excerpt from "Dead Weight"
by Sophie Jai

I have never loved my foot more than I do right now. The winter air hits its pale skin, and my blood, made hot from the wine whose bottle now lies beneath the park bench, is ablaze with emotion. The sun is setting fast. I put my foot onto a tiny mound of ice, its sock and red bandana hanging from my hand like handkerchiefs of surrender, and let my foot feel an extreme it will never feel again. I press its weight into the ice—really press it. It hurts and I yelp. A man in the distance looks at me, then at my foot, then back to my face before turning away. Oh dear, what a sight. I’m crying. This foot and its mate have carried me through this life, each step both known and unknown; I always knew where I was going, but I didn’t know where I’d end up. My first steps towards my father’s open arms. The prescribed high-school stockings pulled over my knees, the rabid late-night dancing. All those reflective, necessary walks in the park. Jumps into the embraces of for- bidden lovers. Tics that showed I was vulnerable, after all. Pedicures whose colours proved I was either a woman or a girl. And—ah!—the crossing of legs—the playful flick, the slippening of the high heel, the public seduction.

That was all before Lanny, of course. Motherhood changed everything.

In the beginning, I was sustained by fear; the possibility of putting Lanny down to sleep as a newborn and accidentally tucking her in the wrong way and cutting off her air supply pulled me from bed at night, running to her and checking her breath with my palm. (Before Lanny, when I went to bed, I stayed there, reading and reading, and eventually writing. I even once published a travel essay in a big magazine about a trip my mother, father, and I had taken to Morocco when I was a young girl.) Then some time went by, both fast and slow, and Lanny entered her Terrible Twos, except that they lasted until she was four. I was working at the grocery store then, getting “warnings” from that bitch Corinne on not being late for my shifts, so I quit on the spot. That was a bad idea, because it took me another two months to find another lovely job at another lovely grocery store. By this time I had no ambitions or passion for anything other than staying awake and keeping Lanny and myself alive. The prospect of travelling, and writing about travelling, was as distant a luxury as the countries I dreamt of visiting. Some more years passed and I fell in love with a man, who loved me back, until before my eyes on a windy day, he was electrocuted while scaling a fence on private property to retrieve my summer hat. That grief never went away, but slept and stirred, threatening to shatter life’s necessary routine. And necessary it was; I was a mother. There was no room for shattering. I worked, I fed, I sup-ported, I slept alone. When Lanny turned ten, I began menopause, and it didn’t stop until she was fifteen; just as she was blossoming, I was withering. We fought plenty, and I was exhausted all the time. Menopause turned me into someone short and insulated and just bitter. (Lanny, not having seen any other version of me on account of not being alive sooner, believed I had been a stern mother my whole life.) I couldn’t fathom being with a man anymore, not in body nor soul nor heart. I was the only woman in my life without a partner and distanced myself from my social circles to avoid feeling like the failure I was. Many times I thought of leaving. Once, I did—just for a night. I splurged on a sitter and booked a nice hotel room a city away. I checked in, unpacked my bag, and howled and sobbed more than I ever did in my life. When Lanny left home at nineteen to study, I had all the time in the world to measure what it was that I’d done with my life and what it had done to me. Before that could all sink in—really sink in and either a) defeat me, or b) resuscitate me—the cancer came.

But the question that lies at the bottom of the bottle is: Did I need to say all of this to Lanny?

I had forgotten that she, standing there in front of me, pregnant and alone, so much like me back then, was not only a woman, but my daughter. I had only stopped ranting when she said: Enough. Stop. As I watched her peel out the driveway through the kitchen window, I wondered: why did I not mention the irrepressible light in her eyes? The way she let me hang up first when we ended a call? How she took me to every doctor’s appointment without complaint? Why am I the way that I am?

Lanny, come on, I type out on my phone to her. I look up now to the darkening night sky for inspiration and lie back on the park bench, my calf on fire. I didn’t mean it. You must know that you were the best thing that ever happened to a wretch like me.

 

 

 

From The Malahat Review's spring issue #234