single-mother mother and her single-mother mother and a whole line of ancestors whose labor literally built the world. You are not wading in troubled water; you are not withstanding water hoses and snarling Dobermans to demand your right to exist. But you still feel like Atlas. You want to find a way to express this to your almost-pouting progeny.
You want to tell them: Yes, my loves. This is true. My body is always on the cusp of imploding, deflating to a melancholy gelatinous mass. My marrow cannot bear any more weight.
Instead, you say, “You’re right.”
“Do less.” They flick their wrists to indicate all of the less that you should do.
You have just come home from a long, unpleasant day at work, full of dark political undercurrents and other people’s breath. You have just taken off your shoes and are holding them in one hand as you head for your bedroom. They have asked you to do something that requires energy. You have said—maybe snapped—that you are tired, and your voice probably felt to them like Seabreeze did on your adolescent skin. You pause, one foot on the bottom of the staircase, one hand on the banister. Your bed is 28 steps away; if you keep moving, you can just rest your eyes for a few minutes. Or you could rewind, slo-mo moonwalk back through the front door, back into your car. You could press your forehead against the steering wheel and Just. Not. Move. You could turn on your METIME playlist and let the 90’s R&B smooth your lumpy mood.
You take a mental deep breath, not a real one, because you think a real one would seem like the beginning of a sigh, which will make them think that they are bothering you, which will make them think that you don’t want to talk to them/help them/be their mother, and that is not true. Instead, you hum. Patti LaBelle. “My Love.” You used to play it for them, sing it to them in utero, in the bassinet, in the crib, in the toddler bed. They do not recognize it, or they do not care.
“So. Can we go?” They wait a beat. Your confused face tells them that you have already forgotten the request, and exasperation mixes with their vocal fry. “To Stop & Shop? For the ingredients?” They are in their baking phase, and they want to make a complicated dessert whose calories will layer onto your menopause belly. They, and your kitchen, will look like reverse Rorschach blots when they are done. You will be reminded of their toddler selves, and you will want to cuddle them even as you remind them to clean up their mess even as they roll their eyes, say “I know,” and then miss a spot.
But they are also having a spurt of soul growth. They might understand, if you just say no. They might ask if you can do it another day, and they might not be salty at all.
But.
Will you remember this as a missed opportunity? On the car ride, they might drop a nugget of meaningful conversation. Or this request could be a cover for a moment of need. The future fractures into a kaleidoscope of possibilities that you see all at once, like you did when they were little and also now when they are big and you saw/see every way they might get hurt running falling jumping spinning drawing building eating loving and you wanted/want to rush forward and take all the pain they hadn’t/haven’t yet experienced but you wanted/want them to have adventures and be full people.
They will probably not remember, in the future, this time if you take them to the supermarket so that they can make chai latte eclairs with caramel ganache, which you didn’t even know was a thing. Or maybe they will, in the future, think of this as a significant thread in the tapestry of your relationship. Will going or not going be a Thing You Regret?
“Sure.” You take your foot off the step, your hand off the banister. You scrape together your strength and firm up your marrow. “Let me get my keys.”
Shinelle L. Espaillat is a writer whose work has appeared in Mom Egg Review, Leon Literary Review, The Banyan Review, midnight & indigo, Pleiades Magazine, Torch Literary Arts, Tahoma Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Minerva Rising, and Ghost Parachute, among others, as well as in the collections Ghost Parachute: 105 Flash Fiction Stories, Shale: Extreme Fiction for Extreme Conditions, and How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems That Illuminate Emotions in Learning and Teaching. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes, and she has been supported by a Powerhouse Residency and by Kimbilio and Baldwin for the Arts fellowships. She holds an M.A. in English-Creative Writing from Temple University. She teaches at Westchester Community College in NY.
Return to Folio Page