recognition

sometimes i'm bored, so i go to class with sara.

the wall holds a portrait of an african mother nursing her toddler, and one of mae west.

"lie down with your legs crossed and bring your head over here." so i do, looking up at a curly haired woman with my head hanging off the edge of the table. sara is sitting up, legs crossed, holding my hands in hers. i am squinting, and both women are asking me to breathe deeply. counting the two women on the walls, there are five of us.

sara grips my hands harder and i feel a sharpness i expect will intensify, "and we're done." the woman says.
"that's it?"
"i just have to put your jewelry in/" she says softly and asks me to keep breathing. i can see her do this part, but i don't really feel it.

"that was ok." i say sitting up, sara is giddy.
"IT LOOKS SO GOOD!"

*          *          *

"what's the date, the 26th...?"
"yeah. my mother died today a month ago."
"awww."
"what time is it?"
"eleven."
"she died at eleven."
"REALLY?" often people tell me they can't read me. "i can never tell when you're joking!" they say, and i guess it's because i verbalize even painful, private realizations.
"yeah."
"eleven exactly?"
"i dunno! i wasn't THERE."

i take notes intently, but i don't understand too much of this class on cognitive neuro science. one way of storing percepts in the brain, like memories, i forget the word that he used, though.

"like if you picture your mother." the teacher says. he looks right at me, and misreads something on my face, adding "obviously, she isn't here."

*           *           *

"i'm thinking about getting my septum pierced."
"oh, don't talk about it. i can't even think about it."
"it'll be cool."
"just...wait till i'm dead, okay?"

she was joking, though, i miss her dumb jokes.

*           *           *

"it's cute." mattE says. he kisses my nose, we're both surprised he likes it.
"do whatever you want." he'd said, the way she said that kind of thing, but not so guilty.
"do whatever you want."

do whatever the hell you whatever the f**k you want. you forget about these things, though, when people die.

i wonder if guilt is a conditioned response to the stimuli that is the sound of my phone closing. you catch that half second of "i should call her."

even, there was this moment of thinking "why is my mother dead? i miss her. i should call her."

i should call her to let her know what i'm up to. "i'm in atlanta with sara, she's gonna drive me home. i got my septum pierced!"

"ARIELLE! i can't believe you did that! UGH! TAKE IT OUT!"
but this is just me synthesizing things she'd said before, because there is no voice.


"i didn't want that to be...i didn't want her to look at me and think 'why did she put that thing in her face?' you know? and that be it."

*           *           *

i see the urn every day. sometimes i sit next to it, but it's cold, and not something you can hang on to.
i avoid midwifery. the reading, and studying. too many questions. sometimes if i think about it for a moment, i can remember perfectly the feel of her. the smoothness of her acrylic nails, her hair, her whole shrinking body. this is what the professor means. the process of memory, name for which i can't remember.

to hold anything is awful, really. wanting to wrap my arms around the urn feels almost like lying next to her comatose and wanting her to talk. to see a woman holding her baby is like that, too. it's beautiful, at least, but i cry.

"i haven't been thinking about it that much, you know. i mean, i think about it all the time, i haven't been so upset, i guess." i tell sara in a makeup salon, fidgeting with the bottles of nail polish.

"you think i should get this one?" it's a baby pink.
"that's cute." she says.
"yeah, i already have it though. i mean, different nail polish, but --i have like three if this color. i never even f*****g paint my nails..."

the last time i got my nails done at a salon, i was three, and the asian woman who painted them must have thought i was a horrible brat because--after she painted them a beautiful hot pink i haven't worn since, she dotted them with perfect black petaled, white centered flowers. to me as a three year old, black petaled flowers seemed morbid: i threw a fit, and she repainted them pink. 

"if you buy two of those," the saleswoman says "you get the gift set with the three little pinks."

"my mother liked having pink nails." i tell sara. sometimes red. one of the last times she got them done, they were hot pink. maybe the last time, but i don't remember. maybe they were burgundy colored the very last time.

--"i wonder about all the peripheral people" i told victoria at the wake. "like that guy that's always done her nails, you know, how do people know that people die, i mean, who's gonna tell him?"
"yeah, there's this guy at golden chopsticks who knows us really well, i was wondering about him, too." she says.

we eat there, between the two visitations, and he is there, even.
"where's your mama?" he asks her.
"she died." some of us say.
"oh" he says, adding "the one that--?" and motions his head toward the booth where they'd sit.
"today is her visitation" victoria says. she cries and cries and then she leaves--

"i just, i guess everything reminds me of her, now." i tell sara. "i was thinking about her last night," i said, "i wanted to call her, and i cried a lot. then this morning i listened to that song from dumbo 'baby mine' i dunno why. and i thought about the baby i might have some day, and i thought: i used to be a baby. i used to have a mother."

"you're gonna make me cry!" she says, and i am crying a little.

*           *           *

"i think it's cute, too!" i say as we get in the car.
"it looks so nautral on your face."
"i love yours, too" i say to her, she has a nostril piercing, now, so we take pictures and text them to people.
"my nose looks so cute now," i say "i mean, sometimes i think it's dumb, you know?"
"it's not dumb! your nose is cute! it's a little button!"

you got a button for a nose, you got a button for a nose, you got a great little button for a nose.

she used to sing that, when i was a baby. we used to sing baby mine, somewhere over the rainbow.

i think of these things, she comes around from time to time to haunt me a little with her phrases and mannerisms, today there was a gift on facebook of a boston terrier.
"little bean head." she'd called him.
"it's not fair that sherry gets oliver. you know, that was the last present i gave your mother" dad complained. 
"you only paid for him, she was gonna get him anyway."
"it doesn't matter, that was the last thing i could give your mother before she died..."

GIVE A GIFT
it says.

on the way out of the store, i'm bored and nervous.

"stop biting your nails!" she tells me
"i'm not!"
"yes you are."
"no, i'm just, biting the skin around my nails."
"well stop doing it."

so i paint them hot pink.

Reviews

[MirrorandError]

I bit my nails relentlessly from age 6, when my parents divorced, to age 31.

[Lusus Naturae]

Capitalization first off. Also seems to be missing anything to lure me to the end. I did not understand the purpose of this text, as it sounded that you were merely bored.