Inheritance
January 23rd, 2012 by zuliekaFreddy had taken Daisy to the ski slopes, and without them I slunk into my natural state of extreme laziness and lay in bed to read another bloody mystery by another up-and-coming Swede. At half past 2 my mother let herself in.
My mother and I have been on fragile ground lately, even more so than usual, and this is because of my pregnancy and my preoccupations with motherhood. In my dreams, I shake her by the shoulders for lacking a maternal and nurturing spirit. Last time she came over, she said You’re getting so big. Well yes, what do you expect was my reply. She reached out to touch my stomach, and I recoiled involuntarily.
She called from the kitchen and I and the heavy belly heaved ourselves off the bed and down the stairs. First she wanted to know if there was anything to eat–she was hungry–and then she asked to use the phone because she had forgotten her cell phone. Then she asked if she could borrow Freddy’s truck to move some bookcases from one house to the newer house she had bought in December.
I opened the pantry to get the spare key to the truck that is kept on a hook, and her eyes snooped along the kitchen counter until they found something disagreeable enough to berate me for. It was a Japanese woodblock print calendar she’d sent that I hadn’t removed from cellophane wrapping. Zulieka, why haven’t you hung this up? It’s a calendar. It’s almost February. (A whole twelfth of the pages are now wasted!)
I didn’t feel up to placating her or apologizing. I told her it was none of her business. She didn’t need to check up on whether I put her practical and thoughtful gifts to good use. You really don’t understand, do you, she said. It’s a fucking calendar, I yelled. It’s not as if a lot of thought went into it; it came with your buy-one-get-one-free coupon. I have a calendar on my iphone, a calendar on my computer, and Iliojuet sent me a calendar too.
She sat down on a kitchen stool with great sadness in her eyes. Here! I dropped the truck key into her hand and handed her the calendar. Maybe you know someone more deserving of this lovely calendar! Maybe I will come to your house unannounced and scream at you for not wearing the slippers I got you last Christmas!
I just really wanted her out of the house so that I could recoup and save some sanity for the rest of the day, but of course she would not leave. I went upstairs and slammed the bedroom door just like a thirteen year old, and she followed me up. I begged her to leave and come back another time when I was feeling better, but she would not listen. She continued her quiet, sad talking about me needing psychological counseling to work out my anger issues, about how she is sorry that I can’t be nice to her, about how she knows I must be very unhappy. At least she did not come into the bedroom. I sat on my bed and stuffed my index fingers into my ears, and read more of the mystery. I was very sweet to Freddy when he came home.