Know the Mother by Desiree Cooper

Author:Desiree Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayne State University Press

MOURNING CHAIR

I WISH THIS SEAT WERE A ROCKING CHAIR. THEN I COULD pretend that this is just another long night in the nursery, you burning hot in my arms.

But it’s not a rocking chair and you’re not in my arms. I’m sitting in your grandmother’s chair. The faded blue one with the overstuffed cushions of worn brocade.

You once said that you wished we’d throw this chair out—that it was embarrassing. Especially after that time you brought that boy home, the one from the football team who made you look like a matchstick in comparison. Your father sat him in this chair and grilled him before your first date.

I’ve moved the chair to the living-room window, so that I can have a view of the street through the sheers. The only time I’ve left this chair all night was to check the clock at least an hour ago. Or maybe it was only ten minutes ago. Or maybe I’ve been sitting in a chair by a window for seventeen years, since the day you were born.

All evening, I’ve been rising eagerly each time I see headlights cutting the darkness. I fall back into the sorrowful cushions whenever the cars slow and pick some other anxious mother’s driveway.

But I’m becoming smarter, like a woman on the maternity ward who’s roused only by the sound of her own baby’s cry. I’ll know when the right car turns the corner. The knot in my stomach will suddenly unfurl.

The street is long-silent. I have begun to prepare myself for the worst. What if the next car that comes around the corner is a cruiser? I have rehearsed my description of you:

My daughter is easy to recognize, officer. She has a scar by her left eye—a tangle with Ginger, her moody cat. She has her father’s high, caramel cheeks that always make her look like she’s just finished laughing. The gap in her teeth—passed down to her from the tribes of West Africa—has been closed with silver braces. And she has her grandmother’s deep gray eyes. The same grandmother who watches over me now, as I sit in her blue chair.

My daughter is easy to recognize, officer. She’s the one with her heart beating in my pocket.

I shift in the chair and take another sip of tepid, oily coffee. I have to use the bathroom, but instead I begin to pray for forgiveness. Maybe my sinful thoughts that night so long ago is why God has put me in this chair by the window tonight, with you out there somewhere, lost to me.

That night, I was full of you. Full to popping. Nine months pregnant and a whole week overdue. I sat weeping in this very chair for God to take both of us right there and then. I didn’t want to live, and I didn’t want to leave you behind. I was tired of the double habitation of my body, the split duties of my soul. I wanted to be complete again, alone within myself. Whole.

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