Natalie Serber previously wrote in the parking lot of her children’s preschool because that was the only time she could claim as her own, as a mother of young kids. Later, when her kids were school aged, she rose at 4 a.m. to quietly make coffee and write before the household woke up. That plan failed as first the dog, then the kids, and finally her husband all awoke and soon everyone was up! Finally she taught step aerobics to help pay for a babysitter so she could write.
by Natalie Serber
(This piece was Natalie Serber’s first publication: Fourth Genre, 2002.)
It could be the music, or the throaty cries of your neighbor in the next apartment, their headboard thumping from the other side of your bedroom wall. Maybe it's a siren in the dry Indian summer heat, but probably it's the music that wakes you. Your thin sheets twisted around your ankles, your bangs stuck to your forehead, you focus your eyes in the early light, gray as dryer lint.
You worry your fingers up and down the length of braided red yarn you wear around your neck to let you in the apartment after school. Key to knot, key to knot. Through your window you see fading stars.
The singer is Billie Holiday. Your mother's favorite. She's been listening to the same song, about a man that got away, forever. You like the next song, about it being nobody's business. If I should take a notion, to jump into the ocean, ain't nobody's business if I do. That song is full of possibilities.
You slide from your bed and creep toward the door on your belly. Through the crack you see your mother's dark roots, her head lolling over the arm of the avocado couch. On the rickety side table, a cigarette smolders in the lumpy ashtray you made for Mother's Day. A wine glass stands empty. You nudge the door open and crawl into the living room.
The air, choked with smoke, is a lid coming down on you. Like a cat, you skitter to the back of the couch, pause, then rub your side along the soft velour, imagining your smooth, orange cat fur. The hazy morning light spills through the window and you swat at dust particles with your kitty paws. On all fours, you slink to the end of the long couch. When you round the corner, there is your mother, swollen eyes, hair flat on one side, her brown pill bottle tucked into her fist, its lid cocked at an angle. Your first-grade picture is beside her, as though it's just slipped from her hand.
She doesn't see you. Her eyes are dark and blank as TV screens. You crawl to her, rub your fur along her ankles. Her feet are cold against your belly. She reaches down to stroke your back, to pull her fingers through your tangled hair.
“Morning.” Her breath is sour. You purr and arch your back.
“Hi Mommy. I'm a cat.”
“Mommy is tired today.”
You form a tight ball around her ankles, rub your paw down her nubbly calf.
“I was awake all night. Feeling blue about being alone.” Her voice is rough, as if it has to crawl over something caught at the back of her throat.
“Meow. Meow.” You flick your tongue against her ankle. It scratches just like your cat's, Mr. Right's, tongue.
“I thought about not being here anymore.”
You've thought about not being here anymore, too. Seated at your neighbor's white tablecloth with sugar dome cookies and grape juice, sifting through their old jewelry box full of glittering rhinestones and creamy pearls waiting to make you a princess, an angel, their beautiful child. You spilled your juice and watched the purple stain bleed into the cloth and drip down to their waxed floor; you knew you didn't belong.
“I thought about what it would be like to just quit.” She opens her pill bottle, shakes the white pills, like seed pearls, into her open palm, and spills them into the ashtray. “Then I saw your picture and I knew you could save me. I need you and you need me.” She pulls you into her lap and you feel the edges of her bones poke into you. “So I held your picture and you made me feel better.”
You look at your photograph and wonder what she sees. A crooked part, a missing tooth, eyes staring straight through the camera, as if right when that picture was snapped you could've jumped into the ocean and it ain't nobody's business.
