Contact
The email popped up on my phone while I playing an online game, sitting in my favorite living room chair, early Tuesday evening.
No subject line. No salutation.
Nona: Please be advised that Elizabeth does not wish to be contacted. This may hurt your feelings, but she would like to keep things as they are.
I think I audibly gasped, because suddenly I became aware that my husband, seated across the room in his favorite chair, was looking at me in that way that couples do: what’s wrong, honey?
Words wanted to come out, but on the journey from my brain to my tongue they were lodged in my throat which had suddenly slammed shut like a heavy door in a haunted house.
I stared at my fingernails for what seemed like an hour, picking at whatever debris is deposited there during a day of contact with the outside world. For a brief moment I thought, maybe I should get a manicure. They say pampering yourself is a good way to deal with devastation. Hashtag self care.
So much to unpack in two simple sentences, typed by the husband of my birth mother and sent away with an electronic swoosh from another time zone into my inbox. Two sentences filled with phrases that are now tattooed in my memory.
Does not wish to be contacted.
This may hurt.
Keep things as they are.
Words did finally emit from me, as words have a tendency to keep knocking on those heavy haunted doors in the throat until the body has to let them out or choke. Conversations were had that evening. I recall them in small fragments because the doors from my ears to my brain must have also slammed shut.
Too many ghosts are in charge of the doors of mentally haunted, I guess
I’ve now had two days and numerous exchanges of thoughts about this message with my husband, with one cousin — the nephew of my mother — and with my dog. All were sympathetic, perhaps no one more than the dog, which is why dogs are wonderful.
Does not wish to be contacted.
The woman who gave birth to me does not want to communicate with me, so much so that she didn’t even send the message. Keep your curiosity and your love and your infantile need for a mother all to yourself, Nona. It’s not wanted here.
This may hurt.
Yes, indeed it does. It hurts in a way I cannot describe.
Keep things as they are.
I understand that many young women in the 1960s were all recited an identical script by diligent social workers about how they could walk away from this experience and wipe it from their memories. A bargain was struck: Selflessly give this unplanned mistake away and you can get on with your life. No one ever has to know.
Except I wasn’t part of the bargain. The arrangement, which affected the rest of my life, was made without my consent. Of course, I was just a newborn, all squirmy and screamy as my brand new central nervous system figured out what does what.
I really wasn’t in a position to contribute to the negotiation, being in diapers and all.
Two days have gone by. Tears, of course, have been shed. A polite response has been sent that invited communication if there is ever a change of heart or mind.
Last night, my husband told me he was proud of the way I am handling this. I told him that today I was going to do something bold and adventurous, something fun to take my mind off things.
This morning, however, after I made a cup of my favorite blend of coffee, turned on HGTV and was headed toward the shower thinking about what today’s adventure might entail, a detour happened.
I ended up back under the covers, trying to find a way to burrow as deeply as I could under the sheet, blanket, and duvet, wishing I could somehow be crushed by them. Coffee was left to cool on the nightstand while the saga of a newlywed couple renovating their dream home in Silver Lake, California was unfolding on the television.
Sleep came fitfully, and so did the dream. The dreams always come when the sleep is fitful.
Through a nicotine haze, I could see the woman who adopted me, sitting in her favorite chair in her gloomy kitchen, smoking a Lucky Strike, pack and lighter at her fingertips near the large, round amber ashtray. Her pale, crepey skin was hanging loosely on her face, her bleached blond hair was in its perfect roller curls just as she always liked it, and her small blue eyes were blazing with righteous glee.
“I told you,” she hissed. “I told you, you ungrateful brat. You always were a nosy little shit, always trying to prove how smart you are. You never appreciate anything. You always had everything you need here but that’s never enough for you.”
Another long drag of her cigarette before its was perched on the rim of the dark glass. Another scowl as she shook her head.
She wheezed through a diabolical coughing fit symptomatic of the oxygen-depriving smoker’s hack that would eventually contribute to the massive stroke that killed her. The table shook from the force of her small body leaning on it as the phlegm violently rattled in her lungs.
Even the ashtray, that as I recall had to weigh five pounds from the hundreds of times I cleaned it, jiggled and almost dumped the burning cigarette.
“You never listen,” she said her in that familiar scorn-filled voice, barely above a whisper now. “I don’t feel sorry for you, not one bit. You got what you deserve.”
Yes, mom. I suppose I did.
