The Sperm Donor’s Daughter and Other Tales of Modern Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

vinyl apron on the wall and I saw a man standing beside the alphabet chart, and a boy named Courtney disengaging from the group to run to him. Poppa, you came to get me! And the man went down on one knee and gathered him up and carried him legs dangling to collect their things from the cubby. My mother told me my poppa was with God, that he died in the war being brave, and she showed me a picture in a rosewood frame. I wanted to make angels wearing pants. I know now the picture was of Carson, her high school sweetheart who died in Vietnam. Even though she lied to me, her tears were real.
    Daily, my mother filled my pockets with raisins and dried apricots. Once I snuck my hamster out of his cage in the kitchen and put him in the pocket of my pea coat. By recess, he’d eaten through the sweetened lining, and I could feel him bunching his little body to sleep along the hemline. At home, my mother laughed as she stripped the seams to find him. He was groggy from dehydration but she didn’t scold me. At dinner, we had contests to see who could suck up the longest noodle. Her laughter and mine. I hear it still buffeting against the bones of my skull. This last year we’ve laughed together so seldom. I long to forgive her as one locked in a cell longs to find a loose brick, fingers tracing the seams of mortar in the dark, over and over.
    When I nap, I dream of fish. The moon is full and the tide is low and the grunion are running. Thousands of them. Slivers of silver on the sand. I have to say the tongue twister, over and over. Slivers of silver on the sand . And I have to rake them all up. Another wave comes in shimmering with fish, and faster than I can rake, they mate.
    I wake to the rhythmic lapping of Lake Michigan, not the crushing growl of the Pacific. The image of the fish still twisting from light to dark. I remember the first time I made love in the neon light of the motel sign, the room turning off and on, the man a black body in a strip of light. Blink, off, blink, on. Each time I imagined it was a different man—always trying to create a memory I don’t have. My mother lay on a paper covered table with her knees up and a plastic straw inside of her while the sperm of many sloshed in and sloshed out. When I was eight and we went to pick Aunt Becky up at the airport, I watched each man who disembarked, especially those with families to greet, though I didn’t look at the families. I kept my eyes on each man’s face and let it be the moment before he greeted me. Even if he was balding and stooped and untidy, I let my heart lilt a little so I would know how it felt.
    The next morning, I wake early. It’s six o’clock, the hour my mother usually rises. The shadows between the ripples on the water are silver. In the distance, red leaf maple, sumac, and birch cast color over the water though the still air has a sheen of black.
    Nigel once asked me if my mother and I were close. We are and we aren’t. Every statement I make about her has to be like that. She is and she isn’t. We are and we aren’t. I’ve longed all my life to feel one solid thing about her, even to disregard her as a pleasant boredom would be relief. She never apologized for anything without finding a way for me to apologize too. So I had to take my anger away with me again. At twelve, I would capture bees in a jar and then shake the jar and watch while they stung each other to death.
    My mother’s lies were high drama, scenes to make me weep. The poor Nellie stories. She told me Carson’s parents lied about the funeral date because they couldn’t bear the public shame of my illegitimacy. I used to picture her standing alone over the grave with me in her arms; it was always windy. She told me Carson’s parents asked that I be christened. My Aunt Becky loaned my mother the family christening dress. That part’s true. It was the one my grandfather was baptized in, layers of fine mesh linen