Read Online What I Had Before I Had You by Sarah Cornwell - Free Book Online
Authors: Sarah Cornwell
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jocks pile up, diving after a volleyball. And then I catch a glimpse of tangled auburn. My body snaps alert.
But receding down the boardwalk are two strangers, with hair not so thick nor so red as my sisters’. One of them scowls back at me. Pam looks at me curiously. “Who’s that?”
“Nothing,” I tell her. “Nobody.” Panic, in these moments. I feel myself rising and falling like an old helium balloon, and I think that if I don’t ground myself now, I will float up to join my mother, high above reason, trailing a snipped string. But I don’t know how, and so, because I am trying so hard not to think of them, my sisters are always there, hovering at the edges of my vision.
JAMES IS NOT my mother’s only boyfriend. There is Riley, an electrician with enormous forearms who brings me Charleston Chews and, even in the summer, asks me that most inane of questions, “How’s school?” There is Terry, who says he works in the import-export business, whatever that means. He brings me books of photographs—Ansel Adams or Man Ray or E. J. Bellocq—and nervously adjusts his long black ponytail. Right now there is another, a French guy who wants us to call him Rocko. He doesn’t have to bring me anything, I assume because he is so good-looking. The boyfriends don’t bother me; I know my mother will never open our door to a man, not really. They are good for presents and trips but not forever.
My mother doesn’t know who my father is. When she was younger, she worked for a madam in New York City and opened her legs to countless men. She doesn’t have to tell me not to mention this period of her life to other people, though I am not shocked—I am impressed, even, a little. She never hid it from me, though I understood better as I grew. At some point, she told me, God decided it was time for her to be a mother, and He willed a pinprick hole into her diaphragm. Who knows how long it was before she noticed, how many sperm—of every kind and color—swam through that little tear into the world of my uncertain parentage? I don’t envy my friends their fathers. At Pam’s house, the bathroom sink is full of disgusting beard shavings; when she wants to go on an overnight, she has to get permission twice.
My mother taught me about sex before I can remember, about the circular journey of the egg and the way the sperm muscle in to fight for position. She said sex is only a tiny flea in the fur of love, which is a magnificent tiger, but that love, like a tiger, will kill you fast. When I asked her if she’d ever been in love, she said no and that she was glad. I didn’t particularly believe her, but when she spoke with such finality, there was no way to needle her into saying more. Her past, as always, a locked vault.
Tonight she is out to dinner with Rocko, which tends to occupy her for three or four hours, so when Kandy and Pam show up at my back door with a joint, a bag of fun-size candy bars, and Back to the Future on rental, I let them in. “Are you alone?” asks Kandy, craning to see past me into the kitchen. They clatter inside, and I see the house along with them, as if for the first time: the white high chairs and the empty Gerber jars on the table, spilled apple juice sticky on one of the trays. I notice that I have been derelict in my duties—a perilous tower of dirty dishes in the sink, paper water-ice lids everywhere with their lemony crust, heels of bread wadded in countless Pepperidge Farm bags. Pam takes in the tacked-up pictures of horses from last year’s Mustangs of the Sierra calendar. The kitchen’s blue paint is cracked at all the ceiling corners, and beside the refrigerator sit boxes upon boxes of my mother’s favorite five-dollar cabernet.
“Score,” says Pam, pulling out a bottle. “Opener?”
Kandy traces the back of a high chair with her finger as she studies the room. I feel a nauseous, nervy thrill: My new friends have stumbled into the secret center of my life, and they have no
But receding down the boardwalk are two strangers, with hair not so thick nor so red as my sisters’. One of them scowls back at me. Pam looks at me curiously. “Who’s that?”
“Nothing,” I tell her. “Nobody.” Panic, in these moments. I feel myself rising and falling like an old helium balloon, and I think that if I don’t ground myself now, I will float up to join my mother, high above reason, trailing a snipped string. But I don’t know how, and so, because I am trying so hard not to think of them, my sisters are always there, hovering at the edges of my vision.
JAMES IS NOT my mother’s only boyfriend. There is Riley, an electrician with enormous forearms who brings me Charleston Chews and, even in the summer, asks me that most inane of questions, “How’s school?” There is Terry, who says he works in the import-export business, whatever that means. He brings me books of photographs—Ansel Adams or Man Ray or E. J. Bellocq—and nervously adjusts his long black ponytail. Right now there is another, a French guy who wants us to call him Rocko. He doesn’t have to bring me anything, I assume because he is so good-looking. The boyfriends don’t bother me; I know my mother will never open our door to a man, not really. They are good for presents and trips but not forever.
My mother doesn’t know who my father is. When she was younger, she worked for a madam in New York City and opened her legs to countless men. She doesn’t have to tell me not to mention this period of her life to other people, though I am not shocked—I am impressed, even, a little. She never hid it from me, though I understood better as I grew. At some point, she told me, God decided it was time for her to be a mother, and He willed a pinprick hole into her diaphragm. Who knows how long it was before she noticed, how many sperm—of every kind and color—swam through that little tear into the world of my uncertain parentage? I don’t envy my friends their fathers. At Pam’s house, the bathroom sink is full of disgusting beard shavings; when she wants to go on an overnight, she has to get permission twice.
My mother taught me about sex before I can remember, about the circular journey of the egg and the way the sperm muscle in to fight for position. She said sex is only a tiny flea in the fur of love, which is a magnificent tiger, but that love, like a tiger, will kill you fast. When I asked her if she’d ever been in love, she said no and that she was glad. I didn’t particularly believe her, but when she spoke with such finality, there was no way to needle her into saying more. Her past, as always, a locked vault.
Tonight she is out to dinner with Rocko, which tends to occupy her for three or four hours, so when Kandy and Pam show up at my back door with a joint, a bag of fun-size candy bars, and Back to the Future on rental, I let them in. “Are you alone?” asks Kandy, craning to see past me into the kitchen. They clatter inside, and I see the house along with them, as if for the first time: the white high chairs and the empty Gerber jars on the table, spilled apple juice sticky on one of the trays. I notice that I have been derelict in my duties—a perilous tower of dirty dishes in the sink, paper water-ice lids everywhere with their lemony crust, heels of bread wadded in countless Pepperidge Farm bags. Pam takes in the tacked-up pictures of horses from last year’s Mustangs of the Sierra calendar. The kitchen’s blue paint is cracked at all the ceiling corners, and beside the refrigerator sit boxes upon boxes of my mother’s favorite five-dollar cabernet.
“Score,” says Pam, pulling out a bottle. “Opener?”
Kandy traces the back of a high chair with her finger as she studies the room. I feel a nauseous, nervy thrill: My new friends have stumbled into the secret center of my life, and they have no
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