mother had taken me to the yacht club (she despised the other members, but liked to have a private beach), so that she could play in the ocean.
Often when I was a child, hearing my father’s voice as they argued at the dinner table, I felt as if I were remembering that day. I saw my mother standing by the edge of the ocean, wearing a blue bathing suit that showed her long pale legs. Her red hair was entirely tucked up under a white rubber cap that made her features severe, strange to me—it wasn’t a woman’s face. Her muscles were taut. The water will be cold at first, a little painful, but it will open into her pleasure: she loves to swim. Her mouth was slightly open, butnot slack. Her face was intent, expectant, she was thinking of her pleasure. Her face was empty of thoughts of me! She turned from me and walked forward slowly, down the deserted shoreline, away from me, towards a sea that became dark cloud at the horizon. And then suddenly she vanished, diving into, swallowed up by, a wavering hand of green and white water, a huge angry wave.
She had left me covered on the sand, but I crawled from under my woolen blanket into a sharp wind. When she came out of the ocean I was blue and shaking, my arms and legs moving in grasping spasms, clutching air.
I had had my first attack.
Because she had been careless with me. Or so my father said when they argued (and they argued always before me: I was the point). And carried along for a moment by his strength, the self-righteous rage in his precise, his furious voice, I too became angry at her. There was a sickening haze around the electric lights. The night’s meat soured in my stomach.
She had abandoned me!
But this anger quickly became a bewilderment of tears in my throat, a clog in my chest, for I knew that my pain had no beginning; the thick impossible air had always been there; there had been no betrayal.
And in times of peace between them my father affirmed this, exonerated her: my asthma was not her, or anyone’s fault; no particular incident had anything to do with bringing it about; it would have begun sometime in any case; it was outside history; it was heredity; my body; fate. But she didn’t believe him then. She was a strong smart woman, but she bent without defense to that blow, never answering back; for she was as hard on herself as she was on others (and egotistical too: taking responsibility where she had none). She thought that truth was in anger always, and so in her husband’s accusation only, that any other explanation was a way of comforting her, letting her off, a lie. To her death she believed my pain had come from her, from her having indulged her love of the ocean that cold fall day. And often, watching her as she argued with him at the dinner table, I thought I saw that sad thought enter her; it was a hesitation when she was making one of her sharp witty caricatures; she glanced at me; a fear clouded the bright brown intelligence of her eyes, suddenly stilled the lovely O almost wicked vivacity of her face. She looked for a moment—my mother, Celia de la Serna Guevara!—as if she were cringing slightly. Her malicious remark would trail off into “… but still, I suppose he’s doing the best he can”—a kind inanity that was not her style at all.
So the terrain of my childhood was a place where I was menaced. My enemy, the air, might come at me at any time, turn suddenly heavy, bad.
I might be lying in bed, watching the shadows pass back and forth over the cracks in the cream-colored ceiling—a map, a land rich with wide riversthat I might dreamwalk. Waiting for sleep, I passed my two friends, Left and Right, the red tassels of the blanket edges, back and forth between my fingers, telling myself a story about them: they were being trained by my fingers, their captain, to do fantastic feats, ones that would make them much-admired performers. My eyes closed to a trapeze, a crowd in wooden stands. Men in white coats passed back and
Often when I was a child, hearing my father’s voice as they argued at the dinner table, I felt as if I were remembering that day. I saw my mother standing by the edge of the ocean, wearing a blue bathing suit that showed her long pale legs. Her red hair was entirely tucked up under a white rubber cap that made her features severe, strange to me—it wasn’t a woman’s face. Her muscles were taut. The water will be cold at first, a little painful, but it will open into her pleasure: she loves to swim. Her mouth was slightly open, butnot slack. Her face was intent, expectant, she was thinking of her pleasure. Her face was empty of thoughts of me! She turned from me and walked forward slowly, down the deserted shoreline, away from me, towards a sea that became dark cloud at the horizon. And then suddenly she vanished, diving into, swallowed up by, a wavering hand of green and white water, a huge angry wave.
She had left me covered on the sand, but I crawled from under my woolen blanket into a sharp wind. When she came out of the ocean I was blue and shaking, my arms and legs moving in grasping spasms, clutching air.
I had had my first attack.
Because she had been careless with me. Or so my father said when they argued (and they argued always before me: I was the point). And carried along for a moment by his strength, the self-righteous rage in his precise, his furious voice, I too became angry at her. There was a sickening haze around the electric lights. The night’s meat soured in my stomach.
She had abandoned me!
But this anger quickly became a bewilderment of tears in my throat, a clog in my chest, for I knew that my pain had no beginning; the thick impossible air had always been there; there had been no betrayal.
And in times of peace between them my father affirmed this, exonerated her: my asthma was not her, or anyone’s fault; no particular incident had anything to do with bringing it about; it would have begun sometime in any case; it was outside history; it was heredity; my body; fate. But she didn’t believe him then. She was a strong smart woman, but she bent without defense to that blow, never answering back; for she was as hard on herself as she was on others (and egotistical too: taking responsibility where she had none). She thought that truth was in anger always, and so in her husband’s accusation only, that any other explanation was a way of comforting her, letting her off, a lie. To her death she believed my pain had come from her, from her having indulged her love of the ocean that cold fall day. And often, watching her as she argued with him at the dinner table, I thought I saw that sad thought enter her; it was a hesitation when she was making one of her sharp witty caricatures; she glanced at me; a fear clouded the bright brown intelligence of her eyes, suddenly stilled the lovely O almost wicked vivacity of her face. She looked for a moment—my mother, Celia de la Serna Guevara!—as if she were cringing slightly. Her malicious remark would trail off into “… but still, I suppose he’s doing the best he can”—a kind inanity that was not her style at all.
So the terrain of my childhood was a place where I was menaced. My enemy, the air, might come at me at any time, turn suddenly heavy, bad.
I might be lying in bed, watching the shadows pass back and forth over the cracks in the cream-colored ceiling—a map, a land rich with wide riversthat I might dreamwalk. Waiting for sleep, I passed my two friends, Left and Right, the red tassels of the blanket edges, back and forth between my fingers, telling myself a story about them: they were being trained by my fingers, their captain, to do fantastic feats, ones that would make them much-admired performers. My eyes closed to a trapeze, a crowd in wooden stands. Men in white coats passed back and
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