I wake fretting.
Red! Over here, Red!
You see I am desired. Just not by her.
• • •
I think it needs to be changed
, my father says.
He has to repeat himself several times before my mother hears, and then finally he gives up, and changes me himself. His hands, though rough, are deft and precise; he turns me over carefully, unwraps me and then wraps me up again, neatly, every detail in place, as if I am a piece of glass he is forming at his lamp, while my mother, who is sometimes nearby—in the same house certainly, sometimes even in the same room—wonders how much longer before she can get back into her strictest corset. Not too much longer now. She is a beautiful woman; she has kept her figure. The mirror is back, its cover removed. We are reflected in it together—here we are: she, smoothing her dress down tight over her narrow waist, turning from side to side, blond curl pendant over bare, white shoulder. I am behind her, a blur in the cradle. My mouth is open wide, oral apparatus on display, tongue first, tonsils behind. In reflection no one can hear me screaming. The reflected me is the one my mother much prefers.
She is usually someplace nearby. Almost always in the same house. Sometimes in the same room.
Out in the yard, sometimes.
Although I am the omphalos, the center, I am sharply aware of my mother in all her peregrinations, those orbits that take her in a series of ever-widening gyres away from my cradle—at first, harmlessly, just downstairs, into the sitting room; then, from my perspective more unnervingly, two floors down, into the kitchen; then, more ominously yet, through the door and out into the yard; then, inevitably, into the shed where my father is working; then, at last, terrifyingly, out of the yard, into the street—foreign place of neighing ponies and rattling cart wheels, of roaring river, from where, despite all, above every other squeak and whistle and rattle and thump, above every catcall and cry, above the passing songs of balladeers and barrel organs, I can hear the distinctive ring of my mother’s bootheel on the cobblestones as she recedes up the street.
I don’t know where she is going.
Away. Away from me.
Still fresh in the memory of an earlier time, a time when she would, by necessity, have taken me with her everywhere, I grieve at being left behind. The physical tether binding us has dissolved, only to be replaced by a tangible, finer, yet equally strong filament of connection; and I am exquisitely sensitive to every tug upon it. Yet it seems that, in spite of all, she is free of me. I am bound, but she is free. With what carelessness she shifts her orbits, moving farther and farther away from me.
I rage, loudly, at the unfairness of life.
My father, putting his mild finger inside my wrapper, says,
I think it is wet
, and proceeds to unfurl me—finds me dry, and furrows his brow. He doesn’t know what’s ailing me—let alone that it’s the same thing that ails him.
When she is nearby we are both aware of her, we two; exquisitely aware. There is her scent: the perfume, yes, but beneath it, more importantly, the earthier odors of her body, the sweet commingling of sweat and milk, armpit, neck nape, and cunt. We are always aware.
• • •
My mother. His wife.
She is moving away from us. Downstairs. Outside. Out into the street.
• • •
Birthing me has hardly changed her at all. She is, if anything, more beautiful than before. Unlike me, she sleeps soundly every night, the gentle, white curve of her brow unperturbed by the various songs I have composed for the purpose of gaining her attention. She is unconscious, slumbering. My father gets out of bed and slips my coral into my mouth. For a while I will suck on it, this hard thing, calcified exoskeleton surrounded by four jolly bells that jingle and jangle softly as I suck,
ring-a-ling-ling-a-ling-ling!
My mother does not wake; undisturbed, she sleeps on, sleeps profoundly.
Ring-a-ling-ling-a-ling-ling!
I think it is hungry,
my father says at last.
My mother awakens then and is cross. Her nipples are red and sore.
It’s biting me something awful, the beast.
At last she feeds me, briefly, before laying me back down and returning to bed herself.
• • •
As is true of all things distant and desirable, the farther away she moves, the more we want her back. We are in the bedroom, my father and I, amid the chaos of disheveled sheets and squandered pillows, sunlight and rose vines knitting a shadow trellis up the wall—my father is at the window, looking out—a silhouette against the windowpane.
Where is she? Where can she have gone?
Another day: I am in my pram, she has tucked me in herself, her hands gentle but uninterested, her curls tickling my face, her perfume my nose; she parks me on the cobblestones in the yard, just outside the back door, and then she recedes, hands and curls and perfume disappearing into the periphery of my swaddled vision, which has no real periphery, no side to side or back, only an above, straight above. I gaze up into the sky. Her figure receding, receding, gone.
A seagull passes.
Another.
Another.
Many in succession.
Eventually Leo emerges from his shed, sees his baby left alone in the pram in the center of the yard, and wheels her back into the kitchen.
• • •
A hot day in August. Roses wilting on the vines.
• • •
Clotilde, later, is petulant, grows vague when scolded.
I’ve been to Mr. Kiersta’s. Nothing fits me anymore.
But you left baby in the yard.
Did I? Did I do that?
Blinking rapidly, in confusion, her delicate blond lashes.
I’m sure I wouldn’t, Leo. I wouldn’t do that.
• • •
She did do it; but we forgive her. Like a planet, distant and revered, she has moved away from us for a while; her orbit has taken her away; this is only to be expected; now she has returned. Supplicants that we are, we dare demand no more. Indeed, we are grateful. My father subsides in his scolding; my mother takes me up into her cool, noncommittal hands, loosens my wrapper just enough to see that I am not sunburned, then puts me back down. Turns away. Turns her back.
And is forgiven.
• • •
Where will she go, my mother, in the new dress of yellow lace that Lars Kiersta is going to make her? Where is she going, her bootheels ringing on the cobblestones, as she retreats up Bridge Street, away from us, toward the town?
• • •
It’s a mystery. Throughout my childhood it will remain so. What I remember is a constant game of hide-and-seek, seek and find; even now, when I think about her, she retreats before me, memory itself is rendered unstable, is itself a thing sought and not found. In memory I pursue my mother through the three small pentagonal rooms that comprise my world, searching her out among the remains of my grandfather’s collection, which, increasingly, migrate out of the shed and into the house. My mother is always hiding: receding behind a stack of specimen trays, or the tawny ocelot with its fierce eyes of yellow glass, or else she is sifting with her pale, elegant fingers through a tray of ancient Persian amulets in semiprecious stone, or arranging on our dining table, as if she thinks she can reassemble them, shards of Roman terra-cotta decorated with a fish, an octopus, a lion, a goat. She is caressing the remains of her father’s world, willing them into coherence with gentle feather-strokes of her cold, elegant fingers. Like me, she is trying to reassemble the past. But the pieces don’t fit, won’t cohere. She lives among them in my memory as if in a museum, surrounding herself, as closely as she can, with the artifacts of her father’s world, as if these things, beautiful and cold as she is herself, can compensate her for her double loss—the loss of her father, and the loss of her hopes of leaving Whitby in search of him.
She finds them an insufficient compensation.
• • •
I am her most tangible artifact: as my father was the first to observe, I look like Felix Girard, the resemblance becoming more striking as I grow. But my mother does not caress me, nor does she seem to find, in me, any compensation at all.
Instead, she looks away.
I make her uncomfortable, the same way the ocean did, once.
She regards me, whenever possible, narrowly, from the corner of her eye.
It is getting so frightfully large
, she says.
I can’t lift it anymore, Leo, it hurts my back so!
I will lift her,
my father says, grasping me by the armpits, hoisting me up and out of a box of my grandfather’s old books, which I have found, and opened, and climbed into, and rummaged through, and bent, and torn, and otherwise rearranged to suit myself.
It is hurting my Papa’s things! Why must it always hurt my Papa’s things, the beast!
She doesn’t mean to hurt them. She’s just a child.
How big it is! Look at its feet! So ungainly!
Meanwhile slipping into her own very delicate shoes.
Or:
It is like a giantess
, she says, as she puts on her petite grey gloves, one slender finger at a time.
I was never like that at her age. Will it ever stop growing, do you think?
• • •
It’s true: I am not like my mother, with her graceful, slender neck, lithe body, golden hair. Even at this early stage I am an ungainly, large-footed creature. I alarm myself as I outgrow, one after another, each of my childhood frocks. One day my blouse fits; the next day I thrust in my arm and burst a seam. I can’t fit my feet into my shoes, my neck into my lace collars, my rump into my pantaloons. My toes poke out through shoddily mended stockings. And I have, what’s more, a wild, curly mane of ginger hair that licks behind me like fire when I run. And I do run—as often as I can—on my long, sturdy, fast-growing legs: up and down and around those spiral stairs, from the kitchen to the parlor to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the parlor to the kitchen, and again, leaving in my wake butterflies off their pins, upended orchids, despoiled carpets, the terra-cotta heads of gods and goddesses rolling, wide eyed in surprise, all around the parlor floor.
Qu’est-ce qu’un sauvage!
my mother cries. She has dropped her pearl earrings, a gift from Thomas Argument. They have fallen beneath the vanity in the bedroom; she cannot find them. She is on her hands and knees in her new yellow lace with her golden curls loose, unpinned. She is crying. And it is my fault—always my fault.
Go! Get away! Go bother your father for a change!
• • •
At least, that’s how I remember it. I don’t know if it’s true. Memories are tricky things.
• • •
She ought not be blamed. She is so unhappy.
• • •
Down there on the floor, looking for her earrings.
• • •
Later, though, she’ll go out again. That’s always the way. She’s gone out! She’s gone! She’s put on her gloves. She has taken her umbrella today, because today it is raining. She has put on her veil because today it is sunny. It is hot. It is cold. She has put on her boots, because there is snow. She is wearing her shawl. She’s forgotten her muff. Where is her hat? She’s gone. Again.
Where does she go, in the evenings, when she leaves us? The sound of her bootheels echoing on the cobblestones, echoing, relentlessly, til it dies away altogether, the sound along with her receding up the brow of Bridge Street.
Such an unhappy woman.
• • •
For a long time I try to find her in the boxes of her father’s books, or, if not there, then somewhere else . . . among the crates of fossils from Mongolia, lately opened, in the center of the room that serves, in the Birdcage, as dining room and parlor both; or else in the closets, the drawers, the cupboards, even in the great, cold, black, cast-iron belly of the neglected claw-foot stove. From which I emerge, covered in ash.
• • •
It is fruitless, of course. All fruitless. My mother is not there. She is a planet, moving away from me. I track her orbits; I trail behind. I am the fiery red tail of her comet. I come close sometimes; but very seldom do I touch. Less and less often, as I grow.
• • •
And so I try to win her by charm.
(What would come naturally to any other child isn’t natural to me; charm rests uneasily upon
my
broad, red brow. But I try.)
Four and twenty tailors went to kill a snail, the best man among them durst not touch her tail . . .
In response to which song my mother turns away with a sigh, retreats, wringing her hands, into some other part of the house.
• • •
It’s no use, no use, any of it. The singing, the trying to keep my feet in, keep my pleats straight. Beside the point, all of it. It is all avoidance, changing the subject.
• • •
Here I am, Jumping Joan, when nobody’s with me I’m always alone . . .
• • •
No matter. No matter. Her back is turned. Head inclined. White nape of neck exposed, hair swept up, bound tight. She isn’t listening. This isn’t the kind of music she likes. She likes music played on a spinet, on a
darling little piano
. Accompanied by one voice only. There’s only one she can hear; could hear—ever.
• • •
Oh, Leo—can’t you make it be quiet? I’ve got such a dreadful headache!
• • •
She seems so fragile sometimes. Brittle, even. The milky-white translucence of her skin. Every molecule gleaming. There is less of her on some days than others. Sometimes, I feel like I can see through her. Straight through.
• • •
My mother is going to leave us.
• • •
I know this without knowing. It’s already inside me, her departure, lodged like a bubble behind my sternum. There is a hollow place, a gap, a fissure. A missing piece. Tap hard with my finger against my chest and I can hear the echo. Nothing I can do is going to change it now. It can be neither swallowed, nor dislodged. I have always known it without knowing. Thus my cries as she moved away from me.