The Raw, the Painful, the Shameful

When am I embodying an authentic self? Is it when I am in the flow of writing or painting, and nothing exists but the page or canvas I am filling? When that flow happens before my brain has registered what my hands are doing, they having taken on a life of their own?

Is it when I am making love and feel as if I’ve dissolved into a single body part that is being ignited by the touch of a lover? When my body becomes a universe, and this spot he is loving is distilled into the essence of a single brilliant star?

Perhaps. But it is also when I am at my worst, when I say the things that shame me, things I should know better than to say because I am saying them to my children. It is when I am hurting the most, and when I see my own pain reflected in my children’s faces.

* * *

“What’s wrong?” I ask my fifteen-year-old son.

His hair, so thick with curls that it feels like a sponge when I press my hand upon his head, hangs all over his face and shoulders, shielding his face from view. His large, lash-heavy eyes, as black as his hair, look smaller behind the hefty lenses of his black-framed glasses.

He brushes past me to go into the kitchen, his newly broad shoulders hunched and raised like armor against me. He ignores me, grabs a frozen veggie chili mac meal from the freezer.

“I was about to make you dinner,” I say as he jaggedly opens the box and places the food inside the microwave. “Or not. I guess you don’t want to eat anything I cook.”

He stands with his back facing me. I ask him again what’s wrong. And then again.

Whipping around, he glares down at me. He’s nine inches taller than me now, and I feel small next to him. “I can’t tell you because you’ll get angry,” he says.

I know this game. I’ll point out that I can’t make such a promise. What if you tell me you put a mouse in your sister’s lunch bag? I’ll say. I didn’t, he’ll say, And besides, she doesn’t take lunch to school.

What if you are horribly mean to little children in a park? I'll say. Yeah, I’m not gonna do that, he'll protest. Ok, but what if you do? How could I not be angry? Ok, Mamma, if I am horribly mean to little children, then you can be mad. But today, you can’t.

I’ll assure him I won’t get angry, as I sincerely hope I won’t.

But today isn’t the day to make that claim, as I should know. I’ve run out of my meds, the ones that keep me away from the edge, that prevent me from sobbing from dawn to dawn. I’d begged the doctor for them around five years ago, when my children started intensive therapy for severe depression and anxiety.

“I can’t keep crying at work, during meetings with people who are sometimes strangers,” I’d told the doctor. “I tried looking online what to do—pinching my hand hard between my thumb and forefinger, holding my breath, counting, pressing my finger firmly against the bottom of my nose. Nothing works. I keep crying at the gas station, in the grocery store, at the bank. It’s getting out of control.”

And so the doctor agreed, and as my home life got worse and the children suicidal, the drug doses got higher. One day without them, and I’m a slobbering mess. Two days without them, and I have only a toehold on the edge that drops into the abyss.

Someday, I’ll go back to the person I used to be, the person who had no need for drugs, who could find contentment from touching flower petals, cradling a rose in my palm and tracing the delicate veins in the translucence of color. To the person who’d sink, laughing, onto the grass whenever a dog passed by to let it nuzzle my neck and place its paws on my chest, knocking me over. Who had dreamed of living in a house full of my children as I nestled on the couch with their dad, my back pressed against his chest, his strong arms around me, his bristled chin resting on the top of my head. The dream that never happened because I had chosen poorly.

My son at last tells me what’s wrong. It’s about Christmas break, how he wants to stay with his dad’s family for the full two weeks, including over New Year’s. I tell him no, that he has to spend five days at the end of the trip with me, after his ten days with his father.

“Why won’t you let me stay with my cousins?” he says as he brings his tiny meal to the table. “I want to stay in Cleveland and Daddy says you won’t let me.”

My ex-husband and I had agreed in the court documents to alternate Christmas breaks for custody. But we didn't end up alternating as agreed because he told me each year how important it was that our kids get uninterrupted time with their paternal grandparents who weren't well, and with their same-age cousins. My own parents had moved across the country to California, to be closer to me and their grandchildren. But my ex-in-laws had continued to live in Cleveland, Ohio.

I start pacing. Grab a garbage bag. Bend to pick up all the torn fluffing our puppy has spread all over the living room, along with bits of hard plastic, scraps of fabric, shredded paper towels, chewed cardboard boxes, and everything else she’s set out to destroy that day.

My movements get increasingly frenzied as I talk; I lift decapitated stuffed animals off the carpet and toss them onto the dog bed. “Of course, Daddy would say that. Naturally, he didn’t mention my offer at a compromise.”

“What offer?” my son says in a tone that tells me he doesn’t care. He is morphing before my eyes into his father, the same scowl, the same contemptuous quiver of the lip, the same expression as the man I’d escaped.

“My offer to stay with friends or at a hotel in Cleveland, but to be allowed to visit your grandparents’ house and watch you open presents on Christmas morning, and to visit you over New Year’s eve.”

“You can’t come into their house!” he says, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Which, perhaps I have.

I fling a displaced pillow back onto the sagging sofa. “I’ve known your grandparents since I was your age,” I say. “I’ve spent time with them, all of them, since I was fifteen. Fifteen! No one is going to drop dead if I enter their house and sit quietly in a corner.”

“They might drop dead,” he shouts. “They hate you.”

“Your grandparents hate me? Why? They know how miserable we all were until I left.” I try to catch his gaze. “Look how happy your dad is now with his girlfriend,” I say.

It’s been three years since he started dating her and he still won’t let me meet her. But she will survive if I walk into the house in Cleveland.

I plead with my son. "I won’t bother anyone—never have. I’ve always been obedient, always following the rules of your dad and his family. No one has to cook for me or cater to me. I just want to be in your presence and not be alone the whole break.”

I know this is useless. I know his father won’t let me into the house where I practically grew up, into the family that had been mine for two-thirds of my life.

We exchange more words. I get angry. Too angry. “All those years of fucking sacrifice,” I scream, slamming and throwing torn toys and pillows, polyester filling flying everywhere. “I didn’t insist you see my family too. My cousins, their kids. The ones you never got to know. Your fucking dad wouldn’t even let me take you to a zoo in Cleveland for two hours when you were little. Two hours out of sixteen days. Year after year. He controlled everything.”

I've never sworn before in front of my children. I've told them language has power, that swear words can be hurtful or inappropriate to say. And I try my best to not belittle their dad. Unless we are all making jokes about each other, like the jokes his dad frequently makes against me.

Usually, I succeed in my efforts: I know the importance of them loving their father.

Now, I am shaking. I am failing.

I think of a picture my daughter drew of me when she was eleven. Me: stick figure in a triangle flower dress with lighting zigzagging from my head. My hair, turned into lightning, standing straight up. Why is my hair like that, honey? I’d asked my daughter. Because you’re always so stressed, Mamma, she had said.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my hair was standing in frizzed zigzags bursting out of my head right now. I grab used plates, bowls, and silverware off the food-encrusted dining table, letting them clatter against each other. I drop them, too loudly, into the sink. I can barely see.

“Fucking piece of shit. All that crap. All the times he abused me. What kind of man raises his voice at his pregnant wife—in public and in private?”

My son’s head is bowed over his paper container of dinner. His hair glistens in the lamplight.

“You know how I went into labor with you?” I continue, though I know I need to stop. “It was because he was fighting with me so much, and I was crying so much, it brought on labor pains. That’s how you were born,” I say, staring at my son, willing him to meet my eyes, though he won’t. He is better than me at that moment because he won’t look at me. Because he shouldn’t.

“I hate his guts,” I tell my son, speaking about his father. “I hate how he continues to ruin my life.”

“You lied to me,” my son says. “You told me you wouldn’t get angry. You always lie about not getting angry.”

My daughter bursts out of her room. “How am I supposed to study if you guys keep yelling?” she says. She turns on her brother, as she does when she defends me, the thing she shouldn’t be doing, shouldn’t feel the need to do. “You’re so mean to Mamma,” she says. “What about what I want to do? No one cares about that. Stop hurting Mamma all the time.”

I sink onto the stairs, my face in my palms, my tears soaking my bare arms and legs.

I will apologize to my son over text the next day. He will not reply.

The puppy watches me from under the table where she’s been hiding. My daughter holds me, saying it’s ok, Mamma. It will be ok. I want to disappear into a void as dark and peaceful as a hole deep in the rich black soil.

* * *

I am 8 months pregnant with my son, in the passenger seat of the car my husband drives. His parents are in another car following us to the mall. My daughter, almost two years old, sits in her car seat in the back, silent.

It is December in Cleveland, and we are visiting my in-laws. I can feel the baby inside me shift, as if uneasy. My husband grips the wheel hard. He turns his face to mine and I see the familiar distortion. Nostrils flared, eyebrows drawn together, eyes reddened and flat, mouth contorted.

Later, I won’t remember what he yells about this time. Maybe I’ve asked to be excused from going to the mall, because that is what I’ve asked, though ny request was denied. Maybe it’s because my daughter has asked to stay home too—because she did. Or perhaps I request to give her lunch first before leaving, because that too, happened. It can have been anything, really. During my marriage, I can rarely remember the subject of the fights, probably because the subject is not the point.

I twist in my car seat to look back at my girl, to touch her tiny foot in her tiny boot. She gazes back at me, her face ever-serious, her eyes wide, her fingers twitching.

We reach the mall and my husband throws open his car door, bangs it shut, and then goes to the place where his parents have parked, to help them navigate the icy lot.

I put one hand under my belly, lifting it from where it hangs too low, and use the other to heave myself out of the car. I am huge; I forget how many times I’ve been asked if I am carrying twins. Then, lifting my daughter from her seat, I balance her awkwardly on my hip, and follow my husband, the tears freezing on my cheeks. She rests her cheek on my shoulder, her hands grasping my coat.

The mall has embraced the idea of festive with vigor. Christmas trees surround a Santa and a line of children wait for his lap, holding ice cream cones and giant cookies from the food court. Fake green and red holly drape from the railings, dotted with large red satin bows. Lights twinkle everywhere. People nudge their way through the crowded halls.

I feel again the familiar sciatica pain, the half-contractions that later will last nearly a month before turning into active labor.

I find a bow-decorated bench and lower myself onto it after putting my daughter down. My husband looms over me, yelling again. His parents stand ten feet away, watching. They rarely interfere, and when they do, it is to tell me to be quiet, to listen to their son. The Indian way, they way he and I both know because we are both children of Indian immigrants, the way that says the man is the leader of the family, and is always right.

The sobs burst out, humiliating in their public display that I can’t contain any longer. My mother-in-law grabs my daughter’s hand and tugs her towards the small train that circles a display of fake snow, more Christmas trees, and giant boxes wrapped in paper with snowman, reindeer, Santa, elves dancing beneath colorful bows.

My husband joins his parents, waving to our daughter, laughing along with the other families. My little girl stares straight ahead in the train, not responding to her grandparents and father. She doesn’t smile or move—a stark contrast to the giggling, joyfully screaming other toddlers in the seats around her.

I will always have a distinct memory of her profile: her hair pulled back into a ponytail that skims the collar of her lavender-colored puffy jacket that she hasn’t taken off. Her head is so small, her face so solemn. She doesn’t search for me as I sob on the bench at the opposite side of the circle from her father.

The train slogs sluggishly, the holiday sounds echoing. The background is blurred and only my daughter’s miniscule body is defined in sharp relief to the smudges of color around her.

My husband and his parents are vague shadows across the circle. I don’t know if people notice me, massively pregnant and crying on the mall bench. They must. They must glance away again, uncomfortable but curious. Perhaps children, in all their openness, stare at me, lips parted.

My son, curled inside my belly, gives a pre-soccer kick to my ribs. I stroke my belly over and over, trying and failing to stifle my sobs in an attempt to provide him with some small comfort. My rapid heartbeat, the primary music of his womb-cocoon, is not unfamiliar to him. After all, he has grown from the size of a seed into a child against the backdrop of an angry father and a distraught mother, and a sister, still a baby herself, who rarely smiles.

* * *

The evening before the children leave for their ten days with their father in Ohio, which will be followed by five with me in California, my son crashes into me on the couch where I'd been lounging. He grabs my wrists with his beautiful, shapely hands.

"Why are these so tiny?" he says, wrapping his thumb and forefinger around my wrists. "Why not?" I respond, staying still for a moment before trying to pull my arms free. I know this is what he wants me to do. He tightens his grip. I squirm and struggle as he stops my escape with ease.

As we wrestle and the pillows go flying, and the puppy jumps up and down with the thrill of it all, not knowing whom to defend and whom to egg on, his hair brushes my lips. I breathe in his boy-scent, the scent I've loved since before I could smell it, since it was forming inside my womb.

He holds my wrists with one hand and starts poking my shoulder with the other. He flicks my upper arm with his middle finger. He laughs.

I am breathless, marveling at his new strength that renders me helpless. I bribe him to stop with the offer of his favorite salt-and-vinegar chips, which I will only give him if he promises to watch the next episode of the superhero series we started years ago. We both know he has grown too old to enjoy it the same as he once did. But we watch and enjoy anyway.

Half way through, my daughter slips between the couch arm and my body on my other side, rests her head against my arm. Soon, both kids are leaning on me. The top of my son's curls brush against my daughter's wavy hair. They tease each other, tease me, stare at their various screens. They cuddle on the couch on either side of me as our puppy stretches across all three of us, pushing the laptop onto the ground. We laugh; the puppy barks.

I lean my head back and close my eyes, basking in the authentic children I've birthed from my authentic self, in all its shame and pain and glory.