Benzo Mama

Illustration by Eaton Hamilton.

Am I hungry even inside her as my nose distorts from her benzos and I shake from nicotine?

I slide into life two months before my due date, weighing four pounds. Six days earlier, Frida Kahlo dies, and, days later, Angela Merkel is born, and on that day in July, I’m held by the ankles upside down and given a good whack to knock breath into me, and then I’m lowered into a 1950s incubator during the wet fishy sign of Cancer, with a birth defect called pyloric stenosis — a thickened, ineffective stomach valve.

At home, my mother bottle-feeds me. First, she tapes up newspapers across the room, because I projectile vomit onto the stove, onto the fridge, onto the walls. If she feeds me outside, I vomit onto the swing, into the paddock, and once onto a horse named King. Elvis Presley has just released “That’s All Right.”

My infancy is marred by dehydration and hunger. Starvation panics me. Hunger is an augur; it bores inside me; every day drilling more of me away until I am a cave of need, and I scream. My mother holds her head and rocks, believing motherhood has driven her insane. She doesn’t bond with me, but I tumble head over heels for her because, over and over, when I am a baby, she saves me, saves me, saves my life.

On a Thursday, at eight months old, I pull myself up on the kitchen cabinets. My big brother can stand, and walk, and also touch the top of the counter where food is. I want to know how he does it. For a week every day I swing myself up to the round knob of the same kitchen cupboard and try again to push my fingers over the lip of the counter; at night in my crib, I examine my fingertips and the consequences of my defeat. The next Thursday, I’m victorious. Ecstatic, I turn to tell my mother across the room the news. I open my mouth to bugle elation, but remember as I try that I don’t have language, and shut it, puzzled. How can I get her attention? I sort through possibilities. Eventually, I realize I can cry.

No, I think stubbornly, no, I won’t! This is delight! This is joy! I will not.

I’ve learned to stand on tippy-toes. There is food on the counters and now I can grasp at it when my mother doesn’t catch me. Enough to vomit and still have bits to digest, and, gradually, as I mature, my pyloric valve settles.

My mother feeds my father’s pants through the wringer washer, carries the creaky wicker basket to the yard, and humming “Heartbreak Hotel” hangs the laundry using wooden clothes pegs. The sheets slap in the wind. She vacuums, listens to Chuck Berry and Johnny Cash, drops the vacuum hose and dances, laughing. She feeds the dog, Taffy, from a bulbous bag of kibble. She digs in the barn trough for a pail of oats for the horses, as partridges cluck in the rafters. She cleans horse brasses and polishes silver. She braids ribbons into manes and tails for shows, and later pins up red, blue, and white prize ribbons inside the tack house. She sets the table. She picks rhubarb, washes it, chops it, stews it. She ties on an apron. She folds meringue, flips the dial of the frying pan, the pressure cooker, the blender, the Mixmaster. She makes pork chops in Campbell’s mushroom soup, roast beef and gravy, glazed maple hams studded with cloves. She piles Wonder bread on a saucer. In the fall, my mother rakes oak, chestnut and maple leaves. In the winter, she skates backward, holding both my hands. She decorates for Christmas. In the muddy spring, she pulls rubber galoshes with spike heels over her stilettos and clasps them shut at the ankle. She irons, spritzing the clothes with water. She puts on her face; foundation, rouge, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick. She reads to us: Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Opens the Door. She coaxes pet hamsters out of the heating vents. She feeds velvet, chiffon, georgette, crepe, satin, organza through her Singer sewing machine.

When she steps into a ball gown, I’m convinced she’s a princess.

Punishments are white bread dunked in either hot milk or water for dinner, depending on our misbehavior, or we’re sent to bed without dinner altogether. I weep at the top of the stairs, bereft from her loss of care. I remind myself that my last punishment never lasted—she liked me again eventually. It could happen like that. She could look at me almost fondly. A paddle hangs from a nail, rhyme about spanking naughty wives and kids painted on it, my parents’ last-ditch threat.

At our house, the leftovers go to my father, then to my brother. When I ask why I can’t have them, my mother tells me I’m not a growing boy. But