DON'T ASK ME HOW OR WHY

for M.O.



Brigit, they said, you will be old one day and your mother will be gone.
It will be a lemon yellow day. Six spikes will spin and the barn will be gone. I counted forty candles on the cake my mother made for me. Lemon, vanilla lemon yellow. All ruined now. All I could think of was one day when she will be gone and I will be caught on the spikes like a ferris wheel, dizzy until I am saturated with lemon bitterness. She cannot die. I quickly count the steps, seven then twelve, I count my fingers, ten, and hours we have spent together, three hundred fifty thousand, four hundred and one. I have recorded them in a book.
My mother asks me, what are you doing?
I am counting the hours, I say.
I am pouring over the yellow pages. Pouring is what others say about books; I am spilling milk onto the directory of names: little Muriel Robertson, Nate, Neil, Norma Robertson, Priscilla B. and Robert Robertson, Wayne Roberts, my mother coughs. I read faster. Robeson-comma-Barton D., comma-Tom and Rose, Alice Robey, Michael and Lynette Robich. I will count the names from the beginning and this will make her stop.
She coughs.
Stop it! I order.
She laughs. It's just a frog in my throat, she says, what are you worrying about now?
A frog, lime green, crawling under the table into a bowl of pale cereal and slipping into my mother's mouth. Lime. The sun shifts. Its spokes spin. I could make her laugh if I wanted.



I can remember a book with a bright yellow chicken that was put in a drum, rolled down a hill and eaten by a wolf. I can remember a book about princesses with spiders and snakes along the edges that she put masking tape over to stop me being afraid. I still imagine them trapped there under glue. I couldn't stop worrying that someone would come and peel back the tape and let them all free. They would be angry then. They would come and bite us. This doesn't bother me so much now. I tell her and she says this is good; I'm bigger now.
There's a mole on her face near her right ear. She won't let me tape it, but I know it is a spider.
I have to tape it, I tell her.
She says, Don't be silly.
I have to, have to, have to quickly before the spider awakens. She cannot cough. I won't let her.
Now, stop all that screaming, she says, Aren't you embarrassed of yourself?
I am not. I am the only one who can protect her.



At your age, she says, other people are married. They have children of their own. At your age, she tells me because I've asked her, they go to work and send their children to school.
But we work, don't we? I am trying not to look at the mole. She has five buttons down her shirt. They are silvery, shiny and gray.
Yes, we do, she laughs.
I need to warn her. They want to take her away. She coughs but there is no frog, I know there's not.
The bowls are on the floor shattered in pieces. I don't know how they got there.
Why? she says, because she has forgotten my rule. Why did you do this?
Don't ask me how or why.
You know we need these!
The wind, I say, The wind is coming through the spokes in the sun. There is no frog and she is stupid, stupid. Why can't she see? Five spokes of the sun and the sky is silvery Grey as a button and ready to swallow her up. I will spin on the spokes. Go ahead, I say, go ahead and die already.



In the silo, it is only me. This is where I go to regain composure. I climb the ladder and look out at sky and grass that goes on forever. There is no black hole that I can see, even though they are out there waiting. I count the bales of hay in the field, and I have made a map of the sky and of these fields. As long as it exists, nothing can happen. Muriel RobertsonNateNeilNorma Robertson-Priscilla B. and Robert Robertson. I am supposed to think about me now, I am supposed to figure out what I did wrong. Wayne Roberts, Robeson-comma-Barton D. But I can't give a damn. Damn! She won't let me say it but I say it now. Go to hell! She's wiping up the mess. I saw her get the dustpan when she sent me out of the room. Tom and Rose, Alice Robey, Robich-comma-Michael and Lynette! Damn! Lon Robideaux, and C.A. Robinowitz!
I hear my voice. It's a hollow tube with a dark brown echo, deep and warm like cow shit. Damn you I yell at her, back in the house on her knees wiping up the broken bits. Go ahead and die! Die echoes deep into the earth.
Frozen. Muriel, dear Muriel Robertson. Five buttons, six spokes. The spider awakens, the black hole around the sun opens its mouth. In the kitchen, my mother is cutting her knee on a piece of crockery.



She was having one of her spells, my mother tells the doctor. He has been here before when I was sick, when I had a frog in my throat.
She was especially upset, she says while scratching at her cheek, near the mole. She has begun to feel its teeth.
You might want to think about moving her, he says. His breath smells of cigarettes and mint, his suit of mothballs. He talks as though I am an armchair. I lift my hand and feel rags around my head. He takes my arm and puts it at my side. His skin is silly putty. It's gooey and puffy, but his grip is steady. He is one of the others, those who never lose their composure. He wants me gone so he can kill my mother.
She might be more than you can handle, he says.
You've been telling me this since she's been born, my mother says, and you've been wrong. This was my fault. I had to ask her. I know better.
There's no point in reasoning with her, he says, stroking his grisly beard. He stinks like something outside our house. He has brought mole roots with him. Twisting into her pores, twelve feet deep like the turkey grass. He is dark gray. The room is tweedy and thick, stretching like silly putty over everything.
You know what I think of your theories, my mother says, I think they're full of shit.
All I can picture is the cow manure, the dark warm brown safety of the silo.
I hold out my arms and she comes to hug me, never taking her eyes off the doctor. From the first one, they are all evil. Starting with Muriel, murderous Muriel Robertson a loathsome, and secret murderer, Nasty Nate and his brother Neil, suspicious Norma Robertson, Prickly Priscilla B. and bloody Robert Robertson, Wayne Roberts, Robeson-Doctor Barton D., and scuzzy Tom and Rose, Alice Robey, the plotting Robiches, Lon Robideaux, Caw Caw Robinowitz, Robin Robins Robinpus.
The doctor shakes his head. You're getting too old for this, he says to my mother, what will happen to her when you're gone?
Gone is a drain that leads to the tweedy roots; a black hole swallowing the sun. Where are you going? I scream.
No where, she says, touching my head below the bandages so I can feel her warm hand. No where. And her voice sounds like a frog that was never there.



In the morning, she tells me I have hit my head against a wall, and I must never do this again. You will hurt yourself, she says, you will hurt those beautiful ideas in your head.
She has brought me crayons and drawing paper on a cookie sheet from the kitchen. I cannot break a cookie sheet.

Where are you going? I ask.
To get you breakfast, she says.
You wouldn't lie to me? I ask.
I never lie to you. She goes to the kitchen.
I can hear her steps, one two, three four. I hear pots rattle. She is making oatmeal. Silvery gray oatmeal in a blue bowl. She will always be my mother. She will always be in the kitchen making the house warm. The painful ideas are knocking at the window panes. I want her to come in and shut the curtains. Three hundred fifty thousand, four hundred twenty-four. But she has already lied. There was no frog in her throat. From the kitchen I hear a spoon hit the side of the pot.



Today I am making the chart. Only two people will know the key. That way, they will not be able to get her.
She gave me a bath this morning, and I splashed her face and she laughed. Now, get up, she said, I can't lift you out like you're a baby anymore. Be careful not to get the bandage wet.
She's right. I'm too big and my arms and legs are ugly and long. I wish she could still hold me in her lap, then the doctors wouldn't be so mad. It's because I'm enormous, it's because I'm this awkward shape that they want to kill her. I'm too big for her on the outside and too small inside. That's what they mean. If I was the same inside and out, then everything would be okay. What happened to me? I asked my father before he died, Why am I like this? I was very small then, it was when I was easier.
Don't ask me how or why, he said. Just be glad you are.
I remember the big black hole made by the spades. Grave, my mother said. Two hundred fifty-two strokes times three. Cut through the roots by men no bigger than I am now.
He had to die, my mother told me, we all have to die.
Not you. Not mothers, I said.
Okay, she laughed, not me.
Remember you promised, I want to tell her now.



On the paper, I draw one hundred suns, one for every day before she must go. They are lemon yellow, lime, licorice, vanilla and oatmeal. Their spokes spin multiplying toward the day when the black hole swallows the sun.
I counted forty candles on the cake this year and I could live to be a hundred. That's what my mother said. She thought it was a wonderful thing. She was smiling. Brown manure sky. The doctors think it's an awful thing I have become so enormous. I am big enough to hold a spade now and it's killing my mother. If I shrink, if I cut myself down to size, then the spokes won't pick me up. I'll be too light and my mother will have to take me with her in her arms. I'll be like the barn swallows--light enough to fly away. Lemon spokes. I will call myself Muriel Robertson.

previously published in
the Denver Quarterly