My mother’s name is Marie. Marie Akamine. Until three years ago she went by Marie Rodriguez, but that is a story for another day. My mother and I are two peas in a pod. Very alike. I like to believe that from my father I got my love for literature and art, but she gave me everything else. In fact, our similarities would be a decibel higher than striking ― say, creepy for instance ― were it not for the set of genes handcuffing us to each other. We both have the same jet-black hair; ink-sleek and straight like a waterfall, and share unhealthy affections for ginger tea, cats, odd numbers, mysteries, and dead things.
Even our names would make perfect anagrams ― Amira and Marie share the same scriptural composition ― were it not for the ‘e’ that sits at the end of hers like some deliberate augury: a pointer to the fact that handmade things can never be perfect replicas of each other.
And it is fitting, I suppose. Really hypes up individualism and all that. I’m fairly certain I would be miserable if I were exactly like her, you know? My tolerance for misogyny and self-sacrifice amounts to a whopping negative one. “The customer is always right,” my arse. Not to mention I have inadvertently bitten into the sensational self-love cake everyone on social media preaches about.
But it had not always been like this.
Not too long ago I wished for nothing more than to live in her very own skin. It was during my early teenage years; a period I would rather not talk about but for the sake of this story. I was way over object permanence at this stage of my life; tackled that issue circa six months old (and yes, I’m proud to say it) but in its place, a different kind of self-realization was occurring; a coming of age experience that exposed me to the fact that being human was simply not / enough /. That there were boys and there were girls, and one was expected to act in ways that fit into either of the two categories (preferably the one coinciding with their genitalia). In addition to this, a series of imposed societal norms, the ignorance of which could cause extreme discomfort, pain, or both.
I was fourteen, attending an all-girls catholic school in downtown Maryland where I was forbidden from knowing a lot of things. Like how to use tampons, question figures of authority, and properly finger a girl. As of the present, I have learned the former. My voice still cracks when I challenge authority, an ode to the friction of restrained fear, and I still don’t know how to do the last thing ― though I make up for it in other ways.
At school, for the many things I did not know, there were new things I learned. I learned that being a lady was not something one simply was, but something one had to become. Ladies did not sit with their legs spread like butter, ladies did not cuss, climb trees, or lunge squirrel droppings at pedestrians. Ladies did not live outside their spot-clean bubbles of femininity. I did all these things, therefore I was not Lady Enough.
And as I came to understand, my mother was what everyone meant by being a lady. One of the sisters pointed this out one day when she was invited to a meeting to address my conduct. After she left, the women discussed her while I sat in a corner, kicking my legs absentmindedly.
ㅤㅤ “. . .and you would think her daughter would be a little more like her!” Said one exasperatedly. “What a charming young lady!”
ㅤㅤ “Perhaps the child gets her temperament from the father’s side,” another theorized.
They all seemed to agree.
I muffled back a snort. My mother dealt in astrology and magic, and I knew that they certainly would have had more interesting things to say, had they known that.
The wisest thing to do was to ignore their discourse, but my young impressionable self could not let go of the fact that my mother had something I was lacking. And the more I dwelled on it, the more the subtle differences became more apparent to me. Where my mother was graceful, soft-spoken, hands willowy and expressive, I was choppy and awkward, and my fingers stubby, cold-bitten nubs of flesh (from forgetting to cream my hands often).
The ‘e’ at the end of my mother’s name stood for elegance.
I did not just want to be like her. I wanted to be her.
To be honest with you, I still do. The feeling comes in waves. Like when I watch her pour tea inside a cup with the ceremony of a communion priest and the effortless guile of a waitress. And when she reads leaves and predicts futures and stretches against the couch, more feline than my cat, Geraldine. I watch with a twinge of yearning. She is lithe limbed and beautiful, a springtime ghost. But there’s not much to be done about that, I suppose. Most of what she is has been formed by experience, another e. This one is a given: she is older by two decades and a half.
I remember when I was sixteen and my first wisdom tooth snagged out ― a cunning malady, that one ― I raved about how I was too old for teeth to be growing out of me and she laughed in that her signature devil-may-care style, then told me about how wisdom tooth are so-called because they grow as one becomes more intelligent, which she thought was something to be proud of. It made me smile. She always has answers to everything, this my psychic mother. She has lived and boated through a shit ton of storms, but like a Venetian rafter, she always catches the sun. I admire her strength and positivity and seek to imbibe these traits, but sadly my head is as dark as my hair. Sunshine doesn’t reach there. Maybe it is one of those things that develop with age? Like wine?
The e in my mother’s name also stands for endurance, the least desirable of our differences. You’d say, well Amira, I know you to be a very stubborn person, and I’ve seen you endure a lot of stuff to make life happen for you. Well yeah. But there’s a difference between doggedly going for something desired, and plowing in deference. She calls it temperance, I call it weakness. She would go the extra mile to harbor a despicable person and their eccentricities. Endure a boyfriend who has expressed verbal dislike towards me. Would take all the shit from me, her family, and everyone else, without a word, like an all-too-willing sponge. I’m ashamed of this metaphor, but it just seems to work for some reason.
And don’t get me wrong, my mother is not always a pushover. I’d just appreciate it if she thought about herself more, you know? I have always prided myself on being a modern-day Atlas, but she’s more of a weight-carrying god than I’d ever be. And I guess I should be way over this at this point, it’s been four fucking years. But the question I’ve had many sleepless nights over is why she can endure so many terrible things and people, but could not endure my father, with his gentle hands, and crooked glasses, and childlike excitement over the unknown. How did she grow tired of loving him when love is meant to conquer all? It doesn’t add up to me. Are there variables in the equation that I’m not aware of, or was she the outlier herself?
Last summer, my father took me to Margarita for some father-daughter bonding, as he’d named it. It was going alright, we’d gone swimming all afternoon and had gotten arepas and oysters and bottles of malt. And then it all went south when I opened my wallet to pay for our meal and a picture of my mother slipped out. My dad stared at it for the longest time until I returned it to the purse, and after that, silence pervaded the area. I could see his knuckles whitening and jaw working, and I couldn’t help myself; I asked, “Why did you allow her to leave?”
What he said next bit into my thighs.
“She was really. . . really exhausting.”
