What We Will Become by Mimi Lemay

Author:Mimi Lemay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

What Joe makes of it is that “either she remembers a past life or she has a great imagination,” but for about a day, desperate for answers, I seriously entertain the possibility that my child has been a boy in some earlier iteration. However, I soon let the idea go. I don’t really believe in past lives, and even if I did, it wouldn’t help me deal with this one.

As Em’s moods increasingly dictate the course of our daily lives, I begin to fear for my more temperate child, for the toll this must be taking on her. There are times that, after bearing the brunt of Em’s wrath, Ella still welcomes her sister back with open arms. Em, for the most part, accepts Ella’s love while she continues to reject her parents’. One day I can eke out a hug or a kiss; the next, I am pushed away brusquely.

The baby, thank heaven, Em continues to adore, and she won’t raise a hand to her in anger. “My baby,” Em calls Lucia, and as she strokes her head I can visibly see a melting of the tension that she carries. She’s got a series of silly names for her, Flashlight and Cheesestick, among others. I am so grateful that she still shows a sense of humor and that she is able to accept love and give it, even if toward me she is increasingly hostile.

Joe fares the worst these days. While I can usually garner a stiff hug and good-night peck, he has been booted off the short list of those whom Em will touch. “It’s probably the sensory thing,” I say, trying to comfort him. But we both know that that’s not it, that in some way, he has been rejected. “She was my Buddha baby,” he says to me one day, and the hurt in his eyes is almost too much to bear. “She’ll come back,” I respond, giving him a hug. “She’ll come back.”

But Thanksgiving is just around the corner and she hasn’t come back. In fact, she has picked up a new, peculiar habit of barking at people. “Hello, Em,” says an acquaintance at the coffee shop where I am buying the kids muffins. “Arf! Arf!” Em cries, loping around in a circle like a puppy chasing its tail.

Life has become an endless merry-go-round of names: Jackson, James, Max, over and over. Sometimes a name will last several days; other times, only an afternoon. There are a few moments, scattered here and there, when she goes back to being Em at home. During briefly lived names, I invariably screw up. Instead of Jackson I call her James or, worse yet, Em. Then she either corrects me forcefully or yells, swinging her fists, and is on her way to the inevitable time-out. I don’t know who I am going to get each day, not the moniker or the temperament.

When she leaves the house, she is Em. Always Em. I will not play this game in public, and she hasn’t asked me to since bringing it up at school that day.

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