Untelling

                I climb into bed with Mother again this morning after Daddy has gone to work, lying right

on her belly, her thin pink nightgown and my white cotton underwear the only things between

us. Her heart beats slow and steady, cocooned with me beneath an old patchwork quilt. Her lips,

slightly open, send out soft, coffee-scented breaths.

                She usually wakes with Daddy and drinks coffee, then comes back to bed. That’s when I

crawl in. But I will be five next week and I know, deep down, I’m getting too big for this. Already I

don’t fit as well against her as I did before. I’m not heavy and crushing her. But I’m tall and getting

taller every day. Too big to lie flat on my mother like this much longer. Maybe only a few more

days. Maybe next week. Yes, next week I will probably be too big.

                I don’t want to be too big yet. Don’t want to grow out of the warm, soft bed on top of

mother, with her smooth skin against mine, the morning peaceful around us. Talk from a news

show floats softly toward the bedroom from the kitchen radio. The clean, alcohol smell of daddy’s

aftershave drifts from the connecting bathroom. Sunlight bursts suddenly and sharp through the

window blinds, as though it has been playing a game of hide and seek all night and finally found

me with its bright fingers, hiding here with Mother.

                I’m fretting, though, on top of Mother’s belly, knowing I don’t have many more mornings

like this. The more I think about growing up, though, the more I realize it’s my only option. It’s

something I must do. Next week will be time to stop crawling into bed with Mother. She is going

to be sad. She likes our mornings, too. I can sense this, somehow, through her skin, and hug her a

bit tighter.

                A few days later, I don’t go into her bedroom. I creep into the kitchen and toast a pop-tart,

then eat it sitting in the dark in the downstairs den. I know Mother is wondering where I am. I

know she is sad.

                I start school and beg to walk home with the big kids instead of her picking me up in the

car-riders lane. Pretty soon, I balk at the idea of ever having slept in the same room with her in

that thin nightgown. Gross!

                When I am a teenager and she has a hysterectomy, I can barely look at her laying weak

on a hospital bed with an IV in her arm. Because a 40-year-old woman half nude in a thin gown

says “frail,” says “dying.” Mother is frail from the operation, a tiny figure with a face as white as

the sheets under her chin, devoid of make-up and that red-red lipstick that, when she dresses up

and wears it made her look like Jackie Onassis. Mother isn’t dying. I know. But I turn away when

I see her in the hospital and cry choking sobs into my grandmother’s arms, giving myself time to

summon the strength to look at Mother and offer a smile, a kiss on the cheek.

Now, Mother is 87. My sister helps wash her hair in the kitchen sink. I stand back and can

barely watch as Mother tips her neck forward on fragile tendons that look like they could easily

snap. Little red age dots sprinkle Mother’s shoulders. The same age dots have started appearing on my skin.

                A clean soapy smell fills the tiny kitchen as my sister sprays water on Mother’s head and

uncaps the bottle of baby shampoo. Mother is back to using that again. Says it’s gentler. My eyes

water from the scent. A lump comes to my throat, but I tamp it down.

                Time passes now, standing in the kitchen, much the same as when I was four years old,

lying on her belly and fretting about growing too big for such a thing. Now, I don’t want her to

leave me. A tear rolls down my cheek as she wraps a towel turban-style around her head and turns, in her now stooped posture, toward me. I step forward and kiss her cheek. I tell her I love her. But I can’t show her like I could when I was a little girl, when the sun rose every morning with me on her belly. The physical, somehow, has become too private. Too hard to see. I love her just as much now, but from a proper distance, a grown-up one. Not skin to skin.