What Kind of Mother

by Clay McLeod Chapman

Give me your hand. Such a simple invitation. I’ve asked it many times of many people over the last year. Folks tend to forget how intimate the act is, how vulnerable you become when you surrender your palm to another. Especially to someone like me. The tender flesh of your wrist, the meat of your palm, the peninsulas of your fingers. Their secrets hidden from you but exposed to me. I’ll guide you there, but first you need to… Give me your hand.

I live off your hands. The lines in your skin. The folds in your flesh. A palm reading sets you back twenty bucks. There’s tarot, too. I provide a full- or half-deck reading. Aura cleansings.

We’ll make our own future, I told my tummy, rubbing my stomach like it was a crystal ball and Kendra was a prophecy floating through an amniotic haze.

“You selling any beeswax, Charlene?” I ask. “Always,” she says with just a hint of pride. “Then why don’t you mind it?”

Redneck therapy, that’s all. People around these parts are more likely to go see a psychic than sit across from a psychiatrist. We don’t talk about our problems. We hold them tight, until they weigh us down. We’d rather drown in our insecurities than share them.

I take a deep breath, hold the air in my chest and… Plunge below the surface. All I can make out are the vague shapes of leaves and clusters of kelp. The shadowy outlines of freshwater seaweed. The pressure of the water pushes against my ears. I’m in a saltwater womb, the rush of blood swarming all around me. I wonder what kind of child might gestate in a watery prenatal chamber like this. What kind of mother it’d be. What kind of mother.

Your future’s so bright, hon, I gotta wear shades.

The most any parent can hope for is that the damage they’ve done to their kids doesn’t root itself too deep. Make its way to the next generation.

That crab was staring right at me. It had invaded an oyster’s home, huddled inside.

You looked like a ghost in your sonogram. The second I saw the foggy outline of your lima bean body, I remember wondering to myself, Is this boy gonna end up haunting me? Your mother thought you looked more like a hurricane. The ultrasound was a radar scanning the Atlantic and there you were, this swirling storm heading our way, seven months out from making landfall. Hurricane Skyler. The fiercest storm this family has ever seen.

I never picked up a shotgun, favoring the pages of a book over a Remington. Most men sensed that apprehension in me. That made me just as much of a target as these damn ducks. Nobody knew what to do with me. Not my mother. Certainly not my father, wherever he went. None of the fathers in my life. Freaks were always in season, so I had to hide in order to survive.

But that was nothing compared to the hurricane inside our house. I’d say the heavens opened within our home. And there you were. Hurricane Skyler finally made landfall.

I found a rocking chair somebody had thrown away. It was a perfectly fine chair. All it needed was a few repairs. Never ceases to amaze me how people toss things that can easily be fixed.

Words fail. They always fail. They are not strong enough to save what you love most. They give shape to those things we cannot see, that we cannot hold, but they don’t make them real for us.

This may have been your story, Skyler, but I was the one telling it now. I’d steer the narrative. Bend the telling back. I just had to be strong, stronger than I’d ever been. It would take everything I had, but I knew I could do it. I didn’t care if it killed me. This was my last chance to steer the story back, steer you back to your family, back to that magic number.