Mother Land
When I kick my legs out to stretch, my right foot knocks the gas pedal. The engine revs, gaining the uneasy attention of the Greelan day workers sitting outside City Depot. The sun is too much. I wipe sleepy dirt from my bloodshot eyes and check my phone for traffic through narrow slits.
I can hear the words that would steamroll off my mother’s tongue if I missed my flight. The intensity of her displeasure. The questions it would raise.
The toothpaste smells like my grandmother’s garden, and I hold it in my mouth as long as I can before cracking the door. The heat usurps the air conditioning immediately, and sweat slips past my pores like a prison guard.
A Greelan in a baseball cap watches me rinse and spit with soft eyes. The dude is waiting outside in this heat just for a chance at manual labor. Suffering to sign up for more suffering. I wonder if some people are born with a natural propensity to endure, or if it’s a learned skill.
The button-down shirt I have hanging from the backseat door handle is is a wrinkled mess. My life: the slowest moving car accident. You’d think I could avoid it. I flex my bicep and suck my tongue to make my jawline pop, then peek to see if baseball cap is looking.
Instead, I see a large white van pull in front of the Greelans, and three guys who look like they didn’t make the football team in high school pop out. They wear plainclothes, vests on their chests, guns on their waists, and form a triangle to pin the baseball-cap-wearing Greelan.
My phone vibrates with a text from my sister. I confirm the time I land, type a text asking about Mom, then delete it.
Baseball cap gives the plainclothes men an easy smile and holds up his hands in placation. A hot wind ruffles his hair. In a breath, the plainclothes men throw him to the sun-soaked asphalt, shackle his arms and legs, and toss him into the back of the unmarked van.
I hit the ignition and shift to drive. At the light, I pull parallel to the unmarked van. I’m a little scared to look over, and when I do, I see the plainclothes men dancing to the stereo. Cracking the window, I recognize the beat—hyper-sexual bubblegum pop, but I can’t quite place the song.
*
Airport parking is awful. The far lot requires a bus and a hike. It’s worth it though, if I come back to a parking bill more expensive than I can pay, it will quite literally ruin my life.
I feel the TSA agent’s judgment when I take off my shoes. God forbid a man has some smelly socks. I’d be fine keeping my shoes on. That was their decision.
The universe smiled down when seating me between two little old ladies in the back row, right by the bathroom. I lean back and close my eyes. I need sleep terribly, but my brain won’t stop reformulating my proposition over and over in my mind. How best to word it, when to ask it, what level of honesty should accompany it, what level of lying I can successfully execute.
When I was young, my dad was easy to lie to. He grew up as such a good kid—honest, never breaking rules—that his naïveté created an atmosphere conducive to my bullshit. Not my mom. She knew I’d do drugs before I did. She didn’t freak out or overreact. She protected me, kept me safe.
But times are different now. And so is she.
I try focusing on my body. Letting go of the stress of going home, the impending conversation, the nagging torment of how deep I am in my situation, the grief of the very event that brings me home, and the fact that I am sitting on a plane made by a company that has been famously pumping out aircrafts that are losing parts mid-flight, and crashing from an imperfect component rolled out before perfected by the disgruntled engineers. Because safety is important, of course, but not if it gets in the way of profit, and the Holy price of their stock.
*
“You look—” this might be the hardest I’ve ever seen her face twist “—great. So good, Hunt.” My sister is a sweet soul. And a terrible liar. “It’s so good to see you.”
The middle console jabs my hip as I lean in to hug her. “You actually look good, amazing even.” I’m a little hurt that she looks so much better than me, like it’s a competition, and the thought shames me. “You look like you’re in great shape. Are you running?”
“Stress.” Her laugh is a little manic.
“Ah.”
It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other. When we’re together, we fall back into that ease we’ve always shared. The comfort you feel being around someone who genuinely loves you, without condition. We laugh and give vague life updates, meticulously dancing around the failures, alluding to hardship but nothing that will kill the mood of the reunion. Tears are for Sundays.
My life updates are all bullshit, of course. Except work stuff. And Caroline. I’ve needed to talk about her.
I don’t realize we’ve pulled into the driveway until there is a lull after my work story about a man being paid triple my salary, unable to understand what a browser is and how it’s different from the internet.
“Should we head in? I’m sure they’re dying to get to bed.”
Her eyes harden, go far away. “I can’t. I just—”
“Come on, Lil. You’re gonna make me face them alone?” I laugh. She does not join me.
“You haven’t been here. She’s gotten really bad.” Lilly’s ringed fingers tighten around the steering wheel, showing the whites of her knuckles. “Doing what I do all day and hearing her—” Lilly’s hand gripping the wheel cranks like she’s ripping the throttle of a motorcycle, then snaps her neck back like something hot hit her nose. “I’ll get enough of it tomorrow. Tonight, I just—”
My sister is a sweet soul. Even in this state of emotional exhaustion, desperation clear in her voice, she can’t bring herself to say a disparaging word. I want to be her when I grow up.
“No worries.” Center console back in my hip as I lean in to grip her shoulder. “Excited to see you tomorrow.”
She squeezes the garage door opener clipped to her car’s visor. A little wave over my shoulder, and I pause in the laundry room after I walk in. Deep breath in, feeling my feet in my tattered shoes before removing them. I can’t believe they still have my middle school art hanging in here.
“Hunter! Baby! Is that you?”
*
Before I take a step into the living room, she’s on her feet and gripping me like I’m her skydiving instructor mid-drop. She yanks me to the kitchen and displays her preparations: all my favorite snacks in the pantry, glass bottles of ginger kombucha, plastic bottles of chocolate milk because I am a child, oranges already peeled and refrigerated in little baggies, and two PB&J sandwiches already made with the crusts cut off.
“All your shower stuff is in the basement,” she gives me a pointed look, communicating the desperation of my need for such a thing. “And I have a brand new toothbrush, paste, and floss. You’re of course welcome to your old room if you’d like?”
She took over my old room years ago, gaining a private space from my father. Her offer is genuine. She’ll give it to me if I ask.
“Of course not, mom. The basement sounds great.” She wraps me up again, then holds me at arm’s length, taking an inquisitive look at my shame.
“Thank you so much.”
“Anything for you, Hunter, baby.” Her not commenting on my appearance is not a good sign. “Now you go get some sleep. It starts at ten tomorrow, and it’s just under an hour drive, so your dad wants to be on the road by eight-thirty.”
“Why so early?”
My father gives a deep laugh from the recliner chair. I irritate him terribly. My mother tells me to just be ready, kisses me twenty-seven times, and gives me a stoic smile as I take my PB&Js to the basement. I put on an indie film from the nineties I’ve seen a million times and scroll on my phone. Social media is littered with dystopia, as usual. I get stuck on a video of a Greelan woman walking out of immigration court to an ambush from plainclothes men—masks on their faces, ball caps pulled low. Her daughters protest in vain.
The comment section is split. Outrage at the disappearance of members of our community, at the inhumane living conditions of the camps they are being held in, and the record breaking profits of those who own them. Other comments are full of pride and patriotic fervor. Lots of references to the law, cleaning out the filth, and deep love for the retaking of this great land.
*
I thought about bringing it up on the drive. If not diving into the full proposition, at least testing the waters. Float it like a joke, see how it lands. But I was ten minutes late getting into the already running car, my father sitting in the driveway in reverse, his impatient foot pressing the brake directly into the earth’s core.
My mother, instead, asks me about Caroline. “When did she move out of the apartment, baby?”
“Like eight, nine months ago.” I take another bite of the breakfast burrito my mother made for me. It’s delicious.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. Did you renew the lease just yourself then?” She spins in her chair and puts a warm hand on my knee.
“Um.” We hit a pothole and I smear salsa on my lips like spicy lipstick. I clean it with the backside of my napkin. The front side says: Mom loves you baby, in my mother’s illegible handwriting.
“Is it hard to afford on your own?”
I’m saved by my father’s anxiety, and it expressing itself through the heinous smell permeating throughout the closed confines of the air-conditioned car. “Oh, no, honey. Are you okay?” My mom rubs small circles into the back of my father’s polo shirt. “Here, I’ve got some antacids. I knew Lilly would forget hers. She always does at big events like this and ends up spending half the time in the bathroom.” My mother digs through her purse, pulls out a little circular piece of sherbet-colored chalk, drops it on my father’s tongue, and seals it with a kiss. He accepts the kiss with a wince.
“Don’t listen to him,” she says. “He loves me.”
I was under the impression the venue is a church, but the cabin-style event room we pull up to reminds me of my childhood summer camp. Memories sit in the body, and I feel the same shiver in my tailbone I did at twelve, opening the door to the wood smell mixing with the pine of my youth. I feel a sudden tenderness for my parents and slip an arm around each. My father puts a hand on my back, and my mother melts into me completely.
At the entrance is a table with blown-up pictures: her climbing Machu Picchu, her bundled up like a marshmallow and looking frozen in Antarctica, her striding through Saint Petersburg with a walking stick. I get a little hot behind the eyes taking in the pictures. My grandmother is the person who made me fall in love with literature. The person who convinced me to first put pen to paper. Who pushed me to keep writing when I had to sell my soul and forty hours of my week to a job for a financial institution that would have afforded me a nice house and a sports car thirty years ago, but today keeps me firmly in the impoverished category.
My grandmother was born on a reservation in Oklahoma—displaced by the dust bowl. She still calls World War Two: the war. In the middle of the table on large cardboard it says in sprawling font: Celebrating the life of Shirley Thompson.
There’s another black-and-white picture of her in college, sitting at a typewriter. She looks like my mother. I find myself reaching out, tracing the edges until I feel someone slap my hand.
“Show some respect for the photograph.” I rip my hand back like it’s burned and turn to face my five-foot accuser. “That photograph has made it a long way.” She pulls at her nose, swinging her long silver hair in the air conditioning and smiles. She’s having entirely too much fun. “I was just a girl.”
“It’s so good to see you, Nana.” I pull all ninety-five pounds of her into my chest and hold her while she giggles at her own cleverness. “You look beautiful.”
“You look like shit, kid.” She hits me so hard in the arm I have to pretend not to be in pain.
“I know.”
“That’s what happens when you move half way around the country and don’t have your grandma to keep you straight.”
I smile and try throwing a witticism back. But much to my surprise, as I open my mouth, I realize I’m crying.
She holds me and rubs my back like she did when I was a depressed teen. She gives me a moment to collect myself, allowing me the silence. A small grace. Then pulls the conversation back to her. Another grace.
“It’s weird attending your own funeral, kid.”
“It’s a celebration of life, Nana. The point is to show you how much we love you while you’re still here. What good is it when you’re gone?”
“It’s so nice to be referred to as: still here.”
“Sorry.”
“You know, Hunter. When you’re old, people talk to you like you’re a collection of your accomplishments.” Her eyes are all for me. Green and full of intensity. “And they want to validate your life like you’re a walking resume waiting for an acceptance stamp. Approval in the eyes of silly babies.”
She takes a piece of chocolate from her paper plate and eats it with defiance in her face. “I’m not looking for these people to stamp my ticket, kid. I just want to have fun, do things that bring me happiness. While I’m still here.”
*
“I just watched her make Uncle Jack take off his sweater because she didn’t like it.” Lilly does this thing with her mouth when she’s surprised. It looks like she’s about to catch a piece of popcorn on her tongue. “She said, nothing that ugly at my countdown to death.”
“I love her so much.” I feel the tears making a comeback.
“Me, too,” Lilly leans close enough to comfort me with her heat, without touching.
We hit the food and fill paper plates with meats and cheeses. I’m not hungry, it’s just nice to have something to do with my hands. While we flick food around our plates, Lilly tells me about her morning—taking out her cocker spaniel to pee and smell the world before the concrete gets too hot.
“They were sitting in an unmarked white van,” she says. “Plainclothes, baseball caps, masks on their faces.” She pantomimes a facial covering.
“It’s crushing my soul. I can’t even get on social media anymore.”
“I mean, what would we do without Greelans in our community? I honestly don’t think we could make it through: Economically. Emotionally,” she counts on her fingers.
Both our eyes travel to our mother. She’s helping Nana—who looks a little pale in the face—into a chair. One hand rubs her mother’s back, the other delicately brushes the silver hair from her face. My mother is patient as Nana smacks away the food she attempts to feed her, the water she attempts to pour between closed lips.
They fall into an embrace. Mother and daughter holding each other as one does another they could not do without.
“She’s getting so bad,” Lilly says, watching their embrace.
“I know.”
“It’s to the point I can barely stand being around her.” She scoffs. “What happened to our mother?”
“She’s always been such an amazing person.” It’s like I’m trying to reassure myself, the weight of my proposal sitting heavy on my chest.
I don’t talk to my sister enough. I’ve actually been nervous to see her. But in this silence, I feel that unbreakable something between us. The inarticulable bond of growing up in the same house as someone, fortified by years of watching the other struggle next to you through the drywall separating your little spaces. I have no idea how to show affection. Especially these days, and when I reach out and do something resembling a punch to her arm, I know it’s the wrong thing. I also know she knows what I mean.
My sister’s eyes travel to the food table where Uncle Jack is standing like the kid nobody invited to the party. “What happened to your sweater?” She asks.
Jack smirks and saunters over. “She’s out for blood today.”
“I know. I saw,” Lilly says. “Now you look underdressed.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Jack’s face pulls tight, his free hand falls limp at his side. “Plain clothes are all the rage these days.”
*
We don’t see it happen. Uncle Jack’s emotion propelling Lilly and me forward. The desperation of our political climate, the general feeling that nothing is ever going to be okay.
“How are we letting this happen?” one of us says.
We’re all so stuck echoing each other in something closer to a therapy session than a conversation that it takes her speaking for us to realize: we’ve gained a fourth.
“Oh, sweethearts, just be patient.” Three necks snap like rubber bands. “It’s all for the best.”
Lilly is the one that takes the bait. “How the fuck can you say that?”
“Sweetie. Language.”
“No, mom. What the fuck?”
My mother smoothes her off-white dress, smiles with patience. “Honey, we’ve been over this. Our streets have been so dangerous for so long. Then our great leader came along and finally wants to clean things up. I know people are saying a lot of things, but you’ll see—”
“He’s a fascist, mother. And a fucking racist.” Lilly spits the words, saliva falling in scattered droplets by our feet.
“They’re just getting the bad ones, baby. The criminals that are here to take advantage of how soft we’ve gotten.” My mother’s cadence is sing-song.
“Bad ones?” Lilly shakes her head, kicking her buckled loafers at nothing in particular. “Mom, they’re profiling every single Greelan. And when you say criminals, what do you mean?”
“People that committed crimes, sweetie.” She reaches for her daughters hand and grabs nothing but air. “Rapists. Murderers.”
“Rapists like the man you voted for?” My mother tries to answer, but Lilly doesn’t allow her. “Most of the people’s only crime is being here and not being able to successfully navigate a broken system. And people that are trying, walk out of immigration court to plainclothes men waiting for them.”
“The law is the law, baby.”
“We’ve broken the law, mom.” Lilly points her eyes at me. “Traffic tickets, drugs, worse.”
“Sweetheart.”
“Are we criminals, mom? Are we the bad ones?”
“Baby. That’s different.”
A pressure has been mounting in me since the conversation began. I almost forgot I was in the room—a living, perceivable thing. Not just an invisible spectator. I think it’s why I allow myself to burst. When I see all four pairs of eyes snap to me, I drop my head into my hands, hiding my wet, salty shame.
It’s the warm hands of my mother I feel first. She rubs my back and coos sweetly, just loud enough for me to hear. Then Lilly on my other side. Her head digs into my shoulder like she’s keeping me from floating away.
I let myself exist in the moment. Three exhausted organisms standing on the precipice of relationship-ending finality—looming over us not just in this conversation, but since the moment I landed, and it will continue long after I’m back in my car, flipping the ignition and praying to a god I don’t believe in that it turns over, taking me to my next place of rest. In this moment though, we are removed from all that. Nestled in the warm cocoon of three people that love each other, and have for as long as we’ve lived.
*
It’s the feeling right before you approach someone at a bar, or ask for their number. Full of want and desperate for reciprocity. Steeling yourself for a rejection you can’t handle. It makes my mouth taste sour.
My father listens to talk radio while he drives. The men are debating fiercely. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but hear lots of numbers and percentages. Didn’t know my dad liked math. My mother scrolls social media, clicking her tongue, making knowing sounds like an intoxicated individual hearing a story they already know the ending to.
It is not a good time. It is not the right time. But it is, nonetheless, the time.
I haven’t been totally truthful, mom. No that’s terrible. Maybe something like: I’m in a situation. Ah. I could just tell the truth: So, turns out I’m a failure.
“Hey, mom?”
My mother makes another noise like she’s watching someone deliver a monologue she wrote and they’re not doing an especially good job, then flicks her index finger against the rectangular glow in her other hand.
“Mom. Hey, can we talk real quick?”
She scoffs. “They’ll just say anything now,” she says, shaking her head, glasses too far down her nose.
“Mom! I need to talk to you!” The volume of my voice makes everyone flinch, including me. My father turns down the music, mother takes off her glasses and spins in her seat, touches my eyes with hers, then looks back out the windshield.
“Is everything okay, sweetheart?” I know she’s irritated, but her voice is full of warmth.
“Yeah, sorry. I just—how are things at the house?”
She pauses for a moment. “Fine, honey. Your dad has started snoring so loudly we’re getting complaints from the neighbors.” She bumps his elbow. He squeezes her leg.
“Good. That’s good.” I try holding the plan in my mind, but can’t remember it with all this beating of my heart. “You know, I was thinking. Caroline—”
“Oh, you’re going to get her back, baby. Don’t you worry. She’s missing you like crazy.” She turns and winks. “Mother’s intuition.”
“Yeah, I don’t—look. Since she moved out—”
“Oh, that’s right. You haven’t told me, sweetie.” As she speaks, she unwraps a granola bar, slips it my direction. “Are you still living in the same place?”
I feel my silence start to build. How long has it been since she asked the question?
“Hunter, did you renew the lease, baby? I actually have some things I want to send you, but wasn’t sure if it’s the same address.”
I look down to see the skin between my index finger and thumb is a few strokes away from breaking blood. I take a deep breath.
“Mom—” I barely get the word out. The sound of my mother’s scream rattles the windows. I throw myself back into my seat and my father slams the brakes. Tires screech against the asphalt in a hopeless panic. The car teeters one side to the other as the breaks fight momentum, until my father carefully maneuvers into the road’s shoulder. Smoke rises off the street into the midday heat and the three of us catch our breath.
“Ann. Was that really—”
But she’s already out of the car and walking behind us into the deserted road. My father takes a patient breath, looks back at me. “She means well, you know?” He reaches out and punches my knee. It’s harder than I expect and I wait until he leaves the car to rub the pain away.
On the road, my mother is in a crouched position, holding out her hands like she’s casting a spell. “Oh, sweet baby. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“Ann. I think it’s just in shock.”
“It’s dying, Daniel. Can’t you see it’s dying!”
The snow-white bunny is completely still, stuck in the thick air like a bug in amber. No signs of injury. Blood does not paint its fur. Bone does not protrude its shape.
“Where’s the nearest animal hospital? Daniel, do you have service?”
“Ann.”
“Hunter! Grab a blanket from the trunk, sweetie.” She looks back at the ubiquitous little mammal—not lying on its side, not in some peculiar position. It’s frozen in prone. Fight-or-flight response in its reptilian brain giving way to the futility, settling into the immobilization response.
“Mom.” I step close and put a hand on her back. She shudders. Tears drip down her blushed cheeks, her shoulders begin to heave and fall in rhythm. It’s like the shaking of her sobs sucks the irritation and anxiety out of my body. For a moment, I let go of it all. I push off what I’m trying to accomplish and the cacophony of competing needs fighting in my head. I crouch there with my mother on the deserted road, flanked on both sides by dense aspen trees, and allow the moment.
“We have to protect the little creature, Hunter.”
“I know, mom.”
It takes a shaking step to full height. Its snow-white fur trembles, letting out the energetic response of its near-death experience, then hops off into the world, light as a feather.
“If we don’t look out for these sweet little souls, who will, baby?”
This type of bunny normally has a small, nubby tail—furry and barely perceptible. As our little friend hops away, I notice that not only is its tail longer and almost squirrel-like, it has two of them. The two tails flutter in the piney air, moving in competing motions.
“I agree, mom. You’re a good person.”
*
Back in the car, my mother finally calms. Her eyes dry, and I know she’s feeling better when my father says that she smothers the family with love and still has enough left over to smother a wild animal, and she smiles.
I ask if they saw the two tails, and my mother says, “Don’t be silly, Hunter. That’s impossible.”
I feel the sweat beneath my shirt accumulate as I attempt formulating a new way to approach the topic. My mother decides to do it for me. “So, baby. You were saying? Are you still at the apartment, or did you move?”
I take a deep breath, let it go slowly. “You know, when you were my age, a job like mine would be enough to afford a house.” I feel the skin on my hand begin to break, and a brilliant blob of ruby smiles up at me. “My wife could probably have even stayed home.”
“Hunter, don’t be sexist. But Caroline would make a great wife. Give her a call, baby. I’d love to say hello.”
“No, mom. Conceptual wife. We’re not talking—” I hold out my hand as if to grab hold of the conversation and, gently, steer it. “Life is so expensive now.”
“It’s all the Greelans lowering the wages, honey. Pity.”
“Mom!”
“I’m just saying, Hunter. It’s the way it is. I’ve been on this earth a lot longer than you. I’ve watched it happen.”
“Damn, mom. Can you just?” A lifted truck passes us and careens into our lane, making my father slam on the brakes and curse under his breath. A flag flies from the truck bed, flapping in the breeze. “I wasn’t able to afford the apartment anymore, okay?” The flag has a snake on it. A bunny—white as snow, is pinched between its teeth.
“That’s fine, Hunter.”
The blood now trickles in a spotted stream down to my wrist, kissing the roots of my opening arm hairs. “I’ve been doing my best.”
“Of course, baby.” My mother spins to the backseat, putting a hand on my knee. “So, where are you living now?”