"My Mother, My Catalyst" by Sarah Haider
Was it all a dream? I sit on my pink satin queen-sized comforter on top of my pillows, because I can’t yet decide whether I should be a functional person today or throw myself under my covers and take refuge there until work. I look around as I breathe in the smell of fresh lilac linens, the sun reflecting off of my pale sage colored walls in a warm, comforting way. There are clean clothes scattering my floor, a week and a half’s worth, keeping time of when I started to feel depressed again. I want to jump out of bed, fold them all nicely, and stuff them in the smooth mahogany draws lining my spacious room where they belong, but that wouldn’t make sense. Logic and cleanliness in my surroundings now would just feel too wrong. I remain on the pillows and stare silently, blankly at the wall in front of me.
The morning before, I woke up groggy and late for class with a dead phone. I had stayed up until a restless two am watching some pointless Netflix movie to distract myself and drained the battery. I pushed myself out of my warm, comfortable bed, stirring the furry golden ball of a Labrador acting as a delightful furnace against my legs. I staggered with a fuzzy mind and sore muscles into the kitchen to perform my daily ritual of turning brown magic powder into the strong black elixir that served as my life force when I ingested it. I poured my cup of coffee, inhaling the waking, deliciously bitter aroma, before throwing the warmest shoes I own on and taking my recently awakened bouncing and whining dog out to relieve herself in the biting, painful cold.
Ripping my now frozen coat off and shrugging out of the red lacey dress I had fallen asleep in, I grabbed the nearest piece of clothing to my feet, a black dress, and slid it on. It was a black kind of day, like most any other day. Coat, shoes, books, homework, wallet, keys, phone. I triple checked my pockets, as I hustled down the stairs, in a livelier state now thanks to the coffee, and drove off to the class I was already ten minutes late for.
School seemed pointless today. The energetic teacher flipped through pictures of life and love, and the students answered back with generic responses. I couldn’t sit here, and pretend yesterday didn’t happen. I couldn’t stare at these photos, smile at these people, and pretend I gave two shits about learning anything that was going to be on a useless exam, when my life, real life, was happening.
I got the group text from my father, as I floated mindlessly, out into the freezing, finger-numbing, cold again to my next class. “Your mother has 5 felonies against her. Idk what is going to happen. You can read about it in today’s paper, it’s online too.”
My eyes took in the words, rejecting the meaning as I snuck into theology. Some girl with frizzy, brown hair, and an ugly grey coat, things I would only bother to notice today, stole my seat. I glared at her as I took a seat near the back. Sit down, take your coat off, take out your notes, flip to the right page, pretend you’re listening.
I pulled out my phone and googled my mother’s name. “Two arrested in suspected robbery and forgery.” My eyes flickered across the black Arial font. I saw my mother’s last name, my name, repeated several times, but my brain refused to make a connection to the words around it. I suddenly became aware of the cool breeze in the room grazing across my eyes. I locked my phone and stuck it under my legs, before water could begin to pool in my tired sockets and noticeably glisten. Listen, take notes, answer every question the teacher asks with a meaningful response, because everyone else seems too dull to come up with right answers.
My mind wondered again as I took my phone out from underneath my clenched thigh. I opened the browser back up and locked eyes onto the title of the article once more. Next to it sat a picture gallery I had subconsciously ignored on my first view. There was my mother wearing her black cashmere sweater and tan work pants on a store security camera. I had always liked that black turtleneck on her. My tired head had rested on that cashmere shoulder many times during long sermons at the church of my childhood, the one I attended before I lost faith in everything. I clicked the next arrow. A woman glared back at me in the form of a mug shot. I had no idea who she was. Her hair was a mess of black and grey, thinning and pulled back. The skin around her eyes was tired, puffy, and rubbed-red dry. Her bare lips were closed and stiff. They had been quivering. Her eyes, black as night, empty, staring directly into mine. She was broken. She was not the woman I knew who had once worn that sweater. She was not the woman I knew, whose, gold, shiny, expensive, chained watch, I would slide repeatedly off of her wrist and on to my much smaller ill-fitted one during those R.E.M sleep inducing sermons. She was not the owner of the warm, intelligent hazel eyes I would smile up into as she pulled me tighter against her, a motherly hug saying “I know. I know. It will be over soon.” She was the most beautiful woman in the world. This woman, staring back at me now, was a stranger. I threw my Iphone back into the pocket of my bag, and started answering questions again.
I skipped my next class. I went to the store, crossed off errands, thought about eating food, returned home, and dove straight into my earlier abandoned bed. The silky comforting blue covers I had stolen from my father when I moved out embraced me. They told me I would be okay. The only hug I didn’t cringe away from anymore. The only touch that didn’t threaten to break down my strong shiny steel mile-high retaining walls I had had to build so long ago. I closed my eyes, hiding from the sun intruding into my dark, blanket sanctuary and laid silently, unthinking.
Ten minutes passed before I switched myself back on and flung out of bed, feet firmly on the cold ground once more, and headed back to school for my next class. We circled desks and read each other what we had written for our class assignment. They regaled us of stories of childhood and glee. One story was of a broken girl, pitied by the author, who I sensed could never truly understand her own character. She didn’t know broken. She didn’t know alone. I read mine last, the story of a fictional character taking refuge in the silent, barren woods. It was shitty writing. I had forced out each word the night before in a tired haze. They said the fact that the character would find the dead, lonely, gray trees beautiful against the frigid fall sky made her unique. They said it told something about the narrator that she would find beauty in such an unusual thing. No, they didn’t understand broken.
My next class I spent with my spiny chair turned to the window, eyes closed, not even faking attentiveness, basking in the sunlight from the only ray that had snuck its way into the fake fluorescently lit room. My mind filled with the numbing light, warm and tiring. There was room for nothing else. The sun passed, I had fallen out of its graces, and I stared down at the bag belonging to the boy sitting next to me. “That bag costs more than my mother’s bail”, the thought my brain spitefully spit out before I could ignore it. My mother’s bail. My mother’s bail. My mother’s bail.
In my last class of the day, my professor dared us to write about a time we had to adapt, to transform to survive in our surroundings. I saw the young souls around me struggle to find a turmulious time in their life. The answers were generic; children of divorce, leaving home for college, having a bad roommate. I know they felt pain. I know their troubles were real and worthy of sympathy, but I knew my troubles to them were of story books, television shows, the incomprehensible. Could I blame them? I couldn’t comprehend my own life. I had been dealing with their monumental issues in steady stream since I was three. I moved through it constantly numb, changing the blank slate of a person I am to fit successfully into my surroundings.
I wanted to sleep. I wanted to end the day, but that didn’t seem to fit in my to-do list. My roommate was in a play she was quite proud of, and we had had a turbulent year in our friendship. I paid hard earned money for a ticket at the door, an expensive peace offering of support. I grabbed a stiff gin martini from the packed posh bar, and entered the theater. It was small, twelve rows of six. Everything was painted black, the stage tiny and intimate. I sat, again, eyes fixed automatically at the black, light-consuming wall in front of me, while taking socially-acceptable large sips of the dirty, bitter martini. I wanted to be the kind of girl who ordered a martini. I wanted to be the kind of girl who dressed in all black and went to plays alone. I wanted to be someone.
As the lights went down, and the audience positioned their heads to observe the paid actors on stage, I turned mine to observe the everyday actors filling the chairs around me. I was the only one there who hadn’t gone through menopause. The elderly couples and friends sat with curled, earned-white hair, fur coats, and wrinkles around their wisdom-carrying eyes. They had made it. They had gone through their trials and tribulations and made it out on the other side with a warm, status-symbol coat, a hand to hold, and a pocket full of money that could easily afford to pay their way in. At some point my mother had dropped out of the race. She had fallen out of the upper class, the trophy wife, cushy suburban life. She was so darkly stunning, her hair the color of a raven’s, her mind more beautiful and vivid than any piece of art ever created, her will stronger than that of an army of a thousand Trojan men. I sat observing these people my mother could have been, as I fingered her delicate string of pearls now laying safely around my own neck. She never belonged in this race. She was too rare, but then that leaves the question, where did she belong? She certainly didn’t belong in that mug shot with those vacant, black-hole eyes that had branded their image, hauntingly, onto my brain.
Where did I belong for that matter? I wasn’t safe either. Nothing made sense anymore. I questioned my intelligence, the one thing I was taught to find security in. My education guaranteed no happiness or stability. My looks, stolen from my mother, paired with my knowing, caged heart, brought trouble and heart break to everyone around me. I was lost. Was any of this enough? Was I enough, because somehow along the way, what my world, my role model, my mother had didn’t make the cut. If it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me. We have the same eyes.
Was it all a dream? I sit on my pink satin queen-sized comforter on top of my pillows, because I can’t yet decide whether I should be a functional person today or throw myself under my covers and take refuge there until work. I look around as I breathe in the smell of fresh lilac linens, the sun reflecting off of my pale sage colored walls in a warm, comforting way. There are clean clothes scattering my floor, a week and a half’s worth, keeping time of when I started to feel depressed again. I want to jump out of bed, fold them all nicely, and stuff them in the smooth mahogany draws lining my spacious room where they belong, but that wouldn’t make sense. Logic and cleanliness in my surroundings now would just feel too wrong. I remain on the pillows and stare silently, blankly at the wall in front of me.
The morning before, I woke up groggy and late for class with a dead phone. I had stayed up until a restless two am watching some pointless Netflix movie to distract myself and drained the battery. I pushed myself out of my warm, comfortable bed, stirring the furry golden ball of a Labrador acting as a delightful furnace against my legs. I staggered with a fuzzy mind and sore muscles into the kitchen to perform my daily ritual of turning brown magic powder into the strong black elixir that served as my life force when I ingested it. I poured my cup of coffee, inhaling the waking, deliciously bitter aroma, before throwing the warmest shoes I own on and taking my recently awakened bouncing and whining dog out to relieve herself in the biting, painful cold.
Ripping my now frozen coat off and shrugging out of the red lacey dress I had fallen asleep in, I grabbed the nearest piece of clothing to my feet, a black dress, and slid it on. It was a black kind of day, like most any other day. Coat, shoes, books, homework, wallet, keys, phone. I triple checked my pockets, as I hustled down the stairs, in a livelier state now thanks to the coffee, and drove off to the class I was already ten minutes late for.
School seemed pointless today. The energetic teacher flipped through pictures of life and love, and the students answered back with generic responses. I couldn’t sit here, and pretend yesterday didn’t happen. I couldn’t stare at these photos, smile at these people, and pretend I gave two shits about learning anything that was going to be on a useless exam, when my life, real life, was happening.
I got the group text from my father, as I floated mindlessly, out into the freezing, finger-numbing, cold again to my next class. “Your mother has 5 felonies against her. Idk what is going to happen. You can read about it in today’s paper, it’s online too.”
My eyes took in the words, rejecting the meaning as I snuck into theology. Some girl with frizzy, brown hair, and an ugly grey coat, things I would only bother to notice today, stole my seat. I glared at her as I took a seat near the back. Sit down, take your coat off, take out your notes, flip to the right page, pretend you’re listening.
I pulled out my phone and googled my mother’s name. “Two arrested in suspected robbery and forgery.” My eyes flickered across the black Arial font. I saw my mother’s last name, my name, repeated several times, but my brain refused to make a connection to the words around it. I suddenly became aware of the cool breeze in the room grazing across my eyes. I locked my phone and stuck it under my legs, before water could begin to pool in my tired sockets and noticeably glisten. Listen, take notes, answer every question the teacher asks with a meaningful response, because everyone else seems too dull to come up with right answers.
My mind wondered again as I took my phone out from underneath my clenched thigh. I opened the browser back up and locked eyes onto the title of the article once more. Next to it sat a picture gallery I had subconsciously ignored on my first view. There was my mother wearing her black cashmere sweater and tan work pants on a store security camera. I had always liked that black turtleneck on her. My tired head had rested on that cashmere shoulder many times during long sermons at the church of my childhood, the one I attended before I lost faith in everything. I clicked the next arrow. A woman glared back at me in the form of a mug shot. I had no idea who she was. Her hair was a mess of black and grey, thinning and pulled back. The skin around her eyes was tired, puffy, and rubbed-red dry. Her bare lips were closed and stiff. They had been quivering. Her eyes, black as night, empty, staring directly into mine. She was broken. She was not the woman I knew who had once worn that sweater. She was not the woman I knew, whose, gold, shiny, expensive, chained watch, I would slide repeatedly off of her wrist and on to my much smaller ill-fitted one during those R.E.M sleep inducing sermons. She was not the owner of the warm, intelligent hazel eyes I would smile up into as she pulled me tighter against her, a motherly hug saying “I know. I know. It will be over soon.” She was the most beautiful woman in the world. This woman, staring back at me now, was a stranger. I threw my Iphone back into the pocket of my bag, and started answering questions again.
I skipped my next class. I went to the store, crossed off errands, thought about eating food, returned home, and dove straight into my earlier abandoned bed. The silky comforting blue covers I had stolen from my father when I moved out embraced me. They told me I would be okay. The only hug I didn’t cringe away from anymore. The only touch that didn’t threaten to break down my strong shiny steel mile-high retaining walls I had had to build so long ago. I closed my eyes, hiding from the sun intruding into my dark, blanket sanctuary and laid silently, unthinking.
Ten minutes passed before I switched myself back on and flung out of bed, feet firmly on the cold ground once more, and headed back to school for my next class. We circled desks and read each other what we had written for our class assignment. They regaled us of stories of childhood and glee. One story was of a broken girl, pitied by the author, who I sensed could never truly understand her own character. She didn’t know broken. She didn’t know alone. I read mine last, the story of a fictional character taking refuge in the silent, barren woods. It was shitty writing. I had forced out each word the night before in a tired haze. They said the fact that the character would find the dead, lonely, gray trees beautiful against the frigid fall sky made her unique. They said it told something about the narrator that she would find beauty in such an unusual thing. No, they didn’t understand broken.
My next class I spent with my spiny chair turned to the window, eyes closed, not even faking attentiveness, basking in the sunlight from the only ray that had snuck its way into the fake fluorescently lit room. My mind filled with the numbing light, warm and tiring. There was room for nothing else. The sun passed, I had fallen out of its graces, and I stared down at the bag belonging to the boy sitting next to me. “That bag costs more than my mother’s bail”, the thought my brain spitefully spit out before I could ignore it. My mother’s bail. My mother’s bail. My mother’s bail.
In my last class of the day, my professor dared us to write about a time we had to adapt, to transform to survive in our surroundings. I saw the young souls around me struggle to find a turmulious time in their life. The answers were generic; children of divorce, leaving home for college, having a bad roommate. I know they felt pain. I know their troubles were real and worthy of sympathy, but I knew my troubles to them were of story books, television shows, the incomprehensible. Could I blame them? I couldn’t comprehend my own life. I had been dealing with their monumental issues in steady stream since I was three. I moved through it constantly numb, changing the blank slate of a person I am to fit successfully into my surroundings.
I wanted to sleep. I wanted to end the day, but that didn’t seem to fit in my to-do list. My roommate was in a play she was quite proud of, and we had had a turbulent year in our friendship. I paid hard earned money for a ticket at the door, an expensive peace offering of support. I grabbed a stiff gin martini from the packed posh bar, and entered the theater. It was small, twelve rows of six. Everything was painted black, the stage tiny and intimate. I sat, again, eyes fixed automatically at the black, light-consuming wall in front of me, while taking socially-acceptable large sips of the dirty, bitter martini. I wanted to be the kind of girl who ordered a martini. I wanted to be the kind of girl who dressed in all black and went to plays alone. I wanted to be someone.
As the lights went down, and the audience positioned their heads to observe the paid actors on stage, I turned mine to observe the everyday actors filling the chairs around me. I was the only one there who hadn’t gone through menopause. The elderly couples and friends sat with curled, earned-white hair, fur coats, and wrinkles around their wisdom-carrying eyes. They had made it. They had gone through their trials and tribulations and made it out on the other side with a warm, status-symbol coat, a hand to hold, and a pocket full of money that could easily afford to pay their way in. At some point my mother had dropped out of the race. She had fallen out of the upper class, the trophy wife, cushy suburban life. She was so darkly stunning, her hair the color of a raven’s, her mind more beautiful and vivid than any piece of art ever created, her will stronger than that of an army of a thousand Trojan men. I sat observing these people my mother could have been, as I fingered her delicate string of pearls now laying safely around my own neck. She never belonged in this race. She was too rare, but then that leaves the question, where did she belong? She certainly didn’t belong in that mug shot with those vacant, black-hole eyes that had branded their image, hauntingly, onto my brain.
Where did I belong for that matter? I wasn’t safe either. Nothing made sense anymore. I questioned my intelligence, the one thing I was taught to find security in. My education guaranteed no happiness or stability. My looks, stolen from my mother, paired with my knowing, caged heart, brought trouble and heart break to everyone around me. I was lost. Was any of this enough? Was I enough, because somehow along the way, what my world, my role model, my mother had didn’t make the cut. If it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me. We have the same eyes.