I'm going to see her again tomorrow. I'll have to fix my hair correctly or she'll complain about it again. She likes it to be just so. Correctly parted. Symmetry. Her sight is good and she can see immediately if there is something not right. 'Oh, you haven't taken care in your appearance today dear, you know how important that is, I keep telling you.' She may be an old lady now but she never stops caring about lipstick. It's the wrong colour for her of course but she absolutely will not be told.
She's worn that particular cerise ever since I can remember. I have looked for it in Boots on several occasions, now and then, and it never seems to be there. Trust her to order it from abroad and not tell us about it. She even wore it when I was in the hospital. I can still see her looking down at me, smiling thinly at my failure to keep healthy.
I'll miss that lipstick, when the time comes. It's uniquely hers. I imagine everyone feels that way about their mother. Some detail. A brooch. A deeply muffled scent of dark urine and toothpaste.
Claire says I shouldn't worry so much about how I look when I go to see mother, she can't see me properly these days anyway. Claire's capacity for self-delusion and wishful thinking is a constant amazement to me. She was never forced to face life as it is, like I was. Like I have been. Even her miscarriage didn't leave its proper mark on her, I'm pretty sure. She probably likes to think it didn't happen, it was just a bad illness, but I can see it in her every time our eyes meet. Which is not that often these days. I think she knows.
'Oh dear I wish you wouldn't go on at your younger sister so', she'd say to me. As if it was my fault Claire is incapable of leading an adult life. My younger sister says I should try and let go of my relationship with mother and find some new point in going on each day. What is that supposed to mean? It seems not only disgustingly cold but nearly impossible to throw someone like your mother onto a burning pyre and forget she exists. I simply cannot do that, but I know Claire tries. And she thinks she's done it. She tells herself at night as she smiles that she's such a free, young spirit but I can see it in her eyes. What she's done. She tried to tell me mother was going to die once. I'm not proud to say it but my ring left a mark in her face that I could still see one week later.
Mother's face is of course quite immaculate. She doesn't believe in wrinkle creams as they don't affect her like they do me. I have received all the curses of the family's blood. The anaemia. My hair is beginning to fall out. I get in such bad moods and sometimes it's for no reason at all.
It's later. I can still hear mum's voice as she tells me not to eat so much lamb, it's so fatty and bad for the digestion. I think she can smell it on me. Like the time she caught us with the brandy. I've never been so ashamed. She doesn't talk about it but I knew at that moment, at that exact point, that I had destroyed her faith in me forever. After that there was no turning back, it was all I could to stop her disgust from growing any further. If I'm honest it started earlier on than that and it goes on until today.
The staff at the home say her mind is gone but I don't believe that for a minute. You can see what she's thinking, she just doesn't put her thoughts to voice as much these days. You can hardly blame her. She's spent her life attempting to set the pair of us on the right track and it's nothing but abysmal failure. It's horrible, I wish I couldn't even see her. I wish she would hurry up and die so I could really be free from her criticism and her judgment. Maybe then I could do all the things I've wanted to. She doesn't have to say anything. She doesn't need to move. It's in what she thinks of me.
Maybe it'll just take some time for her to melt away quietly into the dream. I'm going there again next week. Maybe by then it'll be done. Maybe Claire will be gone forever as well. And then there won't be anyone to tell me what I can and what I cannot do. They'll all be out of my way and I will shine up and have Jesus love me. I've got to be ready.
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