My mother stands by the counter of her kitchen pointing to her belly. I am visiting her for three weeks and am prepared to clock in as her personal chef asap.
Something is in my stomach, she urges. Something bulbous. I tell her to go to the doctor, to eat well, to go on walks. She tells me there is nothing to do. She’s been to the doctor, she eats what she can and it's too cold to walk. It’s hard to care for her now. When I was a child we would care for each other but now I am tired. She needs and needs like taking an ice cream scooper to my stomach.
She tells me this may be the “thing” that does her in. The mysterious illness that gives her weeks to live. I tell her not to speak like that. How cavalier she is about her death. How her own father believed speaking it would result in being struck down by someone; God or the Devil or his wife, I never asked.
My mother’s indoor slippers make a nice sound on her wood floor, like a broken fountain going shhh shhh shhh in rhythm with her steps. She walks slow and wide, as if she’s wearing chaps. It’s hard for me to pity her when anger comes surging through me first. Her back is hunched and she looks at me and then away. She tells me she needs to lie down. She cannot be on her feet. I don’t see her for the rest of the day.
***
When I was eleven I was infected with a bad cold. It was right after a particularly long dance recital weekend. I remember the way my mom looked at me after she touched my forehead with the back of her cold hand. She held my hand and ushered me into her bedroom. She fluffed the pillows and wedged them behind and around me like a fortress. She brought me soup on a tray, homemade Matzah Balls bobbing around. Two small bowls and a plate of toast. She crawled into bed with me putting a damp towel on the nape of my neck and we watched reruns of Criminal Minds and House. She liked House better because he was objectively sexier than any of the investigators. I liked the way she said sexier while keeping her eyes stuck on Hugh Laurie’s face, like she was in agreement with herself. Like I wasn’t there at all. We watched tv until the sunset turned amber and then disappeared behind the trees in our backyard.
She turned to me and asked how I felt. I told her all of my ailments. How my head felt full of cotton and my nose was tender from too many tissues. How my arms were sore and my body was fatigued. She would replace the damp washcloth at my neck and say “me too”. She would explain her own similar fatigue and the cotton-head and the sensitive nose. She felt all of the symptoms I felt. Like I had gathered them up and poured them over her. She said now we can be sick together. We can take care of each other. We can eat soup all night.
I would sneeze and moan and so would she. I would complain about the heaviness of my head on my neck and she would say hers has been like that for longer. My back is sore, I would complain. And my toes and my fingers. Me too, she would say. Me too. And I hated her for saying it. For taking it from me and turning it into a we.
***
The next morning I make my mother and I matching egg sandwiches on Brioche buns I got at the gourmet market, her favorite. The egg's bleeding yolk falls onto the plate and into the air pockets of the bread. I delicately cut up some avocado, feeling guilty that we bought them in the dead of winter. I spread the fatty green fruit across the buns and smash them together with wild arugula and black garlic aioli from the farmers market up the road.
My mother lays on the couch watching the show about Tiny homes and do-it-yourself overachievers. It’s a dark morning, the sun hadn’t yet burned away the mist and clouds leftover from the snowy evening. My mother’s blonde hair is haloed by the TV light. She looks ethereal. Like an oil painting of a languished angel by some Italian renaissance painter. I saunter over to her couch-side and place the two sandwiches on the ottoman. She tells me she can’t eat that right now. This thing in her stomach makes her not hungry. She tells me it is growing, she can feel it. I put her sandwich in the fridge and mine in a paper towel. I kiss her sweaty but sweet forehead and head out the door, her lemongrass scented skin stuck in my nostrils now.
***
Over the next week I began to bring her leftover meals to work on my computer at the local coffee shop. Bypassing her excuses and apologies. I have not stopped making meals for two. The meditation of cooking is good for my mind. If I make her a sweet potato and black bean quesadilla, I eat mine in the morning and bring hers for lunch. I bake tartines of caramelized onions and goat cheese, grill pizzas with artichokes, leeks and balsamic vinegar, stir fry squash and corn and bell peppers with a lemon yuzu sauce. Each meal I eat twice. Once upon completion and the other in a nice tupperware after my mother refuses it.
My mother tells me something is definitely growing in her uterus. She felt like this when she was pregnant. But this is a mass not an organism, unmoving, hard and sharp. One morning she holds up her t-shirt for me to inspect. Her stomach falls over her waistband like a shelf. My mother and I share the same body, especially now that I have hit my 20s and she, her 60s. We resemble each other like shadows do. The outlines are the same but not the details. She pats her tummy and I can hear a strange plinky sound, like someone tapping on a champagne flute, but I shake the thought away. I have had too much sleep, or maybe not enough.
***
I go away for a week. I take the train down to the city where I feast with friends at barbecues and dinner parties and French and Italian restaurants whose names all mean “good food” if translated. I eat pork glazed with honey and spices and fried shishito peppers and vegan hamburgers that have won awards for their trickery. I unbutton my pants after most meals and let my stomach hang out, giving it the freedom to expand. I tell my friends about my mother’s health status. How I care for her. “Like she cared for you, it must be nice to give back to her” most friends say. Yes I say, just like that.
***
I arrive home around dinner time. My mother is standing by the door, her jowls are illuminated by the entry-way light. She takes my hand in hers and pulls me inside. She tells me she needs to show me something. It’s urgent. Come to my bathroom, she says. I follow her. A first aid kit is splayed out on the bathroom floor, gauze strewn around the tile floor. She places her hands on my cheeks and tells me not to be afraid. Now I am afraid. Then she picks up her nightgown slowly undressing. Her legs are skinny and frail. She pulls the nightgown higher revealing her underwear and then her belly. In the yellow light her belly is glimmering. Instead of hanging off her waistband it's round and bloated. Her belly button protrudes like a pregnant woman’s. Her nightgown drops to the floor and I can see her stomach in full view now. Its glistening in a milky-white shimmer, like glass pressed up against translucent flesh. No, exactly that. Press it, she says. Feel it. I place my hand on her abdomen. It's hard. I pat her stomach. It’s hollow. Her skin stretches over this glass orb encasing her intestines. Mom, I say. Mom! It just kept growing, she whines. She breathes deep and I flinch. I can see her insides squirming like giant worms. My mind flashes to videos of glass blowing. Of a hot molten bulb growing with air. I tap on her stomach and a tinny sound echoes through her.
She’s laying on her back now. I Google “glass belly”. I Google “bloated stomach, bad”. I Google “what to do when you have a translucent abdomen”. My attempts are futile.
***
In the kitchen I make bone broth. Placing tiny bones in the bubbling water with sage and salt. I toast pieces of Challah and smother them in cultured butter from the dairy farm across town. I cut up strawberries and peaches and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top. My mother hasn’t eaten a real meal in many days. I’ve lost count. She survives on chocolate milkshakes. I offer her the bone broth in a mug and she declines. I offer up the fruit and bread pleading with her. And then I eat it all. The two cups of broth, two pieces of bread and two overflowing cups of fruit.
***
It has been three days since I have seen my mother’s smooth hollow belly. I tell her I made a doctor’s appointment for the afternoon. We dress separately. I need to spare my eyes from her stomach. It’s a looking glass. Her cavernous stomach haunts my dreams. I help her down our front porch steps. She wobbles as I hold her boney arm. She stops and tells me she can’t go further. There is no point. The doctor will say nothing helpful. I tell her we need to go. We have to. She’s crying now. She’s beating her stomach and crying. She’s begging me to go away, begging her stomach to go away. And all of a sudden it does. She pulls up her nightgown to see a hairline crack traveling from her navel down. I blink. This is not real. But the sound of her belly is loud. The crack ruptures and the bits of flesh and glass fall down her body and onto the floor. I am on my knees. Trying to gather the glass and skin. But there is no blood. Just flesh and crystal pieces. The only sounds are her screams and the crunching of the glass on the ground. My hands are full of jagged cuts. My arms hold what used to be her stomach. She is in pieces. I am too.
Emily Brochin (she/her) is a queer writer living in Southern Vermont. She studied film production and writing at NYU Tisch and has worked in the film industry for five years. When she is not writing you can find her frolicking in the forest with her dogs and making grilled cheese. Emily is currently working on her first novel.
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