before she was a mother or even a newlywed, when she was eighteen years old and had first started dating my father. I loved staring at the bend of my own shadowy features in Mom’s trophies, and this was the largest one: NATIONAL CHAMPION, 1971. AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ALLIGATOR WRESTLERS . This trophy even looked a little like my mom to me: a busty golden lady with skinny arms and fists on hips.
“How come you never got to be the national champion again?” I asked my mother once when I was nine or ten. She’d won the other trophies here, on our island—the Chief had given them to her. This was still impressive to me. But I wondered: why didn’t she want to beat the Seminole wrestlers, to show the Miccosukee alligator handlers what we Bigtrees were made of? We were pinning up laundry on the clothesline near the dandelion wash, and she’d laughed at me from behind a wailing wall of bedsheets. Only a square of forehead and her dark eyes were visible:
“Because I am your mother now, Ava. Because I have important things to do right here, on our island. Honey, did I leave that box of clothespins over by you? This wind!”
That day a category 2 hurricane was coming; truly, it was a strange time to try to pin up laundry, with the swamp wind whipping our hair at each other across the clothesline like a weird game of tennis. We had the same kind of hair, a black coffee shade with ruddy glinting, thick and ursine like Judy the bear’s fur—a big point of pride for me.
Our mother, in several beautiful ways, may have been a little crazy. For example: who dries their clothing with a hurricane coming? Like Ossie, Mom got distracted easily. It was seventy-thirty odds whether she would remember a conversation with you. Her moods could do suddenplummets, and she’d have to “take a rest” in the house, but she’d always emerge from these spells with a smile for us. Until she got sick, I can’t remember our mother ever missing a show.
“Honestly, can you imagine me without your father!” She used to say this all the time. With a sort of vacant, sticky violence, she’d kiss the forehead of whichever of her children was nearest.
Even as a kid I understood that she was kissing us to answer some question that she was putting to herself. Was she happy? we wondered. Were we the right answer? My mother married the Chief and gave birth to Kiwi at age nineteen; she started her career as an alligator wrestler that same year.
“She married him too young,” Kiwi told me once in a sad, knowing voice. But when I told Mom what he’d said, she laughed herself dizzy. Then she repeated it to the Chief and they both roared.
“Listen: your brother is an unkissed thirteen, Ava,” she told me. “He is just a boy. His judgments are like green fruit. He doesn’t have any idea about that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Well, love!” she said, exasperated but not with me, I didn’t think. “Your father and I were sweethearts, you tell me what’s too ‘too’ about that! Without Sam I’d still be on the mainland!”
But one night, the eve of their tenth wedding anniversary, she woke my sister and I and made us come out to the museum. It was very late at night—she’d been drinking rum and soda with the Chief and some of our neighbors. Nobody looked up from the porch as we crossed the lawn. Her palms were damp and she was a little wobbly on her feet, giggling like a girl herself as she let us guide her through the wet grass. We entered the main room of the museum holding hands. “Shh,” she said. “No lights. We don’t want your father coming out here, this is
just girls.
” I held the flashlight and let the light settle on one of her posters. In it, she wore her shrug of a smile and her dark hair in a bun. Half her body was submerged in the lake; behind her you could see the orange sun on the Seths’ back plates.
“Turn the light off please, Ava,” she whispered, and I remember her breath hot and rummy on our cheeks. To
“How come you never got to be the national champion again?” I asked my mother once when I was nine or ten. She’d won the other trophies here, on our island—the Chief had given them to her. This was still impressive to me. But I wondered: why didn’t she want to beat the Seminole wrestlers, to show the Miccosukee alligator handlers what we Bigtrees were made of? We were pinning up laundry on the clothesline near the dandelion wash, and she’d laughed at me from behind a wailing wall of bedsheets. Only a square of forehead and her dark eyes were visible:
“Because I am your mother now, Ava. Because I have important things to do right here, on our island. Honey, did I leave that box of clothespins over by you? This wind!”
That day a category 2 hurricane was coming; truly, it was a strange time to try to pin up laundry, with the swamp wind whipping our hair at each other across the clothesline like a weird game of tennis. We had the same kind of hair, a black coffee shade with ruddy glinting, thick and ursine like Judy the bear’s fur—a big point of pride for me.
Our mother, in several beautiful ways, may have been a little crazy. For example: who dries their clothing with a hurricane coming? Like Ossie, Mom got distracted easily. It was seventy-thirty odds whether she would remember a conversation with you. Her moods could do suddenplummets, and she’d have to “take a rest” in the house, but she’d always emerge from these spells with a smile for us. Until she got sick, I can’t remember our mother ever missing a show.
“Honestly, can you imagine me without your father!” She used to say this all the time. With a sort of vacant, sticky violence, she’d kiss the forehead of whichever of her children was nearest.
Even as a kid I understood that she was kissing us to answer some question that she was putting to herself. Was she happy? we wondered. Were we the right answer? My mother married the Chief and gave birth to Kiwi at age nineteen; she started her career as an alligator wrestler that same year.
“She married him too young,” Kiwi told me once in a sad, knowing voice. But when I told Mom what he’d said, she laughed herself dizzy. Then she repeated it to the Chief and they both roared.
“Listen: your brother is an unkissed thirteen, Ava,” she told me. “He is just a boy. His judgments are like green fruit. He doesn’t have any idea about that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Well, love!” she said, exasperated but not with me, I didn’t think. “Your father and I were sweethearts, you tell me what’s too ‘too’ about that! Without Sam I’d still be on the mainland!”
But one night, the eve of their tenth wedding anniversary, she woke my sister and I and made us come out to the museum. It was very late at night—she’d been drinking rum and soda with the Chief and some of our neighbors. Nobody looked up from the porch as we crossed the lawn. Her palms were damp and she was a little wobbly on her feet, giggling like a girl herself as she let us guide her through the wet grass. We entered the main room of the museum holding hands. “Shh,” she said. “No lights. We don’t want your father coming out here, this is
just girls.
” I held the flashlight and let the light settle on one of her posters. In it, she wore her shrug of a smile and her dark hair in a bun. Half her body was submerged in the lake; behind her you could see the orange sun on the Seths’ back plates.
“Turn the light off please, Ava,” she whispered, and I remember her breath hot and rummy on our cheeks. To
Similar Books
