SECRETS OF MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

by

Margaret A. Frey

Mother is the keeper of family history: birthdays and marriages, christenings and funerals, gossip and rumors and far-fetched lore. And always secrets, the female kind whispered behind hands or linen handkerchiefs. A difficult labor, a fractious child, a worthless husband all find equal footing in her book of record. The stories, judged fair or foul, pass from lip to ear. Embroidered tales become heirloom gospel.

Time slips and slides, facts tangle with Mother's thinning hair. I comb the wispy, knotted ends with a hand cupped to her forehead. Was she always this small with a skull no larger than a child's?

She stares into the oval mirror I snatched from her dressing table in a guilty frenzy. Her bedroom, so long off-limits, still conjures up a sense of trespass and taboo. I selected the mirror, assorted bric-a-brac and pictures of the grandchildren then scattered bits and pieces of her life in this stifling hospital room. Not enough, I know. Not nearly enough.

"People don't believe how old I am. I tell them my age, but they don't believe. It's my skin, you know? I've always had good skin." She strokes her cheek and sagging jowl. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It shows up in the complexion. Not that it matters anymore. It's almost over. Two weeks tops and it's done."

"Don't be silly. You'll outlive us all."

Liar, Liar! To say otherwise would require an admission: Yes it's true. It will soon be done. The words might open a floodgate, the talk turning to her life, her death, worse still all the said and unsaid words in-between. I have no heart for it, no courage. I straddle the narrow bed and continue combing. I dismiss her failing health, her predictions of imminent death because I am a daughter and this is what daughters do: Wait. Smile. Comfort. Even when the tasks are onerous, alien to our natures we turn into ladies-in-waiting, women who transform into patient mothers, more patient wives. It is a fairytale, of course, an absolute crock. Mother and I break the mold. Children scattered. Seven husbands lost, four for her, three for me. She wins! She always wins. The conversation runs in circles; thoughts frizzle and split. "I lost my brain. When I went to that place, you know? I lost it."

"When you went to the hospital the last time?" A reluctant translator, I interpret this half-speak where answers curve to riddles. How small might a person shrink before they disappear? Barely eighty pounds, her reedy arms sprout a pale, duckling down. Maybe this is a secret, an answer to the puzzle--we tumble back into children. In memory and flesh, we condense and squeeze, a flower folding in on itself. Nice thought but the look and smell betray pretty metaphors. Death is unattractive. Death smells like rotting fruit.

"I lost my brain."

I smile. "I'm sure it's there, all intact." Even the comfort words sound false. I check my watch wishing to leave the stuffiness, the too-white walls and the gagging pine scent. I need to hurry before the traffic snarls and I too lose my brain. I step to the adjoining bathroom then lean to the mirror to freshen my lipstick. The berry-berry stain seeps into small, fleshy pleats along my upper lip. My mother's mouth.

"I lost it, I tell you. I lost it all in that place, you know?"

I swing my head from mirror to bed. A tiny shift. Maybe it's the light; everything looks strange beneath harsh fluorescent. For a fleeting second, I stare at myself from between the sheets pulled chinny-chin high, eyes wide as saucers. A scary night-night dream. I sit down, again. "Yes. In the hospital. That's where we are today."

She smiles the smile from my sixteenth birthday, the expression worn again when my first child was born. She crooks a finger. Another secret to whisper in my ear.

I lean over my mother. I smell the odor of sweet, sweet apples, but I cannot resist the voice, the touch, the terrible yearning. I sink into frail duckling arms. A cascade of images: faces and dates, births and deaths, joys and tribulations roll behind my eyes. A passing off, a handing over, a shake-shake of the baton but it is not yet done, not nearly finished, this hungry remembering.

Not today. Not tomorrow. It will never stop.

§ § §

Margaret A. Frey started her career as a production/copy editor in Philadelphia. Pa. Her work has appeared in the "Asphodel" and most recently in Writer's Digest Chronicle series (July 2002). Margaret writes from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, but her heart still lives in the north country. She can be reached by e-mail at: mafrey@tds.net.

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