or had seemed, to my mother at the time, as trustworthy. At the time, my young father had also trusted Kobun, who told him that if I turned out to be a boy, I would be part of a spiritual patrimony, and in that case my father should claim me and support me. When it turned out I was a girl, my mother later found out from others in the community, Kobun had told my father he had no obligation to care for my mother and me.
The next evening, we had the same fight.
“Oh, poor me, poor me,” she said in the mimicking baby voice. And then, yelling, “You have no idea what I’ve done for you.”
“I promise I’ll do a better job,” I said. “I’ll do the dishes and I won’t complain at all. And I’ll do the counters right.” She wanted me to wipe hard, and hold my hand underneath the spot the sponge swiped to catch the crumbs.
“It’s not the counters, you ignorant little shit. It’s this fucking life.” She began to sob, taking in big breaths like gusts of wind.
I stood very still and tall and kept my face the same. I couldn’t feel anything below my head. I was standing like a house I saw in Barron Park, knocked down with the exception of the facade: viewed from any angle other than straight-on, there was nothing to it. No rooms, walls, substance.
“I’m very sorry,” I said again. “I mean it.”
“Sorry means nothing!” she screamed. “You have to prove it. You have to change the behavior now.”
She hit her flat palm against the kitchen cupboards, against the counter—slap, slap. She took another long, deep breath through a closed throat as if she had asthma, as if she could hardly breathe.
“You know what I am?” she screamed. “I’m the black sheep. I’m the one who has done everything for you. But nobody gives a shit.” She extended the “shit,” at full volume, for a long time, gravelly, so I was sure the neighbors, the whole quiet street, would hear.
“I’m the Nothing,” she yelled, starting to cry. “First with my family, now with you and Steve. That’s what I am. The Nothing.”
She turned on a lamp in the kitchen, a gesture remarkable for how ordinary it was in the midst of this. On nights we weren’t fighting we turned on lights in other rooms, and the house glowed on the dark street beside other glowing houses.
“No you aren’t,” I said, deadpan. My feet hurt.
“Fuck you, universe. Fuck you, world.” She stuck out her middle fingers on both hands, pointed at the ceiling.
She went and stood by the screen door, her back up against it, sliding down it so that she was squatting with her head in her arms, the way she did when the fight was nearing an end.
“I don’t want to go on,” she said, crying softly.
She made it sound like it could just happen, not going on, the way my ankle sometimes gave out and curled under when I was walking and I fell.
Without her I would cease to exist; there would be only emptiness.
I crouched down beside her and put my hand on her arm. “What do you mean, you don’t want to go on?” I asked.
“This life,” she sobbed. “I can’t do it any longer. You have no idea what I’ve been through. You have no idea how it’s been, raising you, with no help from anybody. I’m trying so much, but I don’t have enough support. It’s too hard.”
Every denouement felt like the end of a long, tiring journey, disorienting, gravityless. Sounds around us returned. Smells. By that time I could no longer feel the outline of my body.
She stayed on the floor in front of the screen. The fight was over. She wasn’t angry anymore, only sad, and I couldn’t imagine, now that the storm had raged through and left her weak and defeated, how I had ever wanted anything but good for her.
As my mother foundered, I fantasized about living at my father’s house. To traipse around the clean white rooms—still with hardly any furniture—and to sample from the bowls of unlimited fruit. Laurene was starting a business called TerraVera with a petite man from business school, making vegan wrap sandwiches on whole wheat lavash bread. She was chipper when I asked how her day was when she walked in before dinner, with the mane of blonde hair, a leather satchel she carried with papers. Her jeans were cut unevenly on