Mothers and Daughters
By: Keti Shea
10 months old. The age at which you understand the world isn’t safe. Can’t be trusted. Unable to speak but already you know.
Your daughter is different from the other babies. You take her to the pediatrician who says your daughter is just smart. See? the pediatrician says, holding a toy in front of your daughter’s face. You’re a new mom, so you don’t know, the pediatrician says. Your daughter watches the toy, staring through it and into you. A moment of understanding passes between you and your baby. Your baby’s eyes say, This doctor is an idiot. Let’s blow this joint. You take your baby home and watch her play with her hands instead of her toys. She squeezes the sunlight and watches it shift.
12 months old. The age at which you learn no one will come when you cry. You give up on making noise and opt for silence. You jump in a pool to see if anyone will rescue you.
Everyone insists on singing happy birthday to your daughter. You try to dissuade them because you know your daughter does not like the swarm of attention. Everyone sings happy birthday and your daughter sobs, reaching for you. Through her tears she signs milk. She nurses through her own party, side-eyeing anyone who comes close to your dyad. Your daughter communicates with her eyes, telling you who to trust. It is you; she trusts you.
2 years old. The age at which you notice the tightness in your chest. Feel it as a tugging that you will later learn is called a panic attack. This is the first of many.
Girlhood memories return to you as you watch your daughter twirl. You remember loneliness and fear. That can’t be right, you think, as you watch your daughter. Your daughter is so full of wonder and joy. She is bursting. You tell yourself those memories can’t be right.
3 years old. The age at which you know you are tainted. You understand you are alone, utterly alone. That no one is coming to rescue you.
You look at your daughter’s face and body after her nightly bath, her face just like yours, and you study her. Wonder what it would be like to be three years old and free from fear. You marvel at that while your daughter plays with her dolls, naked. She sings to herself.
4 years old. The age at which you convince yourself you are an alien, not meant for life on this planet.
Your daughter has outgrown nursing but requires contact. She sleeps by your side, her head cupped in your armpit. You watch her as she sleeps and imagine what it would feel like to nest in another. She clutches you as if she wants to crawl back inside your body. Jealousy pushes through, followed swiftly by guilt.
5 years old. The age at which you decide you are inhabited by a toxic black mold. The mold requires remediation.
Your daughter learns how to make friends, asking other girls, Do you want to be my friend? Every girl she asks says yes. Your daughter runs through the splash pad holding hands with today’s friend. Tomorrow there will be a new friend because your daughter only knows abundance. You are now convinced your daughter is different, but you are starting to see that her difference is a gift. The thing that will define her.
6 years old. The age at which you understand joy is outside your reach. Not meant for girls like you.
Your daughter asks for the crust to be cut from her bread. Her sandwich just so. Fresh oat milk made from scratch. You oblige. You do not tell her you ate rotten food at her age, or no food at all. That you lost your appetite the day you were tainted and have never regained it. You realize you can’t tell her that because that will ruin her just like you were ruined.
7 years old. The age at which you start to cut your skin. Not because you want to feel pain or feel an emotion, but because you want to tunnel out of your skin suit. Your skin doesn’t fit. If you cut yourself open, your true self will emerge. You are an alien, and you know it.
Your daughter loses both front teeth and insists on a dress from the tooth fairy that costs $50. You resist saying that is completely absurd, and then you buy her the dress. Her delight is short-lived but certain, which you have come to understand is a symptom of abundance. When you think back to what you wore at her age, you realize you have no memory of asking for a dress and receiving it. At 7, you knew not to ask for anything from anyone. Asking was a liability. An invitation to violence.
8 years old. The age at which you learn to hide yourself, make yourself funny so people will tolerate you, hurt you less. Either you are an alien, or you are filled with black mold. The distinction is irrelevant. All that matters is that life is untenable. You begin to dream of death, primarily your own.
Your daughter loves to read books about fairies. She follows you around the house reading her fairy books. She doesn’t like watching movies because they are too scary, she says. You realize she doesn’t know true fear. Fear is with you always. It haunts you. Fear that you will let your darkness rise to the surface and ruin her.
9 years old. The age at which you realize the cutting isn’t working. You have not found a way out of your skin suit. You devise other tactics, such as starvation.
Your daughter is in the school play, a minor part. She spends her time on stage beaming at you, mouthing words you cannot make out. She is not a talented actor, but she does not know this. This, too, is due to her abundance. She only knows herself as whole. You don’t dare to say otherwise, even as you grieve for yourself. All these things you didn’t have.
11 years old. The age at which you walk into the school cafeteria and your classmates look through you, angle their bodies away so you won’t sit near them. You understand you are unlovable. Unfit for love. Your death fantasies escalate.
Your daughter comes home from school crying because another girl was mean to her. You spend three hours rubbing your daughter’s back to ease her suffering. Your heart is a bruise for her. The next day your daughter and the mean girl are best friends. You do not say anything, but you cannot bring yourself to look at the mean girl the same way ever again. You feel an urge to pull the mean girl aside and threaten her with violence. You watch your daughter like a hawk, trust no one with her safety, not even yourself.
13 years old. The age at which you get your period. No one tells you what to do. You think you are dying and are relieved that death is close.
You daughter gets her period. She is not scared because you have read so many books to her about this time. You plant a mulberry tree in the backyard to mark the occasion. Later, she cries because the cramps hurt. You smile because you see how little she knows of real pain.
16 years old. The age at which your mother’s boyfriend creeps into your room while you sleep.
Your daughter is upset because her friend spilled ink on her favorite shirt and now it is stained. You hunt the bowels of the internet to find her a replacement shirt. She hugs you when it arrives in the mail. She wears it three times before forgetting it.
19 years old. The age at which you first attempt suicide, the cold razor against your wrist a relief. You realize you don’t want to die; you just want living to feel less like death.
Your daughter goes to college. You forfeit a chunk of your retirement savings to pay for it, but you never tell her this. She knows about money because you have taught her the basics, what she needs for survival. She doesn’t know about wanting, about coveting, about going without, because that is a thing you have spared her from by giving her everything you have. When she calls late one night to talk about her classes, you wire her money so she can eat at restaurants with friends instead of at the dining hall. The expense feels extravagant to you, and not nearly enough.
20 years old. The age at which you discover that mixing alcohol with drugs, any drugs, can make you leave your body. You don’t like the taste of alcohol but you like what it does to you.
Your daughter calls you drunk from a party, her first real party. She is throwing up and scared because she hates to throw up. You know how much she hates throwing up and are reminded of when she was five and had a fever. She had slept in your armpit, her fever sweat soaking the sheets. You drive three hours to sleep in her dorm room, bringing her water with electrolytes. She sleeps by your side, her head in your armpit. You tease her about it in the morning, and she smiles. She takes you to the dining hall and introduces you to everyone. She doesn’t know how much you still need to be needed by her.
23 years old. The age at which a romantic partner first beats you.
Your daughter graduates from college. She wears a pearl necklace that once belonged to you. You gave it to her years ago when you realized all your beauty was poured into her.
25 years old. The age at which you attempt suicide for the second time. This time you use pills. You throw them up and feel like a failure.
Your daughter calls you from her new job. She is excited and nervous. She doesn’t know how to answer the phones and is embarrassed that she doesn’t know this. She is crouching in the bathroom and whispering. You tell her to find the kindest person in the office and ask them for help. You explain that everyone starts somewhere, that everyone is new at something. You don’t tell her that you were new once too, that on the day you first held her you were knew at being alive. At wanting to live.
28 years old. The age at which you ingest a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and drive home drunk, wishing for death.
Your daughter is getting married, and she wants your help choosing china for her registry. You look into her face as she talks china patterns, and your vision momentarily blurs. You see two images: you, on the verge of death, and her, on the verge of new life. You cannot reconcile these two images even though her face is your face. She picks china and cups and napkin rings. You watch her, still amazed that you created her body, her bones. A piece of you walking around on this earth.
32 years old. The age at which you are pregnant with her. You pee on a stick, but you already know. Her umbilical cord plugs a hole in your body that you didn’t know existed, that you didn’t know could be filled. You feel guilty for loving a baby so much. You don’t want your love to burden her.
Your daughter is pregnant. She is hungry all the time. She begs you to visit because she is having trouble sleeping, can’t get comfortable. You fly on a plane to get to her. You sleep in the same bed in the guest room of her house, a house that is the nicest house you have slept in. In the middle of the night, you lift your arm. In the morning, her head is in your armpit, her stomach a drum in your side. You stop comparing your younger self to your daughter. You understand your timelines have diverged. Time is hers now. Everything you have belongs to her.
33 years old. The age at which you hold your baby and realize you have no fucking clue how to love her. You have never been loved, and mothering a baby feels like giving something that you don’t have to give.
Your daughter puts her baby in a carrier. You hold hands with her and go for a walk. She asks what she was like as a baby and you don’t know what to tell her. Your darkness is a part of you, a part of you she cannot see. You want to explain that your love for her saved you. That she tethered you to this earth, taught you to live. Instead, you tell her a story about how she never played with toys. You just played with sunlight, you say. Your daughter loves to hear your stories.
38 years old. The age at which you face your tiny daughter and realize she is different. That you will never stop loving that about her.
Your daughter is in labor with her second child. At first, she calls for her husband. Then the pain stirs up and she wants only you. You hold her hand and let her squeeze it, hoping to siphon her pain. She bleeds profusely, needs a transfusion. You nearly levitate off the ground with worry. You maul every doctor in the hallway, asking for your daughter. They have to hold you back.
42 years old. The age at which you feel joy and are not afraid of it. You realize your daughter taught you that.
Your daughter is getting a divorce. You fly to her and live in her basement for an entire month. Her eldest is a girl and is different. You spend extra time with the girl because you recognize this difference, it is the black mold you once thought lived inside you. Only now you understand it’s not black mold, just a brain that ticks to its own rhythm. You spend extra time with the girl so she will understand she is not riddled with mold, just different, and that her difference is a gift. When she sleeps, you whisper in her ear at night so she will always know abundance.
48 years old. The age at which you speak to a therapist about what you now know is your lifelong depression.
Your daughter calls to say she has met someone new after her divorce. She wants you to meet him, says she needs your approval. A litmus test, she says.
56 years old. The age at which doctors tell you that you are dying. You snort in their faces. You have spent so many years trying to die and now death is here. Now that you gave all that up.
Your daughter flies across the country to sit with you for a biopsy. As you wait in the hospital, a gowned man walks by and farts. Without turning her face, your daughter doubles over and laughs, sensing your laughter. You will both retell this story for years.
63 years old. The age at which the cancer comes back for you.
Your daughter gives your eulogy, telling the best stories about you. The stories you told her. In her mouth, your words sound different. She has made them better.
1 year gone. This is your daughter’s first year without you.
She revisits her childhood memories. Remembers the times she caught you smoking a joint on the porch, unable to speak. Lost to your darkness. She sees you in new light, understands those times you were distant, cold, seeking solitude—that you weren’t wanting space, but wanting to spare her your demons. She finds an old journal of yours and reads every page twice.
3 years gone. Your daughter is starting to understand. The mountains you climbed to make it through each day. The darkness that shadowed you. She rereads your journal. She starts to see it now, how much your love for her saved you. She is starting to get it. That night she sits on the porch and smokes a joint in your honor. She cries for you. For 3-year-old you. For you at every age.
5 years gone. Your daughter types up your journal entries into a Word doc and sends them to her daughter, who reads them in a single sitting.
10 years gone. Your daughter wonders what you were like before you were tainted, worries she is forgetting you. She tries to picture your smile. Sees your face everywhere she goes. In every leaf.
20 years gone. Your daughter and her daughter celebrate your birthday by smoking a joint together. They laugh so hard they both pee their pants.
30 years gone. Your daughter is in a park with her granddaughter, another girl raised in abundance who wears her difference like a badge. Your daughter whispers in this girl’s ear every chance she gets. At the park, your daughter hears someone call a name that sounds like yours, an unusual name, and she turns, scanning the faces for yours. She remembers you are gone. She doesn’t know you have been visiting her every day for years.
33 years gone. Your daughter is sick with pneumonia. She falls into sleep and lifts her arm while dreaming. In her dream she is playing with her dolls while you fold laundry nearby.
You visit her. Rest your head in her armpit. She understands now. That your cells live inside her, that she carries you with her wherever she goes.
Keti Shea is a neurodivergent lawyer and writer based in Northern Colorado. Her writing has been published in Reverie Mag, Swim Press, Oranges Journal, Inside Voice, Cosmorama, Nuthole Publishing, and Twenty Bellows. Her CNF essay, “Bad Dick,” which discusses social conditioning and rape culture, was recently nominated for Best of the Net. You can find her on Instagram and on Substack @ketishea.IG