My Motherless Mother Made Me Motherless
by ibadãh asiyah ata
My mother did not know how to hold me
because no one held her first.
Her arms learned absence
before weight
learned how to be carried.
Love arrived to her
like a language spoken through walls,
a grammar of slammed doors,
of cupboards closing on empty air.
So when I cried
she translated it as noise.
When I needed
she heard accusation.
Eight years old, a cold spring Wednesday,
ice still in the air
hovering above the baby blossoms.
The Romani school in our camp
was an old caravan retired from living,
its bones too tired to trust with sleep.
Inside it smelled
of pencil shavings,
chalk dust,
and boiled cabbage.
My math teacher called my mother in.
He said I made him sexually uncomfortable.
I was eight.
My mother did not ask questions.
She took me home.
The door closed.
Her anger filled the house
like smoke climbing the ceiling.
Words fell first in our language:
slut
whore
dirty girl.
Words older than I was.
Words heavier than my bones.
I did not know what they meant,
only that they were meant for me.
That day I learned
how quickly a child
can become guilty
without ever knowing the crime.
My sixteenth birthday.
The dusty community wash station
stood outside in the dry afternoon air.
A dented metal basin.
A thin trembling stream of water
threading the sun bleached afternoon.
I washed my hands.
Cool water moved slowly over my fingers
like a quiet animal.
I turned toward her laughing
pretending
I might dry my wet hands
on her sleeve.
Just a joke
the kind daughters make
when they still believe
a mother might laugh.
The air held its breath.
Her hand arrived
faster than the moment.
A sharp crack of sound
like brittle winter branches breaking.
My tooth split the inside of my cheek.
I tasted warm iron.
The thirsty ground drank the water
spilling from the basin.
Even playfulness
could become danger
with my mother.
Pity evaporates
when the body remembers
when the nervous system
flinches at kindness.
The first week after our nikah ceremony in 2021.
Morning light filled the kitchen.
I was rinsing a bowl of blueberries
at the sink.
They shone in the sunlight
like small dark planets.
The bowl slipped.
Ceramic shattered.
Blueberries scattered everywhere
rolling beneath chairs
bursting beneath my feet.
Purple stains spread across the floor.
My body remembered the old rules.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
The word kept falling from my mouth
like a prayer I could not stop.
I waited for shouting
for anger
for the familiar storm.
My husband crossed the kitchen
wrapped his arms around me
kissed my hair.
Nothing is wrong he said softly
It is life. It happens.
Slowly
I am learning
that broken cups are only broken cups
that inanimate things
cannot feel pain
that life is larger
and more beautiful
than the sound
of something falling.
I grieve
for the child I was
and the child
I never got to be.
My mother was motherless
and so
she made me the same.
This is not a metaphor.
This is a lineage.
And I choose
to break the cycle.
I would rather vanish
from this earth
than become
the hand
that harmed me.