me.
Serena_Servais
LOL You’ll be alright when u wake up in morning. U always are.
MelodyHill(Billy?)
Yeah. Know. But can’t live like this. Need not to have these feelings. Need not to go through neediness. I wonder if my mum ever felt like this?
Serena_Servais
Like what?
MelodyHill(Billy?)
A yearning to play music.
Serena_Servais
Doubt it. She played gigs whenever she liked, didn’t she? Why would she yearn?
MelodyHill(Billy?)
I dunno. Depression?
Serena_Servais
She was sick, Mel. You’re not sick.
MelodyHill(Billy?)
I’m not? LOL
Serena_Servais
No! Hon, let’s chat again tomorrow. I’m sorry, have to go. Please! You’ll be ok! Just think of Tessa. U told me yourself she’s only 1 who makes u smile when depressed. Luv u. xoxox
I turn off my computer, singing Joni Mitchell’s River underneath my self-hating invisible sobs. Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on … I reach below my desk and pick up one of Tessa’s teddy bears that she’s left behind. It smells like her—Athens grime and Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo. Its fur is hard and stiff in places where Tessa has drooled on it in her sleep. I rub my cheek against its belly, remembering the first day Tessa and Teddy lay in the same cot together. That was the day Alex asked me to give up playing gigs. I was so high on being a mother that I didn’t even care. I didn’t even question it, fight it, or even try to understand it. Did he take me to see Patti Smith to avoid continuing our discussion? Could he possibly be so cunning?
I tiptoe into Tessa’s room, to look at her, to try and remember the feeling that washed all my dreams away without a care in the world. Maybe I can find it again. To convince myself that motherhood is music. It used to be. When did that feeling cease? And why do I feel so guilty about it?
Tessa is curled up at the bottom of her bed—duvet and pillows and dolls and teddies all fallen onto the floor. I pick up the duvet and cover her petite body, being careful not to wake her. But all I want to do is take her in my arms, and sing her a lullaby. All night. I want to sing to her for so long that she will wake up the next day, and understand, deep down in her heart why I need more, because she’ll have realized that she needs it too.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that I gave birth to Tessa. I can still feel my legs in those stirrups—the sweaty doctor sucking the entire universe through my spasming black hole. Muscles being pulled from my spine, my thighs to my pelvis. What began as an insignificant seed, violently pushed itself like a fist through tearing fabric. The only thought preventing me from slipping into oblivion was that, for this miracle of life, there was light, not darkness, to launch her into this rutted world. Because in those days I was never two shades of gray. In those days I thought I would be a brilliant mother. Full of light. And happiness. Now I worry I’m going to neglect her like my mother neglected me.
I wake up a few hours later in a sweat.
I dreamed I was on my childhood front lawn in a cabaret dress with the snotty-nosed girl, Marlene, from across the road pointing her finger at me, looking very cross. Her nose was running as she sniffed, “My mum says that Winterberry Holly won’t bloom in an Australian climate … My mum says that your dad doesn’t know how to prune the rose bushes properly … My mum says that you have a bogan accent … My mum says your freckles look like someone threw dirt in your face and the wind suddenly changed.” Then her voice grew deeper, and she turned into my mother. “I’m very disappointed in you, Melody. No more gigs for two months.”
I lie back down. On my back. I monitor the adjusting darkness in the room and wish my days weren’t full of so much nothingness. Days that resemble an ice cube in a glass of hot water. Days I psychologically slip in and out of in seconds because nothing
Serena_Servais
LOL You’ll be alright when u wake up in morning. U always are.
MelodyHill(Billy?)
Yeah. Know. But can’t live like this. Need not to have these feelings. Need not to go through neediness. I wonder if my mum ever felt like this?
Serena_Servais
Like what?
MelodyHill(Billy?)
A yearning to play music.
Serena_Servais
Doubt it. She played gigs whenever she liked, didn’t she? Why would she yearn?
MelodyHill(Billy?)
I dunno. Depression?
Serena_Servais
She was sick, Mel. You’re not sick.
MelodyHill(Billy?)
I’m not? LOL
Serena_Servais
No! Hon, let’s chat again tomorrow. I’m sorry, have to go. Please! You’ll be ok! Just think of Tessa. U told me yourself she’s only 1 who makes u smile when depressed. Luv u. xoxox
I turn off my computer, singing Joni Mitchell’s River underneath my self-hating invisible sobs. Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on … I reach below my desk and pick up one of Tessa’s teddy bears that she’s left behind. It smells like her—Athens grime and Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo. Its fur is hard and stiff in places where Tessa has drooled on it in her sleep. I rub my cheek against its belly, remembering the first day Tessa and Teddy lay in the same cot together. That was the day Alex asked me to give up playing gigs. I was so high on being a mother that I didn’t even care. I didn’t even question it, fight it, or even try to understand it. Did he take me to see Patti Smith to avoid continuing our discussion? Could he possibly be so cunning?
I tiptoe into Tessa’s room, to look at her, to try and remember the feeling that washed all my dreams away without a care in the world. Maybe I can find it again. To convince myself that motherhood is music. It used to be. When did that feeling cease? And why do I feel so guilty about it?
Tessa is curled up at the bottom of her bed—duvet and pillows and dolls and teddies all fallen onto the floor. I pick up the duvet and cover her petite body, being careful not to wake her. But all I want to do is take her in my arms, and sing her a lullaby. All night. I want to sing to her for so long that she will wake up the next day, and understand, deep down in her heart why I need more, because she’ll have realized that she needs it too.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that I gave birth to Tessa. I can still feel my legs in those stirrups—the sweaty doctor sucking the entire universe through my spasming black hole. Muscles being pulled from my spine, my thighs to my pelvis. What began as an insignificant seed, violently pushed itself like a fist through tearing fabric. The only thought preventing me from slipping into oblivion was that, for this miracle of life, there was light, not darkness, to launch her into this rutted world. Because in those days I was never two shades of gray. In those days I thought I would be a brilliant mother. Full of light. And happiness. Now I worry I’m going to neglect her like my mother neglected me.
I wake up a few hours later in a sweat.
I dreamed I was on my childhood front lawn in a cabaret dress with the snotty-nosed girl, Marlene, from across the road pointing her finger at me, looking very cross. Her nose was running as she sniffed, “My mum says that Winterberry Holly won’t bloom in an Australian climate … My mum says that your dad doesn’t know how to prune the rose bushes properly … My mum says that you have a bogan accent … My mum says your freckles look like someone threw dirt in your face and the wind suddenly changed.” Then her voice grew deeper, and she turned into my mother. “I’m very disappointed in you, Melody. No more gigs for two months.”
I lie back down. On my back. I monitor the adjusting darkness in the room and wish my days weren’t full of so much nothingness. Days that resemble an ice cube in a glass of hot water. Days I psychologically slip in and out of in seconds because nothing
Similar Books
