ANATOMY LESSON

Memoir by Myfanwy Collins

breasts

Do you want to see it?

We were standing before the long mirror above her cherry dresser when she pulled down one half of her nightgown to reveal the left side of her chest. In a place I knew well, having been weaned only a few years prior there was a concavity where once a breast had been.

I was sick and they took it away, she said, covering back up. Not repulsed, but curious, I wished I could touch it and know that what I saw was really not there.

Later, Auntie said to me, The Amazons cut off their left breasts to better shoot their bows and arrows. Your mother is a warrior.

#

Once, our blood had twined and twisted from the same heart, then two had lifted in the same crescendo. Once our minds had met. Though she was broken by circumstance, dredged by time, lulled by disease, when we parted I kept hold of the one truth: my mother was a warrior whose body wore the scars of her daily battles.

#

hands

Most often she held a cigarette, a drink or a paintbrush. The three served the same purpose: quell the passion, calm the nerves.

Her hands were dark as olives, strong enough to open stubborn jars and delicate enough to sew in a straight line. Her left hand slapped me across the face just once for being fresh and her right one spanked me only once for putting myself in danger. Her hands taught me how to peel an orange in one long, snaking peel. They taught me how to pull on stockings without causing a run.

Her hands were never still. They were there to learn or to teach.

See what happens when you draw a tree and a hill?

I watched as her hands drew a rounded hill and a tree on top of it.

What does that look like?

I said it looked like the tree would fall off the edge. She drew M shaped hills in the background and a long-limbed tree in the foreground.

And what about this?

I said it looked like the tree was closer to me, the hills farther away. Yes. She put a hand on my back as praise. That is perspective.

#

legs

The veins on her legs were thick cords of blue and feathery pink, rivers and rivers of veins, threatening to clog and block, to stop her dead from one beat to the next. As a younger woman, she had legs to envy.

A photo of my mother sitting on a rock at age twenty-one:

Pin curls, white shorts, silky black kitten curled in one hand close to her chest and a cigarette held barely out of range in the other. Her legs curve around each other. My father's eyes were the camera.

Later came hospital stays and iron clad stockings caused by tight black Capris worn during too many pregnancies and high heels worn over miles of working nights. Despite the explosion of varicose veins, she never gave up the heels or believing that her legs were beautiful.

#

face

In my father's wallet I found a poem he wrote to a brown-eyed girl, not yet mother to me. The poem rhymes. It speaks of transcendent beauty. He carried it with him until he died. I keep it now.

Once, her face changed for good. The upper lip bulged out, broken and bruised, bottom teeth cut through skin of lower lip. Nose hung at an angle beneath blackened eyes.

We were arguing and I got out of the car, she told me. I slipped and fell against a rock. It was my fault.

Her lip never recovered--a reminder of one sad night in a lifetime of sad nights. Even as it aged, when wrinkles drew down deep and hairs sprouted, a child lived in that face.

#

back

I helped her into the tub, afraid every second she would slip.

Okay, okay, she said. Okay, okay.

Just one more thing?

Yes, anything.

Please just wash my back before you go.

With washcloth and soft Dove soap, I moved over her back, the ribs, a fence, the spine, barbed wire. The hump, new to me, was death.

Always, I thought, I will watch this same back retreating.

#

feet

Toenails grown long, horny shields, thorny weapons were before me. I needed to feel as though it wasn't just her mind, I cleaved to her body as well. One and then the other, they had a place in my hand as I cut each nail as far as it would go and covered the dry skin with lotion. On her face was a last look of pleasure. These are your feet that will die first. They will grow cold long before your heart stops pumping. And on that day when I enter your death room, I will see your gaping mouth--a bird's flutter--your bewildered eyes and I will feel for your feet, cold in their pink booties.

#

skin

Each night her skin would bubble in a sea of sweat and each morning I would wash it with a cool cloth and dry it with a soft towel. Like a baby, like a woman in childbirth, apologies but no shame.

I'm sorry but this is what you must do for me now. #

body

Still, I know her body more than I know my own. The missing breast and the whole breast, the curved spine, the bulging veins, and the yellowing feet--I know it all. I find no mystery in her body.

#

Voice a rasp, lungs a whisper, liver, kidneys depleted, her body was gone one week before Easter. In her place now are ashes, in a cardboard box, in a corner hutch. These ashes are my own body, carried forward.

§ § §

Myfanwy Collins has worked in high-tech companies, non-profit, newspaper marketing, record store promotion and was a traveling worker with the Cirque du Soleil. Most recently, Myfanwy co-founded a writing, editing and consulting company called Ignited.

Myfanwy’s current novel is "You Are Not the First." Additionally, she has fiction forthcoming in Pig Iron Malt and Pindeldyboz. Her freelance work has been published in the Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, Massachusetts Psychologist and elsewhere, both in print and online.

Myfanwy lives on a barrier island on the North Shore of Massachusetts with her husband and her dog. For more information, please visit: http://www.myfanwycollins.com.

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This piece was first published in INK POT #1 - 2003, a literary journal.