The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter

Things That Stay

Things That Stay We were swimming in a pool of Caribbean blue water. You paddled toward me. Then, inexplicably, you sank: suddenly, like a stone. As I dove down, the water turned dark as a stormy sky. In the absence of sight, I groped the wet depths, until I reached you. We broke through the water's surface and climbed out ofthe pool. I was holding your small, solid body, and you were crying. In these dreams I always find you. I I awoke slowly, reluctantly emerging from the heavy world of sleep where I could still feel the solid weight of my child on my lap. The bright sun smacked me in the eyes, revealing the twisted covers on Whit's side of the bed, but no Whit. According to the clock, she had been gone for about an hour. Amelia had been gone for four days. Out of habit I got up and went downstairs. If asked, I could have offered no good reason to proceed with the day. I didn't have to go to work. I was using up my precious vacation time in order to do nothing much. If I wasn't exactlyvacationing, I was at least vacating. Vacating my mind, my reality, my predicament. Since Amelia left, I had done very little that could be called productive. I had raised anchor, and was floating. But I had promised Whit I would get out of the house that day, and treat myself to something fun. I thought I would go for a swim. The living room looked unusually large in the late morning light. The sun on the wood floor made it appear cleaner than it was, like on a furniture polish commercial. There was a conspicuous lack of clutter now that all of Amelia's books, puppets, and 235 236 Things That Stay video tapes had been put away. The house was empty not only of her toys, but ofher voice, her footsteps, the movement ofair that followed her, like waves from a motorboat crossing a quiet sea. The sea. I would need the beach chair, the cooler, a sandwich, a box of grape juice that we had bought for Amelia's lunches. Still wearing the oversized T-shirt and boxer shorts I had slept in, I began to rummage through the coat closet for some supplies. I found the folded aluminum sand chair, wedged in the space beneath the stairs and perched on top of several cartons labeled in marker "Journals." I pulled the chair free. Then without thinking , I began to dismantle the terrace of cardboard boxes. Seated on the bare floor I unpacked them. I counted more than thirty frayed books: ragged spiral-bound notebooks, black hardcover artist's books, composition books with white freckles on black backgrounds, two clothbound books with tiny locks that were filled with lists ofmy secret elementary school crushes. Back then I still called them "diaries." The 'Journals" start in five-subject notebooks and have the lyrics of songs by Bob Dylan and David Bowie inscribed on the inside covers. One is small enough to fit in the outside pocket of the backpack I took traveling across the country by Greyhound bus at age nineteen. I am pulled into the inky tangle of lines by a suction I can't resist. In that moment those words seemed to be my only hope of salvation. "What would you think if you had known that this is how we'd end up?" I wanted to ask the eighteen-year-old me who looked out on her future and couldn't see a path. After high school graduation that "Me" had written: I have no clear picture of this summer, or college. Everything ahead is unsettled and unknown, like those glass paperweights filled with water and snow. When you shake them up you can't see anything exceptfor the snow. You just need to wait for it to settle, and then it makes sense. I loved the young girls and women I had been in these books. Angry. Smart. Determined to do her best at being human. I could trust the future a little more when I imagined another "Me," ten years up the road, reading the words between the shiny orange covers of the book I kept upstairs by my bed. Surely the Me of ten years hence would love the Me of today, as much as I was then loving the Me from ten years before. Before...