They say that I loved my son’s father so much it made my skin softer. This was true. Sometimes he ran out of breath just looking at me and said, Uh-oh, like our love was a problem. This was also true.
Then, as quickly as the fire that lit when I met him, everything burned, and he left.
Our baby could not yet hold his head up. I lay on my parents’ living room floor next to my son, wondering how I was going to afford and overcome everything by myself, thinking I was too clumsy to take care of something as delicate as a child. And, in having these thoughts, I came undone.
I think I’m depressed, I said to my mother.
Why? she asked. When I was a child, she used to braid and unbraid and braid my hair over and over again until it was perfect. A mother knows what it means to do and undo, how to pull apart and re-center. This is how she raised me.
I reached for my son, rolled over. I stood up. I changed jobs. I got a car that worked. Each night I put some of my dinner into an itty-bitty food processor to make real baby food. I put my son in his Bumbo seat and set him on the counter next to me like you’re not supposed to. In the evenings we took walks. I bought a baby carrier and carried him on my back so he could see the world, but he wailed, so I carried him on my front, where he could see only me. He dreamt for hours, his face on my heart, the most braided thing I own.
My son’s father came back and cried by my bedside in a broken curl, like something the tide had washed up. I touched the salt on his face and wanted my son to see the ocean.
Maybe I can make it work, I said to a friend, twisting myself into knots. I don’t want him to grow up without a father.
But what if it’s worse, the friend said, fidgeting and shifting her weight on the chair, to have that kind of father around?
She was right. At work I pumped milk in the empty office at the end of the hall during my fifteen-minute breaks. Sometimes I could pump for eight minutes and have seven minutes to sleep. At the store I picked the cashiers I thought would be least annoyed by our WIC vouchers. When my landlord needed us to vacate our apartment on short notice, I called every place I could afford. Each time someone found out I was a single mother with a small child, they didn’t call me back. We put our things in storage and stayed with a friend and his grandma. Then another friend—a former yoga instructor—let us house-sit. We were housed, but we were homeless. My son found all my friend’s yoga blocks, and he drew faces on every one of them with a Sharpie. It was terrible. It was hilarious. He made a fort with the blocks, and we sat inside it, frowns and smiles all around us.
We used to do this thing after work, when I picked him up from day care. There was only one day care that accepted childcare assistance and also stayed open as late as I needed. It was a long drive, and by the time I picked my son up, it was dark. On the ride home I’d look at him in the rearview mirror and say, Do you want to go to the moon? And he would kick his legs in his car seat and say, Yes, and I would say, Did you bring your moon boots? and he would say, Yes, and I would say, Did you bring your moon snacks???? and he would say, Yes!!! And then we would count down from ten: . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . blast off!!! I’d push all four power-window buttons down, and the highway wind would fill the car and
off the ground
Camry
our
lift
My son’s dad did not visit. Once a year, for the first twelve years, I flew my son to him. There is a specific sadness of seeing someone be both dead in your life and alive in theirs. When I found out my son’s father had a garden, I wanted to pull my hair out. How did a man who couldn’t remember to buy his son a Christmas present have the skills to grow tomatoes?
A few more raises at work and I let my son pick any cereal at the grocery store. He chose Lucky Charms, which he’d seen commercials for.
How are they? I asked, as he excitedly ate the bowl of pure sugar for dinner.
They’re OK, he said, trying not to frown. I think they lied, he lamented. They’re not “magically delicious.”
For a long time I protected my son’s father. I didn’t file for custody. I didn’t file for child support. I didn’t—and still don’t—talk smack about him in front of my son. But one day, around the age of ten, my son asked questions about his father, and I answered them.
For court, I braided my hair. I wore a black shirt and black pants, heeled boots, and a jacket the color and shape of moonlight, if moonlight were a woman.
Hold me in your hands. Split me into sections.
I’m sorry. That my son grew up without a father in his life. That he got stuck with me, a woman who was barely older than a girl when she had him. That for fourteen years I neglected to do this very basic legal thing. I was a mother who did not need the state to prove it, who would raise her baby with only the soles of her feet.
Cross me over the middle.
Under oath I confirmed his name, Yes, Your Honor, and I confirmed his birth date, Yes, Your Honor. But when the judge asked, Is he fourteen? a smile flew out of me, too proud to stay in place.
Yes, and he’s hilarious, I wanted to say. Yes, and he is sweet to animals. Yes, and he’s a Boy Scout. Yes, and on the second Sunday in May he texts, Happy Mother’s Day, to all the mothers he knows before his friends even wake up. Yes, and he does puzzles with his grandma, and he makes dinner on Thursdays, and he once walked a dog and got twenty dollars and tried to give it to a man on the sidewalk to buy breakfast.
Yes, Your Honor, I said, confirming every little detail I could think of, plaiting all the best things together. We’ve been to the moon.
Full physical and legal custody and a child-support order: That’s what the judge granted me. Everything else: That’s what motherhood gave me. What motherhood made of me, what we’ve done and undone, what we’ve made do.
