On Mothers, and the Ghosts They Leave Behind Anika Kotapally
I grew up with ghosts, or at least that’s what my mother told me. I remember her placing crystals in my room to protect me from them: jet for curses, tourmaline for strength, amethyst to soothe. She was terrified of ghosts, always looking in cupboards and around corners for strays, fears she hadn’t quite gathered in yet. I think the ghost she feared the most was my father. I had barely known him, even when he was alive. She never talked about him, but the look she got in her eyes when we asked was enough: distant, an animal remembering the feeling of being chased, of fear in the back of their neck. Her ghosts were always running around the house, sneaking through the walls, crawling in the vents, until there were more of them than us. Before Abby, they were my friends. I would ask their names, play games with them, draw them into existence as second, third, fourth family members. After Abby, though, I forgot all about my mother’s ghosts, my only childhood friends. As soon as she was born, she became my first thought. I would watch her sleep, blow raspberries to make her laugh, play peekaboo to see her gummy smile. I was fascinated by her, her fingernails, her tiny eyelashes, the shadows they drew on her blushing cheeks. But my mother never forgot her ghosts. They always haunted her, I think. Always just a step behind, always something she had to look over her shoulder for. —————————————————
I was sixteen years old when she left, old enough for it to stick to me, old enough to remember. When I came home from school, the car was already packed. She was inside, looking for something she had forgotten. A tchotchke maybe, a crystal, something to save her from her ghosts, the fears she had tried to tuck safely away. Later, I wondered if she had left
something back to protect us, or if she’d managed to fit all her love in the car too. I wondered if the dust she kicked up in her wake would suffocate us, make us into another two phantoms she couldn’t shake. I wondered if the ghosts she was so afraid of were just the other people she had left, all screaming, crying, begging her to love them again. If she hadn’t forgotten, I wouldn’t have even known she was going before she was gone. This is as familiar as the flutter of my pulse, the way resignation feels, settled into the base of my spine. When I got inside, I saw her rummaging through the drawers. No child sees a packed car and thinks their mother is leaving them; how could I have known? When I asked if we were going somewhere— why would we go somewhere on a Tuesday?—she didn’t respond, only clutched whatever it was she had needed and got in the car. She was my mother; I trusted her implicitly. Like some instinct in every child’s genes, one that doesn’t go away until you kill it out of them. When I was six, I had broken my arm falling off a tree, and she was there, clucking over me, kissing my forehead. The pain sketched dark spots over my eyes, and I cried and cried. She shushed me, called me sweetheart, darling, said over and over, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. And I believed her.
By the time the sun set that day, she was gone. I was sixteen years old. Abby was eight. We were her daughters. She had birthed us, raw and screaming and ugly, held our slimy newborn selves. Her children, her body in another form. My sister didn’t even see her go. Abby doesn’t remember her like I do. And sometimes, I don’t even think I remember her right. My memories of her are damaged film reel, only flashes of reality coming through, the rest corrupted