Inspired by Brenda Miller’s “Split”
Here is what I know about my body: I live in a balled-up fist with mind and guts spilling out between the cracks of callused, experienced fingers, dripping onto wooden floors until I have been squeezed and wrung dry of my fluids, my form deflated, merged into my owner’s skin to the point where my body is no longer my own. Please: I stay silent to listen. I stay silent to listen, and my body chokes and shakes from holding its breath. I open my mouth to say something, but I can only watch as my skin dries up and cracks, and then, I split.
For as long as I’ve known, I’ve loved my mom. I don’t mean this in the conventional way, I mean that I love my mom the way you love the first person who called you pretty and never love anyone quite like that ever again. Resting my head on her lap as she scrolls through her emails, I trace my fingers along the dips of her knees as a way of transcribing the words, You’re everything to me, or, Let’s stay like this forever, or, It’s not like this with anyone else.
But to love something irreplaceable means to live in fear of loss, to go to any extent to preserve your valuables, to bend and still and split whenever its index finger beckons you to.
One summer, when my mom tells me to come to the kitchen, I feel its cold, hardwood floors tensed underneath my feet before I realize I’ve even gotten out of my bed. She turns around and extends her palms towards me, and I look at them to see half of an apricot sitting in each, skin bleeding in shades of sunset orange and red. I take one half, she keeps the other, and in unison, we sink our teeth into the sweet, tender fruit, sucking on the wet, vulnerable flesh it offers inside.
Later, after dinner, I catch my mom with the apricots again. She holds three in just one hand and turns on the faucet to allow the water to run over their skin, cleansing them of any impurities. Then, she lays two of them down on a paper towel and places the third one between her fingers. As I stack dirty cups and plates, I watch the way she strokes the scalp of the apricot—as if to console it—and presses her thumbs gently against the stem end of the fruit—as if to say, Be quiet.
I blink and then she inhales and angles her thumbs downward so that they fully sink into the small body secured within her hands, pushing through the meat and past the pit, allowing the sweet tears to dribble down the vein of her finger till the fruit splits.
I am the kind of daughter that my mother loves to instruct, the kind that is most susceptible to her control: clueless about how long to heat up the leftovers, unsure of where the extra rolls of paper towels are, too poor at navigating the roads to be a good driver, too unlucky to have any success in the kitchen.
I tried to make fried rice once, but when I was chopping the green onions, trying to split them into small, green rings, I could hear my mom clicking her tongue and feel her eyes trailing my skin; they were always roaming, always searching, always itching to pounce forward and dig their claws into my back to share their not-so-positive appraisal of my stance, my choice, my form. That’s why I often longed for the days when I’d come home after school to find no one waiting for me at the doorstep, for when no cars were parked in the garage, for when the calendar showed a little green banner to indicate that my mother had her own boss to attend to. Home-alone afternoons became rare breaths of air, open kitchen hours to experiment with my culinary abilities without having to turn around. Nothing I made was ever particularly successful, but nothing was a total fail as long as my mother wasn’t there to deem it one.
During my cooking endeavors, I’ve tried to ask my mom to stand just far enough from me so that there is space to breathe; but my mom is growing old, and her bones are softening, and it is getting easier for her to fly away at even the slightest touch. That’s why more often than not, when she places her hands on top of mine, whispers in my ear, 妹妹1, 你看你看2, guiding the knife in slow, short motions across the green stalk, I let her.
I want to know more about myself without leaving my mother behind. I want to get a boyfriend without losing my first love. I want to dye my hair without my mom thinking it’s ugly. I am not scared of the risks that come with being my own person. I am not scared of breaking my own heart. I am only scared of breaking hers.
Maybe it’s better this way.
I don’t know who I am if not my mother’s good, obedient daughter. She has brought me up to be more popular among parents and teachers than among any group of classmates. Always the well-behaved kid, always the mini adult, always so mature for her age; never the funny friend, never the teenage definition of cool, never the friend magnet. I don’t know what to do other than obey my mother’s every word, lapping up her instruction and praise like a desperate, abandoned dog. I don’t know how to wear a crop top without feeling ashamed. I don’t know how to hang out with friends without thinking that I should be home focusing on my schoolwork. I don’t know how to not be a baby, how to not be coddled and cosseted, how to live separate from my title of 妹妹, how to run away from my mother’s infamous words, What are you going to do without me in college?
And I can’t seem to answer any questions of Who are you? or What do you think? or What should you do in this situation? without whipping my head around and looking for my mother in my answer. No thought is ever my own; my mother’s is always the default. My body is more hers than it is mine, but it’s too late now to escape this framework that she carefully molded me into, applying pressure to my weak points and massaging my bare skin while whispering lessons into my ear before I went to bed; and then when I woke up, I would look into my mirror to see her wants and beliefs morphed into some kind of nervous, tangible form that threatens to quiver, convulse, and shatter at any given moment. When I die, I imagine that my hollow corpse will turn to glass, and anyone who is there to witness my death will be able to see through me and understand that there is nothing there; I will fall onto cold, wooden floors and fracture into millions of clear shards only to die bloodlessly and without protest.
I think we instinctively fill empty things until they are brimming with the illusion of substance and purpose; diaries with words that will solve nothing, bookshelves with books that we will never read, closets full of clothes we impulsively bought that our mothers will never permit to leave the house, and other containers and cavities where grief, shame, and acceptance should take up space instead.
When we ache, we reach for temporary satisfaction and bandage the places on our bodies where our burdens leak, allowing these thin layers of protection to wither and fray at the ends before we reach for the box again to replace them with new ones. We never stand up, tear the bandages off, and allow ourselves to bleed until we no longer can, until we have to die or until we have to start over.
In my dream, the last time I see my mom, I am leaning my head on her shoulder and we are eating apricots on the sofa. I turn my gaze towards her, and I gather my final breath before I say the words, I am willing for you to hate me if it means I can get to know who I am.
My mother has never looked at me before, but in this dream–in my dying memory–she slowly twists her neck to stare at my scalp. Her eyes are not full of that all-knowing stare, but instead, a watery shine that is brimming with desperation, bewilderment, and fear. She raises her hands, but they don’t cut through the air as they usually do, instead fluttering towards me, slow and imprecise. I wait, curious what she will do, until I recognize it: she strokes my hair and softly presses her thumbs into the crown of my head, as if to console me. She whispers, Please don’t say anything, and then, she inhales, preparing to dig her fingers into my skull and push them through the rest of my body.
But before I am split, I put my hands over hers and pull them away from me. I detach myself from her shoulder, unraveling our entangled limbs so that I can stand up and walk away.
In this dream, my heart is so dense that I don’t think it can break, my body so full of substance, of purpose, that I don’t think I will turn back around. I can hear a soft cry disperse itself throughout the hallway as I manage to get to my bedroom before I feel my body give out on me, knees buckling and gaze unfocusing. I haven’t realized that I’ve hit the floor when I close my eyes and begin to think about how I am going to start over.
Here’s what I know about my body: when I’m not dreaming, my body is not my own. My grief sits somewhere in the base of my throat. I open my mouth to put it into words, but it trembles against its roof and dissipates on my tongue.
I wish that I could stand in the kitchen, the knife hefty in my hand, my fingers wrapped tightly around its grip. I wish that I could bring it down firmly as if I know I’m right, as if I know anything at all.
But here’s what happens: my mom would walk over, her chest unflinching behind her worn-out blouse; she would lean her head against mine so her hair brushed the back of my neck. Here, 妹妹, she would say, Watch my hands. She would press her weight onto me and grip the knife in both our hands; she would raise it high above both our heads, and she would show me how to do it.
How to split.
- little girl
- look, look
