Work Text:
“For when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern, ‘Tis not long after but I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at; I am not what I am”
(Shakespeare, 2019)
-Iago (Act I, Scene I)
From my earliest memories, my mother has been different powerful and wild like a storm. Sweeping in off the coast of our lives bringing calamity to the mainland of our home. There is a certain surrealism to memories, don’t you think? To really dwell upon it one must conjure up vague visions of vibrant blurs melting together to form shapes. These shapes spin back into softly fragmented lava lamp blobs as quickly as they solidify. Memories dance just out of grasp. They tease you with a tickle at the back of your neck and a nip to the tip of your tongue. The name of the game when it comes down to it is trust. Trust in yourself and your perception of reality, however ethereal that may be.
As a child I lived with her in a two-bedroom apartment. If you were to be a friend coming from somewhere far away to visit, you would find yourself driving down a long country road lined with pine trees, and great oaks. The sun always radiant reaching down to warm the pavement, shimmer through the leaves, and reflect brilliantly off the lake. Pulling into the complex you would pass several apartment buildings, all of them small compact mass-produced similarities. Faded brown brick with grey wood paneling, one or two squat windows granted to each home. Finally, after reaching the dead end of the complex trailing the roundabout and parking in the shade of the oak trees, that’s where you would find us.
We lived in a shitty apartment complex. Inside each building is eight apartments, four split between two floors with one communal laundry room included. Heaving open the metallic dark brown door, past and just beneath the creaking staircase is my apartment. Every building is the same copied several times over each is different than the other in some small way. Short brown carpet, white walls, brown accents, one window for the living room flowing into the dining room, and each bedroom, a bathroom, two closets, storage room, and a kitchen. Stucco ceilings with minimal lighting, electric heating. Every door is dark brown, the kitchen is fitted with stained yellow tile.
The distinguishing difference between my memorized home and the others is the darkness. Mother’s sickness was punctuated with long depressive fits where it was always dark inside. The curtains were always drawn thick with layers and windows closed, often sealed with saran wrap in the winter. We had several lamps and fixtures, but the only light tolerated was the cold glow of the television. The sheer thickness of the air in the apartment was oppressive, no room to move, suffocating me slowly. As if the memory has rested itself against my chest like a lazy cat all warm from the sun and aching for a nap. My chest becomes heavier and heavier the longer the cat rests.
Bright flashes of blue light cutting figures through the thickness of the dark room. Stretching past the shine of lacquered wood and curving about glass baubles decorating a coffee table. Smoke twirls upward from the cherry eye at the end of her cigarette to clash with the dancing figures high up above my head. The fog of smoke settles into the room like small scattered stratus clouds cloaking everything. Breathing in and out pushes and pulls the clouds around my face. I am young, too young to remember much other than blurry smears of her face.
Mother is blurred away as if I had been crying and could only see through my tears. Her mouth strangely stays thin and small corners turned down in sadness or defeat. Then like a dragon her mouth cracks open smoke curling off her tongue and from her nose. Gaping maw breathing heat and fire to burn me, strip me of my skin, to eat my heart.
“I wanted to kill us.”
All at once she has stole my breath and gripped me in her claws like a treasure to sate the greed in her sickness. I am unable to recall what I said in response or maybe there is no memory because what would a child say in response to that? Silence said more than I ever could.
“When you were a baby, I thought of taking you to the garage sitting in the car and killing us both with the exhaust.”
Blurry faced and void of emotion the dragon closes its mouth sealing away other truths and secrets for another day. Heat reseeding and smoke rising like it always has. The constant companion to the dark in the apartment, in my life but never had it seemed so oppressive as it did in that one instance.
Dragons steal pretty treasures to hoard away never did I think my mother was one. Never did I think she would steal my innocence; never did I think she would singe me with her fire with such careless ease. Face hot and wet with real tears to blind my sight rather than the vague recollections of memories long past.
Is this how dragons feel? Is this how storms feel? Rolling in on the horizon just as hot and bright as the light from a dragon's mouth, carried by the whipping winds and thunderous clouds. Even now many years later this moment in time stays with me like my own hoarded treasure. Despite the heat, and the sting of her storm I clutch at the tips of her wings trying and failing to not be swept away in the pain.
I haven’t spoken to my mother in a kind way in a long time. I lay awake at night feeling the rumble of fire in my gut, and hear the storm whisper my name. When I do speak to her, I feel the fire lick its way up my throat and the look on her face when I burn her is so satisfying. That feeling sticks with me for a moment and I can’t help but think that I’ve become the dragon.
Pushing and pulling away from her trying to escape the darkness, and the smoke, and her sickness. Dragons in fairy tales have a certain magic about them thick and cloying like their smoke. Like them my mother’s sickness always seemed like magic subtly tightening around me over the years shaping me into what she wanted. She told me I was the center of her world and she would never let me go.
It took me a long time to realize I didn’t need her permission.