My Mother Had a Daughter Once

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My mother had a daughter once.

I was a carbon copy of her in the truest sense, an exact replica only slightly off-color and smudged in odd places. Where my mother had a golden tan, dark brown hair, and gray-blue eyes I was all light, with fair skin spotted with freckles, long blonde hair curling to my ribs, and green eyes that I complemented with forest shades. She swore my eyes would shift to blue and we’d be a matching set, that I only needed to go in the sun more to obtain her golden hue. Still, my eyes refused to budge, no matter how often she insisted that they’d one day be just like hers, and in the sun, I only burned and peeled, revealing pale, freckled skin underneath. In terms of smudges, I was born with ports wine stains on my ring finger and thighs which the doctor said would lighten over time and my mother checked obsessively. Stubborn as my mother swore I was, they clung to my skin and still do, a wedding band of my failure to fade that refuses to leave my skin. I wore my mother’s face in a different color, though, and our bodies looked to be cut from the same mold. She gave me a name with no meaning, but a musical sound and expected gratitude, not hearing the harsh noise that name echoed back to me when placed in the mouths of others.

My mother had a daughter once, and when we went out together people would compliment her on my physique, the cut of my hair, my intelligence, my behavior. She bloomed in the light of such praise, sticking microphones and instruments in my hands, more prop than anything, and said I had a natural gift, though I didn’t.

My mother had a daughter once, and I did everything she excelled at, only less well. This was by design. My mother refused to teach me, though teaching was her trade, and so I stumbled my way through scales and sport camps, always just a little less than she had been at my age.

Alone together she could find only criticisms for me, bile spilling from her mouth and pooling at my feet. She demanded I be more, better. I needed to work harder, practice longer, push myself. I needed to address my attitude, my growing body, my slipping grades. Yet still she would not teach me.

My mother had a daughter once, and I was violated. First by my mother’s cruelty, neglect, and hunger, then by a man who promised to fill the lack I had been handed and provided betrayal and violence instead.

My mother had a daughter once but because she never looked at me except when receiving praise on my behalf or to evaluate my short comings, she did not see the clear signs of sexual abuse, the socks bloodied with parallel lines, or the slow drawing inward. She did not see me first scream for help and then return, painfully, to the marionette she had made of me, all silence and stillness unless directed by her hovering hands. She did not see me as I accepted that no intervention was coming and that I was alone.

My mother had a daughter once but lost me to a silent scrawl on blank pages, my cries for help made quiet and tucked away in the spaces behind my dresser drawers. Slowly, without realizing, I did the one thing my mother could not. I wrote. I spilled my heartache onto the page over and over, never managing to name it. I searched for words that could stand as facsimile for the homesickness I felt sitting on my own bed, an unopened book on my lap, and the sound of cicadas outside my window.

My mother had a daughter once and I handed her pages of poetry and prose, begging her to read it, to think about it, to see the ache tucked inexpertly into the lines. She could find only the failings of an amateur, telling me that while I was better than most my age, I was still not good enough.

My mother had a daughter once but could not see that I was slipping away from her bit by bit, the delay between her tugging on my strings and my corresponding movement. She saw obedience, quietude, and isolation and rejoiced. I was no trouble at all, an easy teenager if ever had been one. All of my teachers loved me, I never missed a curfew, and I spent most nights at home alone, reading or writing while my mother sat in the adjacent room. She was only a few feet away, but as unreachable as the most far-flung island. Meanwhile, my solitude was not as silent as she thought. Inside, my head bellowed outrage and obscenities, and I wrote them down religiously, never flinching from my own rage. Slowly I taught myself how to scream in a serif font.

My mother had a daughter once and saw, finally, what I had done with all of that quietude. When she at last admitted that I had managed to excel at what she could never do at all, she set me free with her refusal to provide further criticisms. I chased the page while she held tight a discarded letterman jacket, instruments grown cold without the heat of my breath, and viewed a stage with no spectacle I would touch.

My mother had a daughter once and I learned there were words for homesickness when one is at home. Sadness, fear, abandonment, hopelessness. I found these words and learned not to use them. I wrote until I could instead make them felt, draw tears from strangers and anger from friends. I learned, in handing my pages to others who would embrace them, that my mother had never wanted a daughter at all. She’d wanted the puppet her denials had made me, something slightly less pretty and well-formed than her, to move about the stage in her shadow. Once I could see the strings, cutting them was a simple matter, and though my body never quite measured up, it was still quite capable of running away.

My mother had a daughter once but doesn’t anymore. The musical name she gave me has long since been abandoned, cast aside for a name of meaning and strength. The props she thrust into my hands have been put to better use. My quietude has become a shout on a page that she refused to read. My mother had a daughter once, but I have long since realized that daughter was never the right word. Looking at my body now, I don’t hear her criticisms, but see places to build strength, to transform myself into the man I needed my abuser to be. There is a quiet surety in my bones that while I may have been her daughter once, I will never be her son.

My mother had a daughter once but lost me long before she felt the shock of my absence. I am told she’s been calling the musical name she gave me, hoping for the response from all those years ago when the streetlights came on and I was due home. She will never get an answer. How difficult it must be to go on searching for someone missing when you no longer know their name.

My mother had a daughter once but doesn’t anymore. One day, I hope she’ll realize why.

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