All rights reserved.<\/b><\/p>\n
Mother is outside hanging laundry on the line. She wrings the neck of Father\u2019s
\ngoose-white shirt, then shakes the remaining drops from the linen. Her eyes are
\nfocused on the clothes already clipped, flapping in the breeze. She is a collection
\nof repetitive movements, a busyness that makes me not see her as others do. She
\nis that laundry, that exact spot beside the line, the path she will take back to the
\nkitchen.<\/p>\n
When I was little, Mother used to braid my hair, pin the tails into a pattern
\nbehind my ears and kiss the part that ran the length of my head, where it hurt
\nfrom the tightness of the braids. I\u2019d feel her kiss there all day, wondering how
\nshe could make me feel like her eye was back there, humming, sticky when
\nI touched it\u2014the center soft, poached. I tried it myself, puckered against cut
\noranges, the core of apricots, the back of her wrists, but it wasn\u2019t the same. I
\ncould not be an eye like she was an eye. I could not use my lips to mark things,
\nbe in things, to follow.<\/p>\n
When I broke my ankle at age five, she found me in a field and ran her fingers
\nalong the tenderness of my ankle, which was becoming plump. Mother carried
\nme home, with my leg braced in her hand, the pressure a comfort.
\nWhen we got home, Mother wrapped and elevated my ankle. We sat in the
\nkitchen, listening to the snow and the wind rushing over the house, picking at
\nthe thatch.<\/p>\n
Mother would clean everything with bleach\u2014the counters before and after
\nevery meal, the wash basins, the bed posts and sheets. She shined the silver
\ncandlesticks on the table\u2014soaked her hands in dishwater, made everything
\nsmell and taste like bleach. I expected her to start cleaning the mess we made
\ncoming into the house, but she stayed seated with my foot on her lap, seeing,
\nI imagined, my eyes palatial, roomy, the cogs in there matching her likeness,
\na version of her that was pristine, glassy, secure on a track that ran from the
\nkitchen to the garden, to the greenhouse, to the well.<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019m grown, I know she was looking for different reasons\u2014to remember
\nme in pain, study the relief she brought with her touch, thinking: what a power.
\nTo give or to keep? She was considering whether or not it was dangerous to give
\nme comfort, if that would make me into something she didn\u2019t want: a soft girl,
\nwhose tears crawled out to be wiped, which is why, I think, it was the last time
\nI was mothered. Better I should be a pliant girl, she likely thought, open in the
\nright places, for the right reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Erica Spriggs All rights reserved. Mother is outside hanging laundry on the line. She wrings the neck of Father\u2019s goose-white shirt, then shakes the remaining drops from the linen. Her eyes are focused on the clothes already clipped, flapping in the breeze. She is a collection of repetitive movements, a busyness that makes me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":1791,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1843","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1845,"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1843\/revisions\/1845"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fictioninternational.sdsu.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}