Out late dinner on the counter thrift store later?? - mom I come home to her loopy cursive letters on the door, mentally preparing myself for the frozen pre-cut vegetables and the takeout box of cold rice I end up seeing on the counter. I empty the box into a glass bowl, stuffing it into our barely functioning microwave that has to be pried open with the “grandfather spoon”. The warped brass spoon is one of the many compulsive purchases Mom made at the thrift store when it was on the verge of closure. Now the bent utensil clutters our drawers with the rest of its long lineage— a reminder of how discounts, odd family heirlooms, and gently-used signs can break a family. I grew up in the walls of the thrift store, and according to Mom, at age five, I outgrew my asthma by learning to breathe through the stale scent of dusty items. At age eight, I started wheeling my own cart of doll clothes in taped plastic bags and half-used sticker sheets. At age ten, I got my first loyalty card, which looked enough like a credit card to make you look rich in elementary school. But, at age eleven, you learn to demystify the places you deemed magical when you were younger. The store was in an awful location, sandwiched between a cigar shop and a faded Indian takeout store in a ratty, off-the-mill strip mall. Each punched-out star on my hollow card reminded me I was mortal. Life was finite, and yet, I kept coming back every Sunday. But Mom found a way to push meaning into objects that screamed of deprivation, objects we didn’t need but that if we adjusted our lives, we could accommodate them. [she told me gardening shears could work in winter] This house feels claustrophobic, with every crevice and every corner filled with decorations. Everything here came from someone else. I imagine that, at some point in time, these objects held a part in someone’s life, that they forged this deep connection, and then suddenly the object was just too different, too worn, too out-of-place to be a part of that person’s life. I live in a house of things that could no longer be in people’s lives. All stories rest here except the ones with happy endings. [she told me to read old magazines in spring] I learn about my mother in pieces. She lived in Colombia with her older sister but immigrated to the U.S. with her aunt and uncle when she was seven. She waited for her sister, who never came but sent money in gradually ceasing payments. She made paper boats out of magazine scraps, wrote spirited poetry, and often got into petty fights with the kids in the neighborhood while her aunt and uncle struggled to make ends meet. In one of her old teen magazines, an article, “Transitioning to Adulthood” tells one to cut ties with the past that holds them back. My mother vowed to never marry—especially if she could use money that would otherwise be spent on “settling down” to buy a motorcycle and drift across the country, consumed by neither marital nor maternal responsibilities. Instead, she grudgingly met her future husband early at nineteen. Conceived on the night of the housewarming party, I became not a symbol of hatred, but even worse: boredom. My mother never craved the comforting constraint of our home. How its walls slowly closed in on one if they merely stared long enough. When Mom was home, he was out. When he was home, Mom was at the thrift store. They worked their schedules around one another until the house belonged to us. If we were close, and I was older we would sit on the porch with green tea, discussing how the august breeze could come and go so quickly, rifling nothing but the sun-bleached hair down our backs. I would tell her not to mourn him before he embedded himself for the second time. Now our house feels empty because it aches for a lost presence. Every time we went to the store, I remember us parting ways with separate carts and coming back to check out, eyeing her disapproval at my barely filled cart, upset that I didn’t feel so inclined to coat this house with other people’s stories so we wouldn’t have to live in ours. [she told me tulip seeds could bloom in summer] Mom had a kid with a guy from work once. He was a part of her secret world far away from my own. Late nights spent together, soft muttering from outside the front windows of our home, lingering conversations on the blackest nights. He must have made her happy. Happy enough to sleep in on Sundays, at least. I remember the outline of a man: tall, fair-skinned, smiling. If I think hard enough, I see the slight swell of her belly before hushed sobs around a small, sleeping frame. Promises that were never made but somehow broken. I think of tulips framing her face and tall man telling me I looked too much like her. For a second, I wished he was Dad, and I contorted his features until my heart grew heavy. That night, I felt close to someone who had hurt me. With the biological basis of attachment working against me, I cried myself to sleep that night, thinking of a happy ending. Thinking of Sundays at the thrift store. [she told me butterfly wallpaper could look prettier in fall] No one is the same after they become a parent. But what about those who say goodbye earlier? Mom took on longer hours. To keep this house, she said. To live a better life, she said. In the daytime, I would believe her when our freshly-papered walls colored our floors. At night, I'd stay awake just long enough to know she’d come back. We lived under the same roof but in different worlds, one of gardening shears and worn magazines, one of tulips and butterfly wallpaper that could cover it all. The clutter in our house aches with despair as if it just cannot alleviate the inherent sadness of this home. As if it isn't big enough, proud enough to do my job for me. “Transitioning to Adulthood” doesn’t talk about that specific moment when you go from girl to woman, but I know it’s at this moment that I feel myself carding through Mom’s past as milestones on my fingers. Seventeen years old is the nearly imperceptible difference between being a daughter and being a mother. It’s when our milestones mesh that I understand a mother’s pride. Like usual, I’ll engrave those milestones in my gut as if they promise an eternity of gratification. And like mother like daughter, we'll learn to believe them, even if antique items line every crevice of our house, and I don’t even have to look inside our fridge to know it’s empty. Sitara is a 16-year-old from Massachusetts. She is a prose editor for her school's literature and arts magazine and loves to write short fiction and poetry. She's also passionate about neuroscience and psychology. When she has free time, she's usually around her cat and dog. Comments are closed.
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