Small Victories

I can’t remember what horrible thing I said to her the night before, so take your pick. Maybe it was after I got a third degree burn getting her dinner out of the toaster oven when I said: “Shirley I’d put a feeding tube in your stomach if I never had to cook another fucking tray of chicken nuggets.”

Or maybe it was on the way home after another drama at CVS when it took forty-five minutes for her to calm down enough for her booster shot. It was too hot for the winter afternoon. I was sweating, overdressed, dragging her and my yet-to-be-replaced hip down Sixth Avenue.

“You’re gay, right?”

“Yes, so?”

“You want to have kids, don’t you?”

“Yeah. SO?”

“So how are you going to have kids if you can’t handle getting a fucking Covid Booster?”

“I’ll get my wife to carry the baby.”

“ARE YOU FUCKING TELLING ME I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE A BIOLOGICAL GRANDCHILD BECAUSE YOU CAN’T FUCKING DEAL WITH A FUCKING SHOT?”

These are the conversations I can remember verbatim. These are the conversations that keep me up at night. These are the conversations that have me whispering, “I’m sorry I love you I’m sorry I love you” into her hair. Those lashes, those freckles, the way the dog starts the night on top of my pillow but is wrapped in her arms by five every morning. That’s when I usually wake up.

There were a couple of weeks in May 2020 when Shirley started screaming and just couldn’t stop. I called Stevie, her third grade teacher. “She won’t stop screaming,” I trembled into the phone.”I’m scared. I don't want to hit her, but I’m starting to want to WANT to hit her.”

My mom used to say to us, “Girls you are making me so mad right now I just want to bash your head against the wall.” Mark, my perfect-in-every-way-brother-in-law, still quotes her as if it’s the worst thing a mother could ever say to a child. I swear, I probably said worse within the last seventy-two hours.

Stevie told me to go buy a pack of cigarettes. And when I felt like I might want to hit her, to just go outside and smoke. I’d quit a while back, but I smoked a lot of cigarettes during the second half 2020. Menthols at first. I know, disgusting, but I figured if they tasted like medicine it was for a good cause.

Now, instead of cigarettes, I have my phone. And coffee. It’s five a.m. Wordle, then Spelling Bee. The New York Times Crossword I’ve done when it comes out at ten the night before because, who can sleep? Then I see if anything I want fits me on the RealReal. Then the solitaire version of Words with Friends because I’m out of friends who want to play with me.

I ignore the piles of unfinished dog beds by the window. Ignore the Bat Mitzvah Quilt that I’ve hand sewn with three thousand one inch hexagons of Liberty fabric that is just waiting for five more rows of quilting before I can put the binding on. Maybe it will be done for my niece’s sweet sixteen this May.

“Mama,” Shirley calls from my bedroom where we both sleep. “Chair.”

Nine times out of ten I tell her I’m drinking my coffee but I don’t know what, guilt probably, brings me back and I’m under the covers.

“Chair,” she says again, and she scooches her butt on my knees, curves her back until it rubs up against my chest.

White sheets, white pillows, white duvet, blank slate, new day, gray light, We lie there. Breathing. Forgiveness, maybe.

“I hate Algebra. It’s so stupid. When am I ever going to use algebra?”

“Like every day,” I say to the back of her head, “Algebra is the one thing you’ll use every day for, like, ever.”

“Mama, not everyone is going to be a quilter.”

“I know, but imagine you’re at college and you’re in your dorm room and you're stoned and your friends decide to order pizza. There are four of you, and one hates mushrooms, and one says she doesn’t want any but you know she’s the one who eats three slices, she just doesn’t want to pay for it, and maybe one’s vegan. A small pizza has eight slices and a large pizza has ten slices.” Too clever by half, I’ve lost track of the pronouns and the mushrooms and Shirley cuts me off anyway. “Okay, I get it.” Mood ruined, no more chair, out of bed.

Back on the couch, and I’m destroying yet another pair of fabric scissors cutting slits for eyes out of a piece of cardboard for some mask she needs for Latin Class. Adam, her teacher, is the one I would have had a crush on in sixth grade, having no clue that he was gay in 1981.

Curriculum night I am dressed for war. Some new kid, Eleanor, called my daughter a ‘homosexual midget.’ It was the first time I was going to meet the mother face to face but it turns out she was too chicken to show up. Shirley, of course, didn’t tell me about Eleanor because she’s seen me upset and she didn’t want to deal with it. So when I found out, I got upset about the homosexual midget comment, but more upset that she kept it a secret from me, and then upset that I’m the kind of mom whose kid won’t tell her shit because it’s not worth the hassle. That’s not why I went through two years of fertility treatments.

*

My mom, when a boy didn’t like me, would get mad at the boy. She’d call him stupid, so then I’d feel stupid for liking a stupid boy. Or she might say, “Why doesn’t he like you? I don’t understand,” like I did something wrong, like I was unlikable. Or, worse, when I actually dated a guy and he broke up with me she’d say, “Oh, Deenz, it’s not like you were going to marry him. You either break up or you get married,” like getting your heart broken isn’t the worst feeling in the entire world. When I did get divorced after fourteen violent, chaotic, alcohol fueled months, she said, “I never really saw the wedding as your marriage to Peter, I saw it as the going away party for me and your father.”

But Adam, the teacher, gave an adorable speech about Latin, and how much he loved language, and said, ‘much to his parents' chagrin,’ he was working on his PhD in literature. Shirley’s homeroom had to write notes for their parents on little index cards paper-clipped to their schedules so we knew which classroom to go to and hers read: “Shirley Moxie Klein, My favorite time of the day is Latin because the teacher is so nice. Except on Mondays when we don’t have Latin. Then it’s Drama because I want to be a famous actress when I grow up.”

So after Adam’s speech, I introduced myself as ‘Shirley’s mom,’ and I gave him the little card, and said “Adam, show this to your parents, maybe that’ll help” And he held it to his chest and twirled. For real. He spun around in a circle. Because I know how to parent. Just maybe not my own kid.

The sound of fabric scissors gnashing cardboard is like moon boots crunching snow. It’s an uncomfortable sound. The scissors buck, the eyes are not perfect eyes; this needs a cutting mat and an Exacto knife. And I say, “Shirley tell Adam your mother was editor-in-fucking-chief-of-Vogue-fucking-Knitting-magazine. And this fucking piece of cardboard has not one fucking thing to do with learning Latin.”

And then maybe I also curse about ruining another pair of good fabric scissors and where the fuck are her scissors and how we have no money to buy another pair of fucking scissors right now.

And so now my daughter just wants to get to school or, more to the point, she wants to get out of the apartment and away from me. It’s not even eight in the morning but she’s got her coat on and her backpack and the new scooter she got for Hanukkah. I’m not Joan Crawford enough to demand that Shirley kiss me goodbye but she does anyway and I say, “Better kiss Pinky goodbye too.”

She asks “Why?” And I say “Because I don’t think they let dogs in the long term care facility where you’re going to live in a coma for the rest of your life if you don’t wear your helmet.”

“Oh, Mama,” she says. She leaves. She’s wearing her helmet. Small victories.

-Adina Klein

Adina Klein is a writer, editor and quilter. She is writing a quasi-memoir about single parenting during various apocalypses. She lives in New York City with her daughter Shirley and their poochon, Pinky.