Emerson Whitney - Heaven

HEAVEN

HEAVEN

EMERSON WHITNEY

Copyright 2020 Emerson Whitney

Cover by Sunra Thompson

All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or in part, in any form.

McSweeneys and colophon are registered trademarks of McSweeneys, a privately held company with wildly fluctuating resources.

ISBN: 978-1-944211-76-9

10987654321

www.mcsweeneys.net

For my mom

CONTENTS

M om was sweaty and the one lamp at her side lit the sweat. The light was making shadows that looked like children. She pulled the sheets up to her chin, shut her eyes. A ruddy, unshaven Texan skulked around. His belly hung over his pants, he was looking out one of the windows behind her bed, shaking a fist at her in his mind. Mom sunk deeper into the mattress, her arms folded over her chest. The man, pacing by the bed, waved an open bible at her. She didnt take itshe wasnt sure who he was, why she was barely clothed in bed, why there was a brace around her ribcage, a plastic ID band on her wrist, why it was so hot, so cold, why the sun had already set.

She didnt understand this part: he found her with a few broken ribs and a bloodshot eye, her head against a steering wheel, a thin, blonde woman with little wrists and small hoop earrings, vodka bottles clinking in the well beneath the drivers seat. She looked expensive. He carried her like a blanket back to his bed.

His mother, a cherry-faced German-Texan, came over to watch. This was Old Texas like in the movies, the delirium tremens in Texas, where dip tins make circles in everybodys back pocket. The old woman watched over her like she would a snake, a fire. As if she were on a porch or in a breezeway and not in a humid room, watching a rich-looking white woman shake herself almost to death. The cherry-faced woman knitted in a broken chair next to the bed. This went on for almost ten days, cicadas crowing, bluebells popping up. I like this story. The story of these strangers watching my mom, doing my job. I imagined it. I wasnt there. At the time, I didnt know where she was. We hadnt spoken. Id been everywhere by then. She was still in Dallasat least, I figured she was. I told myself I couldnt give a shit less. Moms probably dead or dying, Id say. And this was true, at least, mostly. She scared me. Loving her scared me. Eventually, I heard pieces of this story and invented the rest: she was in Texas. There was some guy. There were broken ribs. I had cut off all contact, was on my own. I didnt care about her anymore, Id say. Id already grieved.

But then I began to get phone calls from relatives saying she was skidding, maybe to a stop. She wasnt well. They had no idea that I had started falling, sliding somewhere myself. Everything I fear in her lives hot inside of me. Ask me about my mother now, and Ill answer you with a question. Which of these are my words:

I will be at walmart this aft goin to the tractor supply and mcdonalds 4 my bday haha u gotta luv the simple life we have another noreaster comin. Can we talk 2moro? I have the day off and Im usin it to train kitty to pee and poop in the toilet.

Sometime after the broken ribs and the guy with the bible, she moved into a camper parked on the periphery of a graveyard. The camper was 70s-style with white plastic paneling and a red racing stripe. It was pulled under a group of poplar trees, which leaned heavy across an ornate wrought-iron fence and scratched the roof. When shed walk outside on her way anywhere shed squish across repotted grass, over blown headstones that her boyfriend was supposed to fix.

Every day, she checked her teeth in a tiny mirror over her stove, poured a cup of coffee, and stepped outside. The camper door slapped. She walked into town through the tourists, through the side door to the inn where she worked. She took this walk six days a week with her head down, wiping her hands on her apron. The skin of her palms peeled off, peeling from bleaching bathtubs and sinks.

***

My mother looks like a woman from New York City anyway, even with broken skin. She is proud of a gap in her teeth where she didnt pay for a new tooth, where she gums at watery candy now, she says. Her shoulders and hands are torn up, but the fan of her neck is always powdered or moisturized or whatever it is. Her hair is always newly dyed, her face peeks out from the freshness of it, her hands are mostly clasped in her lap, her eyes darting all around.

When I was little, Id twist her hair around my hand and hold it. Shed put her head into my stomach, knees pressed into the linoleum, wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt with the elastic worn out. Shed make wet streaks on my shirt, sobbing so her head bounced against my stomach, wild and hard, her nose running down.

Id put my hands on the back of her head, shed whimper. Id hold her hair.

Id miss her so much even though she was right there. Miss her like a sheath. Her blue eyes would beat into mine. A tear would kick off my face and onto her head. Mom would see it, reach up and touch it.

I am like Mom. Symmetrical and tan. I write about her body because of my own discomfort, the oil drum fire that is myself.

I want you to see this: Mom looks like Grace Kelly, blonde and summery, she looks steep, lithe, a proud woman with missing teeth. The truth is in her mouth. The etymology of woman is wife.

When I was little, I held a responsibility to her and we were meant to be women, her eyes drawing me down. I wanted to cup her to my cheek. Everyone watched her. I felt that attention as heat. I came alive when I realized this responsibility, I was so young that there wasnt really language for it.

I saw this meme the other day that read: This is such a deep deep memory I almost cant tell if its real, and the photo was of a tub of these little multicolor plastic bears in seated positions, the blue one felt familiar. Seeing it, I had the sensation they were talking about, a sensation of a memory more than anything else. The bears (Three Bear Family Counters on Amazon) are suggested for ages three and up, learning early math fun.

The writer Stephen J. Smith, in Physically Remembering Childhood, explains that the way we speak about the body disconnects it from the mind. It is my body, your body, and sadly, a nobody our everyday language creates a forgetfulness of what it might mean to be embodied.

Apparently pre-verbal memories get lost in the transition to language. Theres a lot of writing about it, that memories unhooked from language show up as this sense. Before three years old, its sort of like this: were embodying experience without pinning it to anything. The bear meme works because all of us who were given the toy at three, as suggested, were sorting our insides out. The memory shows up as physicalthe etymology of -em is to put into, like poured into a frame.

I felt this: Mom treated me like I was grown and like her body was mine. I can still find this memory. Its thick and drawn out. She belonged to me because she wanted me to know: our nakedness and the stuff of it traps us together, this is permanent, her eyes said.

I used to watch Mom on TV, would pull the videos out of the back of the cupboard while I was home sick as a teenager, they were in green VHS sleeves, in the way back. I dont know where they are now and it doesnt matter because nobody has a VCR. A blonde man and woman sat forward in heavy floral chairs. They chatted, glanced at the camera from the foreground of a pastel painting of Sacramento, the womans shoulder pads blotting out the American River. The woman turned to face the camera, she said Marie.