Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro Page B

IRCC judges are going to pick someone else to win the grand prize today. I’m not certain when my mom will come next, but when she does, I’m going to make sure that my room is the best and most interesting place she’s ever seen. She’s going to be amazed—just like the judges of the IRCC.

NOW
between paper and pen
    My aunt Joanna taps on the bedroom door. “I’m going into town for an hour or so. Do you want to come with? You might find a treasure at a post-Christmas sale to bring back to the kids.” She’s right. I’ll need to bring something back to Bella and Dominic. But I can’t focus on that right now.
    â€œI think I’ll stay here,” I say.
    â€œYou doing okay?”
    â€œYeah. So-so.”
    â€œIt’s just hard, isn’t it? There’s not a lot we can do, except be here with her.”
    I nod. “I’d feel better just staying here.” She smiles in a way that tells me she understands. I watch from the upstairs window as she starts the car and drives down the gravel road.
    I’m glad for time alone. It’s deeply wired in me. The long stretches of time that I spent in my room as a young girl balanced me. In my room, the world felt small and manageable. Whenever the shouting between my dad and brothers escalated, I had a place to hide. And when Eden and Jamie fought after school (which seemed like every day), the pitch of Eden’s piercing screams kept me in my room where I was safe. Jamie always preyed on Eden in the absence of adult supervision until he cried out “Mercy.” I felt sorry for Eden but I didn’t know how to protect him.
    As a mother now, I struggle to find a similar kind of solitude—and I desperately need it. I’d be more balanced, more patient, less stressed out with my children and husband if I gave myself a time-out in a room of my own. But I can’t just say, “Hey kids, I need to go spend a couple hours—or a day—alone in my room.”
    Whenever I can, I steal stretches of time to be by myself. When my children were younger, I’d sometimes strap them into their car seats at night and drive until I could hear the silence of them sleeping. If they didn’t fall asleep right away, I’d turn up the radio to quell the anger percolating inside me. I was tired and desperate for time to think, to be, to breathe by myself for a minute. In those moments, I couldn’t help but resent my mom even more, imagining her driving off alone to wherever she wanted to travel after she left us, never having to think twice about anyone but herself.
    Before I left home to come here to Olympia, I came across notes I’d scrawled in journals. These were thoughts that I intended to keep to myself.
    Mom,
    There are times I wish I could flee too. Even when the kids are their worst, I do not strike them. I never will. As I carried Dominic’s tired and angry body up the stairs tonight, I felt the heaviness of love. This is the burden I choose. You know, Mom, you did not do the same. You left—you took the easy road out. I wish I could trust you. Sometimes I wish I had that mom—someone I could have curled up next to and felt completely safe.
    Now, finally alone in the upstairs office bedroom, I sit and pull open the bottom drawer of my mom’s metal filing cabinet. Inside a manila folder, I discover a colored-pencil drawing that is without a doubt my brother Jamie’s work. It is an intricately drawn fish, a marlin I believe, with the word “MOM” woven into its black and blue scales. Jamie is the artistic one; he’s never been able to stop drawing. That’s what he did on the borders of his seventh-grade math homework papers instead of solving the problems and on every small scrap of paper he found in the house. The backs of the PG&E bills and the phone bills were covered with red-and-black ink-pen drawings. He even drew on the unfinished Sheetrock in his