Baggage
Photo credit: Omar Rodriguez / Unsplash
The first thing I did was remove the crucifixes. There were beautiful ones, the blue Murano glass etched with vines adorned with a silvery Jesus, and the brightly colored, hand-painted pinewood cross from El Salvador that featured half the face of Mother Mary radiating Christian love. I couldn’t imagine my mom Alma buying either of them. They must have been gifts in exchange for donations she’d made to groups that kept pregnant teenagers from aborting their babies. There were scary crucifixes, too. Jesus with concave ribs and stigmata on oxidized metal with a ghostly resonance. These were more mom’s style. I used to say they were from her “sinners in the hands of an angry God” collection.
I dusted them off and wrapped them in tissue paper before placing them into a box. It occurred to me that I thought of Jesus less like a friend who was always there for me and more like a competitive sibling–a perfect one who got all Mom’s attention.
So much suffering had happened in this house, so little redemption. I planned to give the crucifixes to Mom’s best friend Janice (who was also a Jesus freak, I mean a devout Catholic). Janice, who lived across the street, would notice my car in the driveway and come over any minute.
I moved on to my room. Posters of Jesus Christ Superstar covering posters of Megan Rapinoe and Brandi Carlile. I ripped them off the walls with relish. I was done with heroes. Done with believing in people.
There had been so many signs that I liked girls. People ignore what they don’t want to see. People only believe what they want to believe. Especially Mom.
I cleared the shelves of my rock collection, tossed away the fake diaries I used to keep Mom off my trail. I threw out old CDs and letters. I felt myself getting lighter.
My mother had wanted a girly girl. She named me Jasmine. My friends called me Jaz. She’d dressed me in pink, curled my hair, and later tried to teach me how to put on makeup. Instead of a girly girl she’d had me, a tomboy who gave herself homemade haircuts (let her try to curl these short locks) and who considered anything that wasn’t a black T-shirt and jeans dress-up clothes.
My dad left when I was six. He tried visiting for the first year, awkward visits to the zoo or amusement park where he would buy me anything I asked for and I’d end up puking when I got off the roller coaster. Every stomach flu I ever had reminded me of my father.
The last time he visited I heard him tell Mom, “I can’t. I just can’t. I’ll send the check, but don’t ask me to come back.”
I’d like to say I missed him, but I didn’t.
Mom got even sadder and more religious after that. I guess she needed a man in her life, and Jesus was the most reliable one she could think of.
I thought Mom’s experience with Dad might put her off men completely, but when I was in seventh grade, she started asking who I was interested in. No way could I tell her about Kim. Instead, I made up a boy named Matt, who was tall with dark hair and played on the baseball team. Mom got an excited look in her eye when she dropped me off, scanning the kids for a glimpse of Matt.
My mother’s attention was constant, well-meaning and heavy. We were a team of sorts. We spent long nights together watching The Amazing Race, joking about what a crap (my word, because Mom would never swear) team we would be if we were on the show, me scared of heights and her scared of water.
Then came the day Kim kissed me in the locker room while the rest of the field hockey team was outside. From then on, Kim was all I wanted. My life revolved around stealing time with her, in quiet hallways, empty basements, in my room as we listened for Mom’s footfalls on the stairs.
Eventually, Mom walked in on us (thankfully fully clothed). She let out a yip like when she saw a mouse in the kitchen and clattered down the stairs. I untangled my legs and followed.
Mom was on her knees in front of the Mary statue on the television. “Loving Father, touch Jasmine with Your healing hands, for I believe that Your will is for her to be well in mind, body, soul and spirit. Cover her with the most precious blood of Your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Cast out anything that should not be in her.”
I imagined myself scarlet from head to toe, covered in blood.
“A prayer for the sick, really Mom?”
“That girl seduced you. It’s her fault.”
“I kissed her first.”
“It’s that liberal school. Sex education.” She spat the words out.
She was casting around for a place to lay the blame, anywhere but on me.
“I like girls, Mom. I like, I love, Kim.”
Kim was standing behind me on the stairs. “I love you too, Jaz.” I went to her and put my arms around her waist, as Mom looked on, eyes wide. That’s when I knew Kim and I had a future.
“Not in my house,” Mom said. Her voice seethed. Her hands trembled.
I walked Kim out. The blue of her shirt grew smaller and smaller as she rode away on her bike.
From then on Mom watched me like a study hall monitor. Kim and I found ways to be together, a study skills class (as if), even a fake Bible study group that made Mom so happy I almost felt guilty. Kim’s name never passed Mom’s lips.
When I was eighteen, I moved out. I worked at Maud’s serving drinks to people like me. I grew my hair out and shaved one side. Kim and I spent weekends with a gang of friends, most of which Kim got in the breakup. Kim never came with me for weekly visits to Mom’s house or to any family outings. There was no one to comfort me when the accident happened.
I’d persuaded Mom to ride the ferry to Shoal Island instead of taking the long way over the bridge. Mom had just relaxed. She was pointing to a water bird when she leaned against an unsecured latch and fell. I tried to jump in after her, but a man on the boat held me back and called for the crew. I watched helplessly as Mom screamed, thrashed and then dropped under the water. They didn’t reach her in time.
Mom would have loved her funeral service. The priest praised her devotion to God and to me. But she had been devoted to a version of me that didn’t exist. I wish she had known me–really known me–and found a way to love the true me.
Kim skipped the service though I asked her to come. That was a clue we were growing apart. Maybe it stopped being fun for Kim when my mom was no longer around to disapprove.
I was twenty-three and an orphan. A single orphan with an entire house to clear out. My joke was that if I ever inherited my mother’s house, I would turn it into a recreation center for gay youth. The truth was I needed to live here now.
As for Kim, the usual baggage of a high school romance weighed down our relationship--we were each other's firsts, we had witnessed and comforted each other through family shit-shows. She’d been my only partner.
The doorbell rang. A halo of curly hair shone through the frosted glass. My mom’s friend, Janice.
Janice wrapped her arms around me, and I accepted her touch. Warm, just like Mom. She pulled back and stared at my face. “You have her eyes. It’s like she’s here with us.” I smelled the citrus bite of her Jean Nate perfume.
I gestured to the box of religious paraphernalia. “I have some things for you.”
“Oh, each of these has a story,” Janice said. “We’d take these bus trips with the church and share a room. Did you know Alma snored? When she’d wake up her left eyebrow hairs would stick straight up. It was the cutest thing. Sometimes it took Vaseline to calm them down.”
Mom’s rogue eyebrow, I thought, was the wildest thing about her.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said. “I’m sure she has some jewelry you could have as a keepsake.”
I placed Mom’s wooden jewelry box on the bed. I opened it and pushed it towards Janice. There was a whole section devoted to crosses. She picked up a thin, gold cross that shone.
“She got this one at Ave Maria Grotto in Alabama. So much walking, the place was filled with reproductions of shrines from all over. We figured we’d never get to Rome, so why not go to Cullman? Your mama got so tan. This cross looked beautiful shining against her skin.”
Janice sighed.
I’d forgotten that she was mourning too. Perhaps more than me since she spent so much time with Mom.
“Take it. Take anything you want.”
Janice poured over the pieces as she shared stories about Mom.
She fell silent when she found the locket. Heart-shaped with a picture of my father in it.
“Wow,” I said. “I thought she’d forgotten about Dad.”
“Honey, once your mother loved someone, she loved them for life,” Janice said. “You keep this and remember that.”
I slid the locket into my breast pocket.
After Janice left, I was in the kitchen throwing out old pie tins when the locket hit the floor. I picked it up and noticed the edge of another photo behind the picture of my dad. I grabbed a butter knife and popped off the frame. Behind the picture of Dad was a snapshot of Mom and Janice smiling, their heads close.
All this time, all I had seen was mom judging me. I hadn’t figured out that her brand of love and mine could feel so different, and still be love. I put the locket around my neck and went back to clearing out the cupboards.
Across the room, I saw the Salvadoran cross peeking out from the corner of the box, the portion of Mary’s face smiling. I lifted the wooden cross and stuck it in my back pocket.
Editor’s Note
When we write in our minds the narrative of a disagreement, we’re right and the other person is wrong. Why is it so hard to realize in the moment that the truth is always more nuanced? In Ellen Birkett Morris’s story we have two characters who lack this nuanced perspective.
No doubt you as the reader identify more with one character than the other. And that is exactly the point. We assume we have the moral high ground, that we are the ones who are right. And, you know what, maybe we are–but the issue here isn’t about who is “right.” Failure of empathy ultimately just hurts both characters. The same is true for you and for me and for anyone else who digs their heels into an argument at the cost of personal relationships.
With the story’s lesson in mind, here is a reminder: May 10th is Mother’s Day. How is your empathy these days?
Josh Boldt, Editor
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Buy Ellen Birkett Morris’s novel Beware the Tall Grass:
Story Track
Patty Griffin’s “Shine a Different Way” is a song about releasing the urge to control the narrative–both for ourselves and for others. It’s about allowing people to be who they are. About breaking free from our mental ruts so we can “shine a different way tomorrow.” The mother and daughter in Ellen Birkett Morris’s story both wish each other were different. Both of them assume the other is wrong and refuse to see the opposite side until it is too late. We should all, while we can, heed Griffin’s advice and “let it start again…let it chase the wind.”