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by Edna Wallace, LMFT

It wasn’t like she wasn’t there;
she was there.
But she looked
out of herself
and saw herself
getting dressed.
She didn’t get dressed.

She narrated
the person
getting dressed.
“Now she’s getting her
underwear out,
now she’s deciding
which shirt to wear.
She hears noises
downstairs
and knows Mummy is
making her breakfast.
She yawns.
She’s very tired.”

Sometimes she
couldn’t stop
narrating.
It scared her.

She rarely talked at school—
except to her best friend.
She looked down.
She didn’t know what to
say to people.
She was “too quiet and shy,”
the kindergarten teacher wrote
in the report card.
They held her back
in kindergarten ... twice.

She wore jumpers with pockets.
Her hair was matted.
She rarely washed it.
It was hard to comb,
so she didn’t.
She saw herself as she felt:
not there.

She imagined her mother not there.
She wished her mother not there.
She imagined Mummy
was a mother-thing,
an alien being.
She imagined her real mother
had been kidnapped
and was trying to get home.
The mother-thing who
screamed at her
to set the table
wasn’t her mother.
Her mother was kind
and beautiful
and aching to come
back to her,
to kiss and hug her
and tell her she was loved.

She would do a test.
“Do you love me, Mummy?”
she’d ask.
Mummy wouldn’t
answer right away.
Then she’d say she did.
She wished Mummy
would turn from her cooking
and kiss her.
But Mummy
would keep on
chopping onions.

She’d ask the same thing
a few minutes later.
Mummy would answer,
chopping:
“Yes, I love you,” she’d say.
She’d sound impatient.

Sometimes she
would look
at the chopping knife
and imagine threatening
Mummy until she’d
relent and leave,
and her real mother
could come back.
She was terrified
by the thought.

She retreated into her books:
All of a Kind Family,
All of a Kind Family Uptown.

One day Mummy
took her to get a haircut.
The woman tore at her hair
to get all the knots out.
It hurt each time she pulled.
She started crying.
“Don’t you ever wash your hair?”
the hairdresser asked,
tearing.
“Sometimes,” she whispered.
“You have to wash it
every week. And you
have to comb
it every day,”
the hairdresser said.

The hairdresser
looked upset.
She turned to Mummy:
“If you brushed her hair daily,
she wouldn’t
have these knots.”

It hurt so much.
She cried.

Mummy said,
“I tell her all the time to
comb her hair.”

She imagined her real mother
washing and combing her hair,
kissing her hair after.
When the hairdresser
finished,
her head ached
and her hair hung
straight and clean.

Mummy picked up
a black comb from
the salon basket
and gave it to her.
“If you used this
all the time,
you wouldn’t
be crying now.”

She put the comb in her
jumper pocket.
“Do you love me, Mummy?”
she asked quietly.
“Yes, I do. Now let’s go home.“

They went home,
and she set the table
for dinner.

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