I chose to not text him back or do what I wanted to do, which was call and lay into him until he could finally see where I was coming from. Expending more energy on him wasn’t the answer. Why try to explain yourself to someone who had no capacity to listen?
* * *
—
MY HAIR HAD GROWN long and stringy. I washed it every other day but I rarely brushed it, and since there was no need to keep it out of my face anymore, I left it down. One weekend morning, early before anyone else was up, Tami in a beige sweater jogger set found me in my brown turtleneck. I’d been browsing coffee table books in their living room when, passing me from behind, she lifted a strand of my hair by its end and we both watched it listlessly fall. Then she sat down across from me and offered to take me to her salon so I could get that limp mess trimmed, blown dry, and tousled with a nutrient-rich mousse.
I said I didn’t want my hair to look like a bird’s nest.
Why would it look like a bird’s nest? Does my hair look like that? No, so why would yours? I’m sitting here trying to help you. It was just a suggestion.
And like that we were arguing. From the sorry state of my hair to when I would be getting married and having my first child. He doesn’t have to have means, she said about this elusive husband. Or a title, she added. As long as he was good to me. I let out a laugh and got back a glare. Tami asked why wasn’t I more worried about these practical matters when people who never marry become outcasts, and a woman isn’t a real woman until she’s had a child.
Some words will take years to forgive. Or never. I, the childless non-woman and wife to zero senators, wished to reach out to my sister-in-law, but she also knew how to push me away. Has she forgiven her own parents for their dismay in her just becoming a mom? Hurt can be paid forward and often is, to make your own feel less.
Tami, these are my choices, not yours, I said. How you would handle a situation is not always mine.
Her head shrank a little back into her neck, and yet even so, she didn’t develop a double chin or look any less refined.
What she was trying to say, she clarified, was that to grow, a woman must be willing to take on many roles. You can do anything well, Joannie, so I have no doubt that if you set your mind to being a wife and mother, you’ll be fine, maybe even fantastic. Don’t force yourself to be alone. Feminists have kids too.
I had many thoughts at that moment but no good reply. So, I just let my turn to speak run out until Tami started to talk again.
And once you have kids, no one will harangue you, not us, not anyone. No one will see you as a child anymore or assume that you’ve deviated from the path or missed out. As a mother, you become legitimate, thus untouchable. Consider it an out.
Of motherhood Tami had once said that there was no other job and I’d replied of course there were other jobs. Funny to me now how motherhood could work. That having a child made you a real woman who was no longer a child, but then once your own children became adults, you reverted back to the child.
Sounds of bare feet down the stairs, of hushed talking, and of my nephews trying to be discreet but failing. The fridge door opened but did not close.
I asked Tami how having kids was considered an out. The more I had, the more I would have to do, the more places I would have to go. Pediatrician visits alone, the dentist, emergency room scares, then back to the grocery store to stock up on more food. My mother would need to see them. From China she would fly over, and then my many kids and I would have to fly over there to see her.
Your mother is going to be here.
I said I didn’t think so.
Tami’s cheeks flushed and so had mine.
Can I ask you something? she said, her voice like a blade, and without waiting for my reply, asked, Do you see yourself as better than the nonworking woman? Is motherhood somehow beneath you?
Absolutely not, I said. But since motherhood has been exalted to sainthood, I felt that the nonworking mother thought herself better than me.
No, not better, she said. Just different.
Oh, different, I said. I said I hated that word.
We stared at each other for a bit longer and then at the coffee table. She put a hand to her throat and started to rub it. I’m not sure that you know this, Joannie, but you can be very intimidating sometimes.
Intimidating? Me? I thought about all the things I’d been compared to. I told Tami no version of me was that fearsome.
But that’s why you’re intimidating. Look at all that you’ve accomplished. You’re completely unafraid to plow right on ahead when most of us would be. I want you to have it all, I really do, and thinking ahead for our collective futures, your brother and I also don’t want you to be alone. We don’t want your mother to be alone. So, with your career now set, is it not time to shift your goals?