How to Celebrate Mother's Day, part three

1.
Because she sat in the kitchen with the curling tongs, most afternoons. And she spread my hair like a blanket over my shoulders and brushed it until it crackled. And then, section by section, she curled my honey hair. The hair that was just as hers was, when she was young.

And then she would re-tie the sash on my dresses, making it big and pretty.

And she’d send me out to skip and prattle for the newspapermen on the afternoon train, all of them young men new to suits, to pencils and telegraph wires and column inches.

And I know my hair caught the sun like waves on the ocean. The sun and their surprised eyes.

And that Mama saw it from behind the blinds, her hands empty and still.

2.
Because she taught me that bolts of lace and cards of pearl buttons were as potent a message as those punched in telegraph tape.

3.
That Mama wouldn’t let the servants clean the sheets in the guest room. The ones he blackened and stained with smuts from the lab, him falling into bed after a week or more away.

He would sleep for a day or more and look at us, bleary-eyed, when he awoke.

After he left, she’d bundle up the sheets like they were something sacred. And take them down to the basement and scrub them clean again, her soft fingers burning in the soap.

I read how women used to hang the sheets out the window after their wedding night, the blots of blood a badge of purity.

I think Mama’s triumph was keeping his badges, his hard work, his neverending work, all to herself.

4.
Because she stroked my cheek when she was happy with me. Even now, someone touching my pocked face makes me intensely happy.

5.
That when Papa dumped an armful of broken clocks before going away, that Mama got down on the floor with us, even though the servants laughed at her.

She’d taken apart chickens, she told me, a streak of rust across her cheek, a screwdriver in her hand. How different could this be?

(Likely story, said cook, smirking.)

6.
A crock of milk gone sour; you don’t know it’s off until you pour it out. That’s how it was with Mama, those last few years.

But I knew she was sad and drunk most of the time. And I didn’t say anything to Papa.

I didn’t say, “I know you love Mama. And if you come home for a week, a week or maybe a month at home because you love Mama, she will be a little bit better.”

7.
Because she smiled crooked. And often, when we were little.
Because her happiness was stitched into Papa’s shirts
and he never knew it. Because I see now that she was young
and foolish, when she married him.
When she died.