Moods of White
I once saw a frog turn white. A snake slowly devoured it. I was seven, and my stepmother was hunched over just a few rows away. She was picking cucumbers.
"Nina, are you getting ready to chase another rabbit," she said while arching her back. Her belly pointed west. My baby brother was tucked away in there.
"No."
Her shadow hovered over me.
"Oh, Nina, honey, don't watch that snake. It's not good for you to see."
"It's dinner."
"It's death," she said and then shivered—barely enough for anyone to notice, but I always noticed. "We should say a prayer for the frog."
"Bless the snake's food?"
The woman loved me, more so than even my own father, but I couldn't help taunting her. She wasn't my mother—she was, but she wasn't.
My mother died when I was learning how to maneuver my tongue. I had just finished feeding. The flaps to her bra were wide open. She was in her own home—what did it matter that she let her nipples peak out?
While she tucked me away in my crib, another woman, my father's lover, entered the room. She shot my mother dead (no one has ever told me why—my father certainly doesn't talk to me about it), and then put the gun to her own head. I'm sure I screamed—the noise must've scared me—but I envision myself laying in the crib sucking my big toe while the women died on the floor—my mother's bluish white milk intermingling with the other woman's black blood. It's an image that had visited me long before my drunken aunt, the one Dad no longer talks to, bragged about it at a family reunion.
"My mother found them," she said. "Nina's eyes were swollen shut from crying. Mom thought the crying was what caused Jill's milk to continue flowing. She never got over those limp breasts dripping milk into all that blood."
Other relatives clucked in horror until they saw little me standing in the corner sucking my thumb. Then complete silence. Someone swooped me up and carried me to my stepmother, who tucked my hair behind my ears and rocked me. She whispered something into my hair. I didn't hear it because my father was too busy calling my aunt a stupid, callous bitch. I buried my face into my stepmother's sundress. A daisy-shaped button bruised my lip. I felt her voice through the dress yell at my father to stop it and take us home.
That night—I was five—was the first time he noticed the "nightmares." I had them since before I could talk, but now it was all Aunt Becky's fault. He heard me singing when I should've been sleeping. He walked into my room to see me huddled on the floor caressing my carpet. I was singing it to sleep.
I live in a small house in Alaska now—just Sam and me. People think I'm a paid photographer, but my father pays all the bills.
I prefer to be by myself. I've had lovers, but I bore easily. When the urge strikes, I put on some makeup and seduce a willing partner until the need has been fed.
Sam was a gift from a man I once lived with.
I came home from university and threw my bag on the dining room table. As I was pulling off my gloves, a powder puff with four legs came bouncing, no rolling, out of the living room. His energy was so bright it blinded me from seeing that he is not white, but pink.
"Oh my God! Who are you?" I asked as I bent down to scoop him up. His hard, round belly bubbling with joy against my frozen palms.
"He's yours," Bill, the former lover, said. "He's a Samoyed. I saw him and knew you had to have him."
"I'd buy you a diamond, but I think the dog will last longer," he said while looking at the warped hardwood floor.
"You're right," I said and laughed, not getting that I was breaking his heart again. "He's so adorable. Bill, I just love him. Thank you so much."
It took me about ten minutes before I realized that Bill was no longer in the room with me. I found him in our bedroom packing his belongings.
"You love?" he said. "In the two years I've known you I've never heard you say you loved anything."
"It's a puppy. How could I not love him?"
"And me?" he asked.
And there we were again. I didn't even bother trying to explain. He had heard it all by now and was bored with my answers. I wanted to touch him, to stroke his face and tell him it would all be okay, but I didn't. I never did.
Instead, he got up and put his big hand on my shoulder—perhaps he was bracing himself. "Nina, I love you—more than you will ever know—but you're broken. I see you light up when you're around plants and animals, but you dim around me. Maybe I'm the broken one. I don't know, but I can't do this anymore. I bought the puppy because I knew he'd bring you what I can't."
"Nina!"
"I'm coming, Mama." Dad didn't like it when I called her by her name. He said it was disrespectful. He married her when I was two. A picture of me as their flower girl sat on the fireplace mantle. Their portrait hung above it. A picture of my mother was hidden in my nightstand. Katherine, my stepmother, gave it to me. She told me it was okay to miss my mother, but to not let my father know I had it. "It still troubles him," she said.
"Hey, Sweetie. Look what we're eating tonight," she said as she placed a platter of potato pancakes and a bowl of applesauce on the table set for two. We lived in the Catskills. Dad worked in the city and came home on the weekends. It wasn't always like this, but when their fights came on a regular basis—Mama said there were too many ghosts haunting them in the city—Dad bought the hundred-year-old house outside of Middleburgh. My stepmother grew up in Rochester, so he thought this would be a good place for her. It was. She loved the country air. On the few occasions when we drove into the city, her face hardened and cracked as much as the cement sidewalks. She no longer smiled or laughed in the city, but when alone with me, she sang and taught me the wonders of the earth—oh, how she loved to work in the garden and take walks in the woods.
"Mama?"
"Yes."
"Why did the frog turn white?"
"Oh, Nina," she said while plopping applesauce on top of my pancakes. "That's not appropriate for the dinner table. We're eating here."
After a few minutes of silence she said, "I think because the snake suffocates its prey. The frog had the life drained out of him and with it went its coloring. Does that make sense?"
"I guess. Do you think it hurts?"
"I think God takes away the pain of the dying," she said, careful not to look me in the eye. I knew she hated having to tiptoe around death in front of me, but she was the only one who would at least address it.
It's snowing outside, again. It's not the same soft, glittery snow I knew in New York. It rarely falls here. It is shot from the sky. The wind squeezes through the incredibly well-insulated walls and rapes the flames in my woodstove. Through the netting, I see the flame's white core bend toward the cast iron wall while its blue and orange cloak is savagely torn. It's late, and I'm tired and cramping.
I need to get out of bed and take some Advil and close the woodstove door. Heaven forbid an ember jumps out and scorches my wool rug.
I hate being on my period. I can feel my uterus shed its layers of unused skin. Clumps of waste drop and my stomach revolts—puffing up and protesting this unwanted reminder of fertility. I am not a breeder, and I detest the female parts for not just dying and going away. They don't like me either, so the last week of every month is revenge time.
When I was thirteen, my cramps were so bad I could not walk. I coiled up in the big beige chair in my room and just cringed. My prep school roommate tried to console me. I just asked her to leave me alone. Two years later, my menstrual cycle finally spat out its first triumph.
I was on summer vacation with my father. We were at a cabin near Lake George.
"Um, Nina, you better go change," he said while pointing at my stained cotton shorts.
For a man who had a way with women, he had no clue how to deal with a girl's first period. Then again, he was always awkward around me.
"It's a full moon. Let's go for a walk down to the creek," said my stepmother. "It's so pretty down there at night."
I loved the creek. You had to walk up the pothole-infested road, which was surrounded by trees, rocks, and mushrooms. The trees held branches above your head. In the fall, they would drop their leaves and litter the road with gold, brown, and red. But in the summer they would only let small slivers of light pass through their green veins, spackling the road with white dots and cracks.
Once you got to the top of the hill, there was a path through the trees that led down to the creek.
Salamanders and beetles owned this path—they hid behind the roots and fallen leaves when we walked there, but they watched our every move. During the daytime, when I'd go there by myself, I would sometimes taunt them—poking the beetles with sticks and picking up the lizards by their tails. They tolerated me because they knew I'd eventually leave them alone.
"Yes," I yelled and ran from the kitchen to get my sweater. My stepmother opened the utility drawer and got out the big flashlight.
She was one of those rare people who knew how to walk. She didn't feel the need to ruin it by talking, or the need to hurry up and rush to where she was going. She just walked—even with her seven-month-old fetus bouncing away on her innards—and soaked in all the sounds and smells and energy of living. I loved walking with her.
Damn it. I can't take it anymore. Hot flashes of pain shoot through my abdomen. I get out of the bed and accidentally step on Sam's tail. He's used to this, gives me the would-you-mind look, and then puts his head back down. He knows I'll be back in bed soon.
I shuffle into the kitchen, pour a shot of water and open my bottle of Advil. The light above my stove throws shadows across the room. It's going to be awhile before I can doze off, so I pour some milk into a saucepan. Sure, I could microwave it, but I like watching the flames kick the pan before they settle into the business of heating. Plus, it tastes better when it's been burned just a bit.
"Nina, you're going to have to hold my hand when we go down the path," my stepmother said. "My balance is probably out of whack."
The moon was more brazen than the sun—it didn't settle for white dots and slivers. It went around the leaves and caused huge shadows on the road. The birch trees looked like dinosaur bones. The oak and pine trunks just brooded and hid in the shade.
"Okay," I said while wrapping my fingers around her warm, soft hands.
And then she yanked—or maybe it was a jump. All I remember is that she jerked her hand away from me and let out a yelp. I saw pain and confusion on her face.
"Mama?"
"Oh shit," she said while trying to compose herself, but she lost her balance and fell down the hill. Fallen branches snapped, leaves crushed, and I bet the ground critters ran like hell as she rolled down the path into the creek.
I ran after her. The water rushed over her twisted legs, creating a froth between her and the creek bed.
"Jesus fucking Christ," she moaned. "Nina, baby, you need to run home. Dial zero and tell them your mother is in labor. Hurry, honey, and then wait by the path for them."
"But, how do they get here?" I cried. I was hysterical. My mama was stuck in the creek.
"It's okay," she said. "Our address is right by the phone. They'll know what to do. Baby, you need to hurry."
I ran faster than the rabbits I used to chase. I slammed through the screen door and picked up the phone. I used to get in trouble for listening in on other people's calls while my stepmother ironed or washed clothes or did whatever housework she was working on—it was a party line, and nine times out of ten you heard the Bakers down the road (way down the road) or someone else on the phone.
"Help! Help!" I yelled into the phone. I could hardly breathe, my heart beat bruises into my chest. The operator calmed me down and took all my information. She told me to go back to Mama and mark the path entryway so that the paramedics could find us.
"Don't leave your mother all by herself," she said. "It's going to take a while for them to get there, but don't you worry, we're gonna take care of you guys, okay?"
I ran back to her. She had pulled herself out of the creek. Only her feet were in the water now.
"Nina! Stay by the road. They need to see you."
I snatched the flashlight from the ground, ran up the path and leaned it against a scrawny old birch. When I got back to her, she had figured out what I had done.
"You're such a smart girl," she said. "You know how much I love you, don't you?"
I snuggled up to her and together we watched the moon shine past the leaves. The light was kind to us. It didn't make us squint like the sun did.
We spent a long time alone together. At first she cussed herself for being so stupid, then we sang a bit, but as the cramps got worse that all stopped. Then she started yelling. She tried to bark orders at me—teaching me what she herself didn't know how to do—but the pain took over.
"Oh God," she screamed. "I don't know how to do this. Where the hell are they?"
They found us right before she gave birth. The feet came out first. There was so much blood pouring out of her. A man gently pushed me to the side as he tried to help her. The baby had patches of white all over it, as if my stepmother's womb was still trying to cling to it—pull that child back in as he was not yet ready to be born. A thick cord looking like a blue and white serpent was attached to his little flat belly, and a sack that reminded me of a black, dried-up jellyfish clung to the other end. I may have been young, but I knew what the men and my stepmother knew. My brother was dead. The moon, ashamed by his death, moved along and did not light up his tiny body. I watched it hide behind the clouds and wanted to yell for it to come back. I wanted it to give us hope—perhaps it could help my brother, but instead it hid and waited for us to leave before it came back out. Maybe it was just mad at me for not loving my mama enough.
She died at the hospital. I heard relatives say she simply lost the will to live. I heard her relatives whisper what an awful man my father was—so cold, so distant, always going off with other women. He could've been a better husband, a better father.
People pitied me when my biological mother had died, but now they feared me. A child who witnessed the death of both her mothers and a sibling had to be cursed. I was not allowed to attend the funeral. I was told it would be too upsetting for me, but I sensed it was because it would be too upsetting for the adults.
My father earned a good living, so he invested in doctors and homes and everything a screwed-up, grieving little girl could need. He did not introduce me to any more of his women.
I pour a little vanilla extract into my mug of milk, stir it, and then bring it back to bed. Sam is comfortably snoring on my floor. I snuggle under my covers and sip my milk. Tomorrow would have been my brother's thirtieth birthday. If the wind lets up, I will go for a long walk and photograph all of the day's moods of white. I no longer mourn, but I do try to send my mothers and my brother snaps of life. Maybe I'll even put on a little makeup and eat dinner at the tavern. Obviously, I do not plan on bringing anyone home, but perhaps I'll find something nice to whisper into someone's hair.
Copyright 2006 by Bettina Tison Bennett
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