One

My mother died March 20, 2011.

Her name was Lydia Kathleen. She married my father when she was seventeen. At eighteen, Lydia Kathleen gave birth to me. My father tells me about the snowstorm in Durango that night. They were scared coming down the mountain. My mother was in labor for hours. My father says soon as I came out I shit on her. He says I was a beautiful baby.

I was three when my mother abandoned me. We don’t forgive women much. Consider Eve. We forgive mothers even less. A woman who abandons her child is a terrible human being. A man who abandons his child is a deadbeat dad. Long time ago, I forgave my son’s father for wanting nothing to do with his son. I believed I did this for my son’s benefit. I forgave my mother nothing.  I wanted her to apologize for leaving me. I wanted her to repent. She never did. Not to my satisfaction, anyway.

When I was twenty-one, I found my mother the first time. It wasn’t difficult. I started with my grandmother. She wanted me to know my mother. She felt it was my right. For the longest time, my grandmother was the only person to speak to me about my biological mother, to provide stories and pictures.

My beautiful stepmother was twenty-one when she married my father and barely equipped to deal with a resentful stepdaughter. At five I wanted a mother but had no idea what that meant. It meant I had to share my father with another woman, and by the time I was ten I was too selfish for that.

By the time I was twenty-one I’d decided my biological mother, my real mother, would open the universe. She’d validate my resentment toward my stepmother; she’d validate my anger toward my father for loving this other woman more than me. Lydia Kathleen was happy to do that. She said, “I left him, not you.”

Six months later, my mother left me again.

Lydia Kathleen disconnected her phone and changed her address and didn’t tell me a thing.

She did this three more times. Oh, sure. Eventually, my mother would send me a surprise letter or give me a call or find me on My Space and I was just supposed to feel happy we were reunited again.

Except I punished her for this with her past.

I never let my mother forget she left me to become a hooker then ended up in prison. My cruelty felt justified, my anger. She left me. I had a son to protect. She was flaky; I couldn’t trust her. Lydia Kathleen was never the person I wanted her to be; she left me over and over again, and by the way, I WOULDN’T LEAVE MY CHILD FOR ANYTHING.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

My mother died March 20, 2011. A person I don’t know found her dead in her apartment. No cause of death yet.

March 20, 2011, I had coffee with my father and we spoke unkindly of my mother and neither of us knew she was dead.

March 20, 2011, I got back to work (again) on this short story I’d been working on for months called “Dog Men.” Ultimately it’s a story about how men come between women. Since I’d started the story seven months ago, I’d dedicated it to Joyce Carol Oates, then March 20 2011, I changed my mind and at the top of the story I typed, “To my mother.”

March 21, 2011, I received a message on Facebook from a stranger saying he needed to speak to me ASAP regarding Lydia. I responded asking why he’d contacted me. No answer.

March 25, 2011, I received a second message on Facebook from another person I didn’t know regarding Lydia. This time when I asked why this person had contacted me she was kind enough to respond. “Your mother died March 2oth. Your Aunt Karen wanted you to know.”

I have this picture of my mother and me; it’s the only picture I have of us. In it, my mother is a veil of hair. She has her arms around me. I have the biggest eyes imaginable. You see mostly me, which isn’t strange, is it?