The Dark Room

Abstract

The Dark Room Marcia Trahan In 1980, when I was nine years old, my mother had a hysterectomy. I seem to have been anesthetized during the week ofher hospitalization: I don't remember missing her, I don't remember feeling that she had been taken from me. Her homecoming from the hospital must have sparked a flurry of activity—my sister Anne tucking piUows behind Mom's back and running to fetch the TV remote, my father heading downstairs to smoke in the basement so that Mom wouldn't split her belly open, coughing—but I can't recall the day she came home. I remember the days afterward, when Anne and my brother, Danny, went to school, my father to work, leaving me alone with Mom. I remember how the whole house ached, with Mom's pain at its center. She lay on the couch, a thin yellow blanket covering her legs and her bandaged beUy The air seemed to throb with hurt, the way it did when Mom got angry. She wasn't shouting at anybody now; she lay there, immobilized by something that was stronger and angrier than she was. It was my job to keep her company while she convalesced. I hovered at the edge ofthe living room at first, unnerved by the thought ofgetting near her. My assignment had come about by process ofelimination: my two oldest sisters, Carmen and Denise, were living what I imagined to be thriUing coUegiate lives in NewYork State, too engrossed in faU-semester midterms to come home toVermont; Danny and Anne were similarly busy with high school, tackling trigonometry and oil painting and World Lit. My father couldn't afford to lose even a few days' wages from the garage where he worked as a mechanic, and even ifhe could have taken time off, my mother didn't consider men to be capable of caregiving; she would have found fault with his every clumsy gesture. We lived at the end of a dirt road, our patch of land bordered by cow pastures on three sides; beyond the pastures lay a dark, dense wood which held aU my fears ofmonsters and boogeymen in its 54 Marcia Trahan55 tangle ofbranches. Two other houses were visible through the big bay window that faced the road: little ranch homes like ours, each sealed tight with its own troubles; we hardly knew those famiUes. The mothers had day jobs, as did my mother's sisters, who lived in the next town, ten mues north. It often seemed to Mom that she was the last housewife left on the planet. As for me, I was gUding through the fourth grade, a so-caUed "gifted child." IfI missed a few days, even a whole week, my parents must have figured I could easily slip back to writing reports on Michelangelo, maybe work a Uttle harder to catch up on long division (my "gift" did not extend to mathematics). Although I was miffed that my siblings' educations were considered to be at a more crucial stage than mine, I didn't mind staying home. The speech therapist at my school had determined that I spoke with a lisp—a deficiency so slight that neither my famüy nor my merciless classmates had ever picked up on it—and she'd set me up for twice-weekly torment with a student therapist, Darlene. Darlene seemed to dislike chüdren as deeply as she loved the sound ofher own smooth "s;" her cold eyes narrowed as my lisp and my shyness grew worse under her supervision. Being left alone aU day with Mom and her pain was vastly preferable to being cooped up for an hour with Darlene. "Marcia?" Mom's voice was hoarse, as ifher throat had been scraped raw. I ventured closer to the couch. "Come sit." She patted the edge ofthe cushions. "Just don't lean on me." I struggle now to recaU what her face looked like as she invited me to sit. Does a chüd ever reaUy see her parent? To me, my mother was more a pervasive force than a person: aU industry and anger. She cooked, she cleaned— and she yeUed...