A spinning top, a blur at first, then settling into a rapid, humming focus.
Mom spoke a language that we gathered and pieced together, tested and retested until we got the desired results. Images lacked context, seemed to drift from us the longer we stared. There was an embedded familiarity within the walls of the house, the fear and breathless wonder that came from looking out of the window in the living room, the thin brown arms reaching across, the creatures that came to rest every morning. Trees. Birds. We didn’t have names for these things yet.
Still, they called.
Our first bed was the carpet, root beer-colored, too thick for the vacuum to plow through. It was tall enough to bury us. The fibers bowed as Mom kneeled, her body crumpled inward, weight against her elbows, palms flayed out. She spoke, begging, but it wasn’t until much later that we realized the words weren’t being offered to us at all.
Scale felt foreign to us before she picked each of us up, allowing our bodies to occupy the space between palm and fingers. Her eyes tracked, scanning, waiting.
Later, we could hear her in her bedroom, her restlessness hemorrhaging through the ceiling. We wondered why she wouldn’t sleep, what she was thinking about.
If she was still waiting.
Questions surfaced like spoiled cream to be dispersed and gulped.
We spread out across the house, filing into forgotten corners. The expansion offered silence, little else. The couch, the lamps, the boxes of cereal left on the kitchen table. We wanted them to be brothers, to have their own voices, to answer us. We begged them to tell us where we came from, what we were supposed to do. The naivety embarrasses us now, a childish appetite, but the isolation was real because we felt it, because our belief in it made it so.
We planned our expeditions, short distances, only while Mom was at work. Each day we covered a different area of the house, returning to the living room as if we hadn’t moved all day, had waited patiently for her return. We kept our perceived rejection a secret.
Looking back, it’s clear that it started early, that there were things we didn’t want her to know, that we were already hiding parts of ourselves.
A routine, details shaped and reinforced by habit. Single crumbs of bread, eaten from an outstretched finger. Gentle figure eights with a toothbrush.
Eventually, we migrated upstairs for bed, aggregated in a box on Mom’s nightstand. Our tablemate was a glass of water, filled, but never drank.
We slept an hour, less than. It was all our little bodies needed. The rest of the night, we watched Mom as she rolled and shifted, trips to the bathroom and back, her sleep mask slid upward for glances at her phone.
Mom slept with the blankets up to her neck, a torn piece of gray cloth in her right hand. She once told us it used to be a stuffed animal, one from her childhood, a bear in a former life. The rag was all that was left, a remainder gathered when you take reality and divide it by time. She held it up to her nose as she struggled to sleep, the smell offering a comfort we couldn’t understand. She never explained, never tried. We didn’t ask.
So we never knew.
It came in waves. We wanted to know, but then lost the desire in the flow of the routine, our actions mechanical, rote. How could we understand that it wasn’t this way for everyone, wasn’t normal? Normal is what you know. We knew the house, we knew each other, we knew Mom.
We had our own normal.
Still, it sharpened in our ears, like gravel, like something choked and dispelled, circling when a confrontation with Mom was discussed. It reminded us of a sound. When we were only seconds old, we heard it bleeding from Mom’s eyes.
Crying. When we learned the name, it felt wrong in our mouths, too round, too mercurial. Not that we had a better word in mind. We suspected there wasn’t one, that somethings were truest when unnamed.
Some of us couldn’t take hearing the crying again. It’s because we love her that made a confrontation necessary was the proposed rebuttal. The truth, however painful, was keeping us apart.
We voted.
Everything came out at once.
We were on her lap, all of us, looking up at her eyes, lead-dotted and damp. She told us about the imposed solitude, the feeling of being unanchored, the decaying half-life of time.
It came from a book, bought from an old lady at a flea market. She showed us the book, the first and only time we’d be given the privilege, a sticky note marking the page. Later, it would occur to us that those bound pieces of paper were our father of sorts, a knotty metaphor that only further imbedded the distance we adopted as our birthright.
It was meant to bring companionship, Mom told us. She had read the words just as written, but still, something had gone wrong. Magic was funny like that, she said. That we were given life was a mix-up, a mistake. The best mistake I ever made, she told us, then, as if reflex, she gathered all of us into her arms at once. It felt warm, felt good.
It felt like love.
The routine evolved.
Mom taught us symbols, the words on paper. We first learned to read books with pictures, mostly animals who made mistakes, learned lessons. After awhile, the pictures disappeared and the words compounded. Mom’s favorite book to use for lessons was called the Bible. We liked the stories of power, of nature controlled, of plagues summoned. We read it like any other book, it only occurring to us later that Mom saw this God as real, believed herself to be the same as us, just as small, just as helpless. There was a hierarchy, a ladder to climb or descend, and Mom was at the bottom.
We liked television better than reading.
At first, most of the characters in shows looked the same to us, looked like Mom with their softened edges and shallow color palettes. We couldn’t tell them apart. We liked cartoons best, especially a cartoon about a doll that transforms into a boy, who is eventually made real thanks to kindness and bravery.
Mom must have sensed something, the gravity of the movie. It wore on her with each viewing. One day she asked us if we wanted to become real like the character in the movie, if that was our dream. It was maybe the fiftieth time we’d seen the movie, but we hadn’t considered the possibility until now. We nodded, understanding the metaphor, even though we couldn’t truly dream.
Our sleep was simple, dark, empty.
Mom was silent for awhile before continuing. If you changed, became human like me, you wouldn’t be who you are, she said, her words contended.
Did we want that? Did we want to be something different?
We told her no, that we wanted to be the way we were. We thought that that was what she wanted to hear from us, but there was a divergence. That night, for the first time that we could remember, Mom didn’t take us to bed. We slept on the carpet, were there in the morning when she came down. She picked us up, fed us, carried on as if the previous day hadn’t happened. Did she think we forgot? That we didn’t notice? If so, we let her believe this.
We stopped watching the movie about a boy who becomes real
Besides, we had started liking other television by then. The difference in the faces was becoming easier to identify, sharpening, disparate elements culled and assembled in front of our eyes.
Things were taking shape.
While Mom went to work, our trips throughout the house became more focused, more purposeful. What we found was the remnants of someone, a life lived and then abandoned, settled between the walls like dust.
There were traces of it in the house, clothing items kept but never worn, books we knew she would have never purchased herself, pictures hidden in boxes. It was in the pictures that we found clues, snippets of the woman who made us, what was truly in her, what she had passed on to us.
We found photographs, laid them out in what we perceived as the proper timeline. We used any visible markers we could find to place the chronology: the colors sharpening, the resolution increasing. Hair was sometimes helpful, but it refused to change linearly, going from long, to short, to long again, the brown darkening and fading, roots visible and then snuffed out. We made up stories about the other people in the pictures. There was an older woman who appeared often, squinted eyes behind thin-framed glasses, an unwilling smile like she was always looking right into the sun. There was also a man, puffs of red hair, never looking at the camera as if every image was captured without consent. Others appeared for a while and then disappeared somewhere in the space between photographs. What were they like, what happened to them? It made sense, one of these people must have been the one who left the hole that we were meant to fill.
Or maybe it was everything. Maybe holes are dug by anything left behind, anything you couldn’t take with you.
I’ve made mistakes, Mom told us once, between sips of a bottle of something. We called them her bad nights, did our best to give her space. I don’t want you guys to make my mistakes.
We thought about the pictures we’d found, moments gone, people lost. Each one representing something incredible, a promising start until it wasn’t anymore, a mistake formed in hindsight.
But what she didn’t realize was that the mistakes were hers, that she was allowed to make them. And for some reason that seemed like a beautiful thing to me.
I’ll go, I told them.
An integration plan, spoken of, but never detailed. People are suspicious, Mom always told us. They can be evil, cruel. It had to be a slow process and, in the meantime, we were safest at home.
Every few months we approached her, told her we were ready, that it was time, but she always felt like we had more growing up to do. I know you better than you know yourselves, she told us.
So I decided to do it. Two other volunteers joined me, sliding into Mom’s work bag, nestling under the lipstick and loose change and spilled cards from her wallet.
We didn’t leave the bag all day, just listened, Mom’s voice coming in and out, the tone recognizable, but transposed, dirty jokes, a heady arch of a laugh exploding before the punch line was reached. It was exciting, but there was a sour edge to the revelation. It felt wrong, like hearing a secret not meant for us. Out there in the real world, I realized, we weren’t the only ones who were free.
She didn’t even notice that our ranks were short when she returned home. She had grown used to us, whatever version of us she could see, had allowed herself to see. It occurred to me that she only knew us in generalities, the image hardened and set in her head.
We took shifts. Only once did I leave the bag, after I had learned Mom’s schedule, knew she’d be gone on lunch. It was just for a few minutes before I walked back to the bag, returned to my place.
The others asked me later what it was like leaving the bag, being truly out there, but I didn’t have a good answer.
It was more, I said. More than this. It wasn’t an answer they seemed satisfied with.
Why wasn’t that enough?
Mom found out, of course.
We’d started taking turns in Mom’s bag, going day after day. We must have known we’d be discovered, must have wanted it in some capacity.
She wasn’t angry, didn’t do anything at first. She looked at us for a long time, a distance made clear, a ship fading over a horizon. For the first time, Mom could see that we weren’t her, weren’t an extension of her person. We were our own people, made our own choices, and with that realization came a kind of betrayal.
The next day, Mom was late coming home from work. I thought maybe she was avoiding us, was still mad, but when she finally opened the front door, she held a brick-shaped box that looked like a present. She eased herself to the floor, hoisting her right leg with her hands, crossing it over the left. She leaned in, set the box in front of us.
Mom’s lips braced against her teeth as she spoke, her words crackling in a splintery alto. She told us it was time we saw, something that it might help us understand who we are. We were given the choice to leave, look away, preserve our current reality.
I stayed. The rest followed my lead.
The box was opened to reveal a boy holding a blanket the color of the sky, thumb in mouth. He had our features, the same round head, same nothing eyes. It was us, except its limbs were petrified to its sides, body motionless.
Dead.
We gathered around to see, but why? Why did we want to touch it, what did we think we’d find? Was it macabre? Like poking a dead animal, the edema a gauge of something lost. Maybe we wanted to know what we had, what we stood to lose.
She had collected figurines like this, displayed them, cared for them, loved them.
I can’t say why you were chosen from all the things in the house to become alive, Mom said, but it means something. Her eyes seemed to bubble, solvent but steady. Her face mimicked the look she had when reading the Bible, the look of someone who believes, who has faith in the face of evidence to the contrary.
This is what you used to be, she told us. Not what you are
After that day, the figure disappeared, never again mentioned. I was glad it was gone, could see that it upset Mom. All it did was serve as a reminder of our past selves, of how Mom’s mistake created us, of the debt I owed her. I tried to own that truth as best as I could. I lived with it.
But I also understood that Mom couldn’t do the same.
I had my first dream a week before Mom died
I said nothing to the others, the first secret that was truly mine. I wanted to ask Mom what dreams were really like, I wanted to be certain.
I thought I had time.
Gently, in her sleep.
I woke to her alarm screeching, begging to be acknowledged. We crawled out of our crate, gathered next to her. When I touched her arm, the skin was already different, like it had had its own life, like that was gone too.
Maybe Mom was sick, something sudden. If she saw it coming, she could have kept it from us so we didn’t worry. Maybe she was waiting for the right moment, for the proper way to tell us, and she just never found the words.
No visible marks, no blood, no evidence that she did it to herself. We stacked ourselves on top of each other to reach the medicine cabinet in the bathroom to investigate. Bottles of liquid, pills, rows of orange containers with names we didn’t recognize.
What if it were because of us? Because of something we did or something we could never do?
I decided silently that it was a virus or some kind of accident, something sudden, something unintentional. I couldn’t believe she knew and didn’t make arrangements for us to be taken care of. She created us, she was our mother. She couldn’t have killed herself because of something we did, couldn’t have done it at all. I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
She had earned that much.
We didn’t know what to do with her body, how to remember her, to honor her. We spread out and pulled her blanket up to her shoulders. We took the remnants of the stuffed animal she slept with, placed it next to her face. That piece of cloth was as close to a sibling as we had. It could stay with her when we couldn’t.
There were calls, maybe her work wondering why she didn’t show up or a concerned relative, Mom’s sister or a mother who we never got a chance to meet. I wondered if these people were our family as well, if that’s something earned at birth or a gift, one to be given or withheld.
We huddled in the living room. What would Mom would have told us to do, what would she have wanted for us? The hollow echo of the question reminded me that we weren’t completely separate from Mom, that she took something from us when she left.
I found this comforting, knowing that there were parts of us to take.
We realized that only Mom had known about us, that we didn’t have to reveal our true nature to those who were bound to come looking for Mom. Some liked this idea of climbing up on a shelf, becoming figurines again.
The group was split down the middle. Already I could feel the hole forming from the things I couldn’t take with me. It was an experiment, fun at times, but mostly messy and painful, is what the other half told us.
This was easier. Better.
I watched half of us climb onto a shelf, silent, trying to become what we once were. Maybe a stranger wouldn’t know the difference, but I could see it, an unease giving them away, like the memory of movement. Because they may not be human, but they weren’t figurines either, because the change had already happened.
And there was no way to completely go back.
Out there, beyond the front door is more than this, I told the others as we waited, a reminder of what was out there, the possibility of something else. Good, bad. It would be ours, together and separately. More. More was all I could promise.
We speculated what people would think, if stranger’s eyes would make us into something different, more like Mom, or perhaps less. Would our humanity evaporate in the hands of those who didn’t understand us, didn’t want us?
We sat for a long time, but eventually, the waiting ended.
I heard it, the noise outside the door, the banging, then the edgeless thud of the door being forced open. There was a strip of bright at first, and then the slow, reluctant swing of the door, a light that cracked open the room. It greeted us like a question asked, waiting for an answer.
Patient.
Ready whenever we were.
