Andie Foley

Mama

6:30 AM: I am jarred from sleep as a tiny hand snakes its way
into my shirt, fingers like ice as their owner blindly
gropes for my breast. This morning ritual is the first
sign that my co-sleeping infant is stirring, and it is
here that I check the clock on my phone and groan.
Happy Saturday.
6:30 AM: The rising sun confirms what he has known for hours: he
will not be getting any sleep. He has been up every hour
on the hour tending to Her. One more bathroom trip. One
more plea to check the stove for a dinner that is not there.
One more conversation about the men in the living room
who are loudly discussing their plans of murder and
debauchery. There are no men.

9:30 AM: Breakfast is a bleary-eyed, baby-in-bucket-seat Gallagher
show, and I am in the front row with no plastic sheet.
They call this cereal. I call it Satan soup, especially when
it has found its way to her hair, to my hair, to floor, to
ceiling. To forgotten crevices where it will inevitably
crust and sour. The baby is bathed beside our breakfast
dishes.
9:30 AM: He has exited the room on tiptoes and She has bid him
adieu with a monstrous snore. His family routinely
berates him, blaming his sleepless nights on the fact that
She routinely sleeps into the afternoon. But, these hours
of quiet are precious. A chance to read a book. Play a
card game. Take a shower. Take a shit. Its true what they
say about the little things.

12:30 PM: She has joined the land of the living and my nerves are already
shot. They have lived with us for five months now, and in that
time, I have continually cursed the names of their four children
and seven other grandchildren. Why should this responsibility
fall to me?

She has different questions and different thoughts, and directs

them at the infant. Why in the world would we have chosen that
for breakfast? Here, have some chocolate milk. Have some
French toast. Have this candy bar. Who the hell cares about the
food on your plate?

He chews his food in quiet resignation, and my husband knocks

on a locked screen door to signal his arrival home from work. I
excuse myself to let him in, returning to find my grilled cheese
covered in maple syrup. The child is innocent. She is not.

3:30 PM: The house has settled in a food-borne sleep that I would 3:30 PM: She has berated him for a solid hour for not taking Her
kill to be a part of, but my husband has stolen me away home. She is home. She is in Her own bed, back turned to
 from a baby-occupied bed and to the privacy of a him in frustration as he sits beside Her with his book. She
different room. I was his lover first. closes Her eyes and sighs.

Behind a locked door, 63 and 55 occupy three square
feet of couch cushion in a forced and careful silence. I
guide his fingers away from my abused chest and to a
better location. We both commune with God, and its
cold and carnal.
Everything would be better if we could just make love.
Its been nearly a decade since his prostatectomy. He has
been impotent since.

6:30 PM: Forks and knives chirp and chink in the deafening quiet of our
dining room. Baby has her mouth full, arms and legs peddling in
excitement as the spoon airplanes its way to her open mouth.

She also has Her mouth open. Over the past six months, Her
dementia has compelled Her to self-mutilate, and we have
watched in horror as piece by piece, portions of Her face have
been clawed away. Her actions have left a permanent twisted
snarl where Her sweet and motherly smile should be. She eats,
and a bloody tissue catches the liquefied remnants of Her food as
they escape from the missing section of Her lip. I have lost my
appetite. He runs interference on the seeping hole, and looks at
Her with nothing less than adoration.

9:30 PM: Wonder of wonders! We have managed to put our
sleeping babe in the crib to one side of our cramped
room. For a moment, we revel in the added square
footage of our own sleeping surface (how does one infant
take up so much space?).
And the quiet darkness is split by my spouses snore. I
hear the shift of fabric as the baby scoots from supine
position to knees, and those tiny, sticky fingers curl
against crib posts to pull their owner upright.
9:30 PM They have been attempting sleep for two hours and, in
that time, have already made five trips to the restroom.
She forgets that She has already been. She forgets that She
hasnt cooked dinner in years, that if Her husband let Her
check there would be no pot boiling unattended there
(though there might be, if She were left alone).
Somehow the topic of Her condition enters their
conversation. She spits in his face for saying the word,
and yet again faces away in Her fury.

Her blue eyes blindly search the darkness. If I were not A beat. She turns to Her husband and Her angered
to breathe, I could be invisible. features soften in familial affection.

Mama? Mama?