Heart Berries: A Memoir(23)

When I feel like a squaw, I wash my face with alcohol—toner. There’s never enough dirt to constitute the compulsion to clean myself or think I’m dirty.

My ex-husband’s family had an endless bankroll for lawyers and detectives, and I spent most of my pregnancy in court, trying to retain custody of Isadore.

“You were in foster care?” my lawyer asked.

“Yes. Can they use that against me?” I asked.

“Everything is fair game.”

In moments like that, I remembered the ladybugs and mold. I remembered sour meat in the fridge and needing Mom to come home. I remembered what it was like to be nothing.

She came home after three weeks once. I screamed at her for leaving my brother and me. I told her that I would take off with my boyfriend if she didn’t change. She unplugged the landline phone, so I couldn’t call anyone, and locked it in her bedroom with her padlock.

I remember, when she left, kicking down the door. I called a social worker who had been sniffing around. I was glad to bring the shame to our home. I was glad to expose her.

What they didn’t tell me was that I wouldn’t see my brothers if I stayed in care. Maybe visits, my social worker told me when I asked. Before I turned eighteen, child protective services let me go home, after four different types of foster families. After I realized dysfunction was too well ingrained, I couldn’t stand each family’s specific type of awful or safe.

A woman you liked left tennis balls at your place. I searched through your phone and found pictures of her dog. It was a small terrier with white fur. I don’t know why she didn’t send pictures of herself. I know that you liked that.

How you fucked me then was degrading. I knew that when you were done you were also finished with me. The other women, white women, were treated like good friends. I could have used that.

One morning, I left your house, and you saw me later in public. You didn’t stop to speak to me. You waved.

Maybe I make myself the squaw? Maybe, this whole time, I should have sent you pictures of my hands.

I was not the mother Isadore deserved. I was distant and kept to a routine, so that there were no moments of candid and inexplicable love. I won in provincial court, and supreme, and then we had a date for the Hague Convention.

My lawyer tried to explain what it was. She told me a story about a woman who abducted her child from Ireland to escape her husband. The Hague Convention deported the child back to Ireland.

“What did the mother do?” I asked.

“I think she moved back to Ireland.”

Isaiah didn’t move in the womb. My doctor told me some babies were quiet and lazy.

The things you said to your white women—I wanted that.

I slouched and inhaled shorter breaths to take up less space around you. I understood I had sacred blood, but what would that mean to a white man like you? I know. I know the tenses and the syllables of every rite and had spent hours with women who made medicine. I wasn’t made to be ornamental, but it’s what I wanted. I inherited black eyes and a grand, regal grief that your white women won’t own or carry. I don’t think you know how I felt, and I wondered what my grief looked like to you?

I went into labor alone in the hospital. I gave birth alone. I held Isaiah in my arms. When my lawyer said Isadore would be taken away soon, deported back to the U.S., Isaiah was in my arms.

“I don’t understand. I have my baby,” I said.

“I told them they would be separating brothers, and about your culture, and no one said you were unfit,” my lawyer said.

“What happened?”

“Isadore was born in America, and Vito said that he was coerced into leaving with you and his son to Canada. The convention is international. That’s a concern.”

“What about this boy?” I asked.

“They don’t seem interested yet,” she said.

I went back to get my earrings from your house and saw you holding your Laura in the doorway. I still knocked.

You told me to come back later.

How many times did I go back before I got pregnant? When did I become enough for you, and what was the distinction? It would help to know what makes me worthwhile, and what doesn’t.

I sent Isadore Hot Wheels cars in the mail. I cradled Isaiah and couldn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure if I had a right to be a mother if I had no right to have Isadore. It didn’t make sense.

My therapist guided me and showed me how to hold Isaiah. She made me look him in the eyes and explained he wasn’t bonded to me. He averted his gaze when I was close, as if I were a monster. I know I am a squaw.

Social workers offered me respite—time away from my baby. I used the time to drink. I didn’t think it was possible to be fortunate enough to be a mother again.

Isaiah cried all night, and I remembered well that I held a hand over his mouth, long enough for me to know I am a horror to my baby. Nobody wanted him for those split seconds, and I wondered why the people who should be punished the most aren’t punished. Because they hurt children who don’t matter.

After those seconds of postpartum depression, or grief, or terror, I took the transgression to healers and social workers and therapists. They absolved me—what else do they expect from someone like me, I thought.

One woman, the director of the Health Department, said I was a tiger cornered in a room. My circumstance was a cage. My marriage was a prodding thing, and my baby was still my cub. I don’t excuse myself, even when the analogies align.