Hi friends,
Thank you for being here.
Now that I am done with my draft of my memoir, I am scrambling to find new topics to write about, so I can keep moving, so I can keep writing, because even though I am alone when I write, I feel as if I have gathered faceless people around a campfire to tell my story. I read today about the opposing theory of how memoirists are often considered narcissists because they only talk about themselves. It’s true, we do. But what about it? In the past year of focussing mainly on my memoir, I have found how political I sound giving descriptions of routines that would otherwise be invisible if not written about. Let’s face it, we live in a white patriarchal society where the universally normalised truths are what written by those in more privileged positions. My memoir writing particularly is giving voice to the unheard, albeit written in the me me me form of what is seen to be narcissism.
But enough about that for now.
Onwards to supplying you with my usual life updates, I received my first rejection letter this morning. It wasn’t as stomach-churning as I had expected it to be. The editors very kindly gave valuable feedback on to which I have applied and rewritten the piece I sent them, and it lies in my collection of short story collections to peruse and learn from in later days.
In other news, I wrote this piece the other day after painting with my children. I hope you enjoy it, and not think I was being so narcissistic in writing on this platform the stories I want my children to read about when they are older, and wishfully thinking, in a more privileged life than the one we are living in right now.
Your sister is anxious but can't tell us like you tell me and I tell you, because she is three but can't talk yet and it is all my fault. She holds two colour pencils in her stubby hands, where did she even get them?, and climbs on the bed, trying to balance her weight on the edge of the mattress with her short legs, pulling herself up with her elbows, the two pencils tattooing the grey fitted bedsheet with two lines of red and purple. She is jumping now, the metal frame creaking a melody only she can decipher in her little bouncing repertoire. I know this move. She is trying to remove her excess energy in one of the ways she knows how. I read it from a book. I am afraid to look at the mattress. I am afraid the spring that I have pacified will pop back out the hole in the fabric like a jack-in-the-box like it did last night while you were sleeping.
Should we paint? I ask, rattling the box containing the acrylics in 24 different colours so she knows what I’m talking about, so I know I’m doing everything I can to make her understand what I’m talking about. She slithers down the bed excitedly, dropping the pencils on the tiled floor. The red one spins, and she watches it, distracted by the sound, and laughs. Her laugh is an old man’s laugh, you say, as you’ve said so many times before, and we exchange eye-rolls and a chuckle each, our inside joke of an inside joke.
She sits herself onto the crease of the drawing block pad I laid open on the floor, right in the middle. You come back into the room, balancing the white plastic palette you have filled with puddles of water in their six compartments in both hands. You set it down on the paper, inches away from your sister’s knee. She grunts to say she is ready, we are ready, she is waiting for me to slide the sleeve from the paint box to reveal the colours in their miniature bottles. I stretch my arms and my body follows just long enough to reach the drawer next to us so I don’t have to get up to get the loose cotton buds. I feel for them with my fingers, and grab five, I think, or maybe seven, and let them roll on the floor upon release. Your sister grabs one, looks at me for approval. I nod, go on, one at a time. She picks a bottle from the paper sleeve, light blue, and places her fingers on the lid to unscrew it. We’ve had this same box of paints for a few months now, the lips of which having dried sticky paint on its rim makes it tighter to open than when we first bought it. She struggles, her face vibrating, teeth clenched, and succeeds. She places the lid on the floor, upside down so it doesn’t leave a circle of light blue rim on the tile, and gently puts down the bottle. She dips the cotton bud inside, half way in, and pulls it out. Her finger has a touch of paint and she looks at me, resisting the urge to lick it. I look at her face, resisting the urge to nag. She knows. I have to believe she knows.
They call it a mother’s intuition, what mothers think and feel to respond with in order to keep the children alive. Far-fetched in terms of having a non-verbal child, because they can still be breathing, still be healthy, without being able to talk, as is the case with your sister, so maybe when they’re talking in terms of survival, it is the mother’s and not the child’s. It is in my case.
Your sister pokes the cotton bud in tiny dots all over her side of the paper. She is Yayoi Kusama, and then Jackson Pollock when she trails the end of the cotton bud to pull the dots into a coherent mess. You, on your end of the paper, are starting to blend reds into oranges into yellows, your meticulous movement careful and calm. Are you going to paint too, Mama? you ask, as I watch your paintbrush move slowly upwards and downwards. I have not bought the right kind of paper for your experimental blending. The paper is pilling and linting, as if it was having an allergic reaction on its skin, threatening to thin out and tear. What is the antihistamine equivalent to my poverty thinking? How can I make this right to you and your sister, and your creative potentials if I can’t afford to buy us the right kind of paper to paint on?
I try to subdue my anxiety and dip a cotton bud into the only clear water left in the palette. I run it across the page, collecting the dollops of excess paint already on the paper as I go and filling in the empty spaces with tinted water. Your sister chooses another colour, and then another, and another, twisting the lid back onto the last one before opening a new one. One at a time. She gets it. You’re blending blues into greens into purples now, and I hold my breath and try not to look in case the paper rebels, but it doesn’t and my heart beat slows down.
Have you had enough? you ask your sister, as I try to remember where I am again. I look at your sister and her body has replicated the same patterns she has made with the ones on the paper with paint. If she was exhibited next to it, she could be her own Warhol. I turn my head towards your paper. How did I miss the makings of your rendition of O’Keefe’s poppies? Do you like it, Mama? It’s for you, because you like flowers. Your pride emanating from your small body as you held the paper up, your sister’s side streaking like the tears of salty water running down my cheeks and onto my pillow late at night. Have I had enough?
So what if they say she is stupid, if they use a word no longer considered politically correct to describe her, so it bounces back onto me and my abilities to mother? So what if she just needs a little more time to adjust to this new life without a complete parental unit, a complete family unit you often read in books and ask me if ours is broken? So what if I am at fault for breaking it, for breaking her, for breaking us, and failing at trying to fix the cracks, only filling up the empty spaces with tinted water?
We move like synchronised swimmers for clean up. You slowing your steps, heels down all the way so the coloured water left now in the palette doesn’t spill. I hear it swooshing as you pour the liquid down the sink outside our bedroom. You, turning the tap on now, and the gentle sloshes of your fingers scrubbing inside the indentations to return the plastic palette to its almost-white.
I pull a wet wipe from its plastic tub, ripping it off on the corrugated end like a magician with his handkerchiefs. I swipe the floor, covering a finger whole with the wipe so I can scrub where tiny specks of paint settled. Your sister dabs her hands gently on the paper as she has seen me do before, to see if the paint has dried. Satisfied, she closes the pad and climbs on the box on the floor next to the table and flops the pad into the recycled box on top. She returns to me, I am on my knees with the wet wipe and waits. I throw the used wipe into the bin like Salt-Bae and your sister has arranged the paint bottles back in their box. I slide the paper drawer in for her to close the lid. You are back, the palette held upside down now dripping three stray droplets of water onto the clean floor.
Where is the painting? you say, knowing that we must have put everything away in your absence. I want to have a good look and take a picture.
Your sister sighs and gives you a look that you don’t see because your eyes are fixed on the recycled box on the table, answering your own question.
You put the palette in the drawer, wipe your hands roughly on your t-shirt, and take the drawing block back out.
You flick through the pages until you get to the right one, and smile.
I think this is the worst one yet, Mama, and you break into an uncontrollable laugh.
Don't be discouraged Lisha, you have at least had a reply (a rarity from what I understand) and details of where to correct or change things... keep going ! xxx
Congratulations on your first rejection letter! And one with feedback! How wonderful!! So often it is simply a form letter. They read your work. Well done! xoxo