Like a splinter in my finger, I always thought if I left my mother alone, she would work herself out. As my phone rings and her rat-trap voice springs into action, I assume this time will be just like the others: that all I need to do is listen, withstand the burst of fire in my blood, say the words she needs to hear and then hang up.
For the past twenty-seven years, on the twentieth of December, I’ve heard the same declaration. ‘I’m tired, Layla,’ Mum would say. ‘Maybe it’s the cold or the town or your father’s shadow lurking.’ There would be a pause then, the silence magnifying her martyrdom. ‘Always,’ she would whisper, ‘lurking.’ And I would think of her in that husk of a house, curled up beneath the faded painting of Lazarus, the phone cord wrapped around four of her fingers. Her minus sign eyes. I would imagine the threadbare carpet and dusty childhood photographs; outside, the soaked soil and the Huon pine trees, creating their own darkness under dense cloud. ‘The forecast is nothing but trouble,’ she’d declare. ‘The wind will blow salt into every nook and cranny.’ She’d stand and pace the kitchen linoleum, her feet making suction-cap sounds; grief as energy. ‘I need to know that you will come for Christmas. Say it,’ she would hiss. ‘Say it or you’ll find me in the bathtub.’
And every time I would sigh. Plane tickets already purchased never enough assurance. Her tone of voice turning over a heavy stone in my stomach, the weight that only children who’ve grown up with a bottomless-pit parent can understand. We learn to ignore the heaviness. Hell, we learn to blame it on ourselves, until the only way we believe the load will lighten is by making ourselves as small as their problems are big. Part of me wished I could just say no, to see if she’d go through with the threat. ‘Yes, yes,’ I would always concede, ‘of course we’ll be there.’
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