Read Online The Long Journey Home by Margaret Robison - Free Book Online

halfway down her nose, and one of her women’s magazines—
Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal
, or
Redbook
—lay open and spread across her belly.
    The hall behind me was dark, and the house felt large and empty with her asleep. I wanted her to wake up. I watched her belly rise and fall with each breath. The electric fan at the foot of the bed ruffled the pages of the magazine a little, but my mother didn’t stir. Not daring to wake her, I hoped that my steady stare would make her open her eyes and look at me, but it didn’t.
    After a while I turned away and walked down the hall. I wished Bubba was home, but his room was empty. I went to my room,kicked off my shoes, took my dress off, and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Then I went out the back door to the swing set, where for a long time I hung upside down from the trapeze, thinking of Tarzan.
    In the movie, Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan. I don’t remember the name of the actress who played his mate, Jane. Jane didn’t matter. Tarzan was the one who rode the elephant at the head of the herd; he was the one who wrestled alligators and protected Jane from the charging rhinoceros. I wanted to be like Tarzan, not like Jane, leaping helplessly from the tree limbs into his strong arms, or fixing the food and waiting for him to come back from another adventure.
    It wasn’t just Jane I didn’t like. It was suddenly and painfully apparent that I didn’t like being a girl who would grow into a woman. I thought of Mother struggling into her girdle on a hot day, sweat already trickling down between her breasts when she’d hardly dried herself from her bath. I’d watched her straining to pull the sides of the corset together over her flesh, fastening the hooks and eyes one by one, then tugging the zipper closed with short, hard jerks.
    I began to swing back and forth on the trapeze. I let my arms hang limp from my shoulders, fingertips touching the dirt where the grass had worn away.
Tarzan, King of the Jungle
. To be at home in all that wildness; to not be bound by rules and expectations. A large grasshopper hopped through the grass just beyond my reach. Then I heard the rush of water running in the kitchen sink. Mother was up, cooking supper.
    Some days Mother didn’t change from her nightgown until afternoon. On those days she moved slowly and her mood felt heavy like the heavy breasts that hung loose under her nightgown. Mother’s life felt like a chore to be completed, a burden to be endured. She was always stirring a pot of grits or frying bacon and eggs, and the trash can by the stove was always running over. There were tubs to be scrubbed clean of scum and stray hairs, beds to be made, floors to be swept. And all the while, despite her slow and labored efforts, dust settled on the tables again, floors lost their luster, clutter accumulated.It was as if the house, with its attendant chores and demands, conspired to keep her forever captive; as if the tasks multiplied and took over her whole life the way kudzu vines took over abandoned places in the country, climbing walls, roofs, outhouses, and tool sheds.
    Swinging back and forth on the trapeze, I was flooded with images from my mother’s life. Relentless as kudzu, insistent and intimate as blood, they flowed through me. To be a woman was to be dead. I thought I would just as soon sit down in an electric chair and have someone strap me in and pull the switch. I’d never felt more alone and lonely. And it didn’t matter that Mother was awake now, because there was nothing she could do. There was nothing anyone could do. I was a girl, and being a girl, I had no choice except to grow up and be a woman. My face felt hot. I gripped the trapeze bar with both hands and swung down. I felt sick to my stomach, and a little dizzy. I walked over to the oak and sat on the grass behind it. My mind filled with the image of mother’s large, pendulous breasts. After her bath I’d watched her lift them—first