a cry
My mother asks for some covers for her bed. What about the sheet? But an un-ironed sheet wasn’t enough, she asked for the heavy weight of a blanket over her small and gaunt frame. Mom, it’s 30 degrees out, you’ll fry. Not at all, replied my mother: she would sleep with the air conditioner on for that whole summer night. Mom, I charged again, profaning our familial hierarchy again, how could you? Have you gone crazy? The electricity bill will cost an arm and a leg. Or an eye. Oh, I know, and you’ve just lost your little student stipend, I know, you don’t have to rub it in my face, said my mother without even a full stop in the middle, without breathing; the victim’s guile spilling from her mouth as my ever-smaller mother dragged out her words and begged for her candy: if you don’t give it to me, I won’t sleep. I shrugged. Ignacio shrugged. My mother shrank like a silkworm between the sheets and under our thick winter blanket. The living room went dark with her in it, hibernating. We went to bed too, but Ignacio tossed and turned and every insomniac somersault kept me from falling asleep. Talk to me about something, if you can’t sleep. Ignacio hugged me and started to spew everything that was hammering at his brain, twisted nails, little needles, almost insignificant, the stingers of African wasps that repeated to him the following: would the alarm go off at five in the morning? Should we have ordered a taxi to come pick us up? Would my insurance pay my bills? Would there still be bread in the refrigerator for my mother’s breakfast? But no, I said, discreetly moving my hand over his face, don’t worry about her, she’s easy to please if you follow her lead. Yeah? he started to ask, already dozing. Yes, she’s so scared, I said, and of course worried, he said. Yes, yes, I repeated, yawning, as if it wasn’t me she was worried about, as if the imminent operation wasn’t happening to us. Because we suffered that night without knowing it. And, holding tight to trivialities, thinking about my mother’s anxiety and her easy happiness, we sank gradually into the mattress, but soon the springs pushed us up again toward consciousness. We heard a cry. A high-pitched cry. A scream of terror. A scream that lay like a cable through the night. And it came from the living room, from the mouth, the larynx, from the strident vocal chords of my mother. Did you hear that? I asked Ignacio. Yes, I heard it, it just woke me up. It’s my mother, I said. Yes, it’s your mother, he answered, with zero desire to get up. She’s my mother, I’ll take care of it. I went sliding along the hallway, terrified of finding a rapist, a thief, a hairy spider, or a snake tangled up in my mother’s legs. I held on to the walls, afraid I would bump into her. Mama, I whispered, taking a step toward my childhood, suddenly lost in a hallway before the Santiago bedroom where my mother was sleeping. Are you there? Are you awake, mom? I returned suddenly to New York with my bare feet at the edge of her mattress. I waited for an instant, remembering how I’d asked her the same question hundreds of times, separating her eyelids with minuscule fingers in search of awake eyes in her sleeping body. Mom. I said it again and filled my mouth with that word that smelled of milk under her perfume. But it was that same mother who had just torn through the night with her cry, who had howled and woken us up but hadn’t woken up herself, who was now snoring gently, clutching the blanket. Mom! She didn’t answer. The inflatable mattress hissed under her dead weight, under the imperceptible rocking that pushed out the air supporting her. The mattress was in motion, alert but unconscious or dreaming; just like my mother, I thought.