The Salt God's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

fathers had done if they took after any of the men on television. There were no real men in our lives.
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    THE NEXT MORNING, the motel room at the Twin Palms was dimly lit, with a thin curve of light spilling from between the curtains. My mother reached across the bed and picked up the black telephone receiver. She dialed and pushed her hair from her eyes. I imagined the man on the other end of the conversation was wildly in love with her. I could hear his laughter. As she carried the phone into the bathroom, where she sat on the edge of the tub to shave her legs, nestling the receiver under her chin, I pictured her words creeping into the sky, burning with the stars, and becoming dust. Magic swirled around her, as though hot flames. I was certain her magic made everyone fall in love with her—men, women, and children. Someone was always waiting for her, and she was always excited at the outset, before she grew bored. I could tell by the way she drew on her eyebrow pencil that afternoon, creating extra-thick, dark brows, and the fact that she plucked her eyebrows, bewitching Dolly and me, in the flicker of the television. The Brady Bunch was on, and I was certain Mr. Brady, an architect, would be the perfect partner for my mother.
    â€œI may not be back for a while. You have everything you need. Play games, okay? Use your imaginations. Be creative.”
    â€œWhat time will you be home?”
    â€œGo to sleep after Johnny Carson ,” she said.
    Who was my mother going to see? Why couldn’t he come to the motel to bring us food? We were hungry. My mother
ran down to the snack machine and bought us Pop-Tarts and pretzels. Our car was still underwater. The phone rang an hour later, and my mother hung up and took off her bra. He couldn’t get through the storm, whoever he was. We finished the peanuts in the minibar. To distract us, my mother told us her favorite story, “The Most Beautiful Lady in the World.” She had been telling us this story since we were small, and we never tired of it. It was about a young boy who gets lost while shopping with his mother in a market. He asks everyone where his mother is, but he is a stranger to this place. When people ask him to describe her, he says, “My mother is the most beautiful lady in the world.” The police search the area, questioning all of the most beautiful women—girls with large black eyes and lustrous long dark hair, girls with thin waists and full red lips. Still, none is the right one. “Is this your mother?” ask the police. Each time, the boy says no. They continue looking for days.
    One day, the boy sees a woman in a crowded market. He runs to her and she throws her arms around him. “My son! Where have you been?” The old woman with bloodshot eyes smooths the pleats from her wide yellow dress. Her hair is thin and short, and when she smiles, her mouth is empty of teeth. “My son. Thank you for finding him.” The most beautiful lady in the world walks away with her son.
    That, my mother said, is how a child should view a mother, whether anyone else thinks her beautiful or not.
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    WRAPPED IN BLANKETS, we took in an episode of General Hospital and then The Partridge Family . My mother had quit talking and started drinking, emptying the minibar of tiny bottles, keeping her back to us in the bed. I imagined my sister felt the same way about her, wanting to bridge our mother’s silence with our bodies as her moods turned dark. There was too much we didn’t know, and yet her whiskey love carried her away from
us even further. She wanted something. What was it? She was hungry for it, but she didn’t eat. She smoked three Winston Lights and then locked herself in the bathroom to take a hot shower.
    She was trying to burn.
    Our two fathers had somehow remained a part of the hidden tapestry of our lives. They informed my mother’s actions, her drinking, those things I did not understand. It was