The Body of Evidence

What happened to my mother to make her change so drastically from the way she was, according to neighbors who live here in Guatemala, and remember her from when she was young? Especially when they say things like I remind them of her. It makes me question my reality. Or at least the version of La Llorona that I know.

The body

We were handing out leaflets announcing a general assembly, and we were going door to door in the neighborhood. I was meeting people who lived around me, but I had not met them yet. Especially since they were so much older than me. All of them asked where I lived, and as soon as I mentioned which house, they knew exactly who my family was, and then they wanted to know which of the sisters was my mother.

Many remember my mother. Some of them remember her as being this force of nature. They called her “El cuerpo” (“the body”) because, apparently, she was very attractive in her youth. This was said to me almost in awe, like she was on another level.

I can kind of cosign on that. I’ve seen photos of her as a teenager. Aside from the look on her face, which looked like she wanted to be anywhere else but where she was, she was attractive and quite fit. Many of these older people, most of the women at least, say that they knew I was my mother’s daughter because I look very much like her. Yikes.

I wish I cared for my mother as a person and could take these comments as compliments. But they feel instead like a sentencing. Like chains being tossed around my neck. I wish my relationship with my mother were the sort where I could look at her and say, “This is who I want to be when I grow up.” Like other mother-daughter relationships, or at least some that I have seen.

An albatross around her neck

I hear these stories and wonder when did it all change, and why? Was it her broken relationship with my father? Was it her difficult upbringing? She mentions that one often – how she had to mother her siblings because her mother was an invalid, and later passed away at a young age. She definitely makes a point of raging about how her sisters were able to make friends in the Colonia because they had no responsibilities, while she had all of the responsibilities.

She had to mother her siblings. She never stopped bitching about how her siblings got to have friends, but she was too busy running the house for her father to have a life. That she would have been real friends with the women in the Colonia, but she was too busy being in charge, being the responsible one.

She says it, and I know that it is at the core of all the resentment she has. For some unbeknownst reason to me, her sisters look up to her, and they wonder why she is such a raging bitch to them. The last time we got together with one of my aunts was about three years ago, when her youngest sister came into Dallas for a few days. Her sister cried because my mother agreed to see her, and on top of that, she was being nice. Trust me, no one was more shocked than me that she was behaving like a human being. It was proof that most of the “bad blood” was on her side of the equation.

I wish I could talk to her to understand her better. But I think that time has passed. When there might have been a window where asking her to tell me about herself would have given me a straight answer, now I don’t trust any of the stories she tells me since they often veer into her disgust of other people, or are peppered with tales of how others are trying to get one over on her, or steal from her, or cheat her in some way.

Unreliable narrator of her own life.

Instead, I am relying on context clues. Nuggets that I pan from the stream of consciousness, comments from the neighbors who knew her. It is one more reason I feel it is important to reconnect with her sisters and maybe even her brother, whom she hates. If for no other reason than to hear their version of events, since I can’t trust or count on her to give me hers anymore.

When I think back to what I knew of my mother in my youth, she used to seem confident, if a lot naive. She acted like she was very nice. I say acted because she seemed to be really nice to everyone else, but she treated me terribly, so it felt like I wasn’t worthy of her kindness for some reason I would not be able to overcome. Such as the fact that I was born.

The motherhood she couldn’t escape

Which could be true. I mean, I am pretty sure my father didn’t want to be a father. I don’t remember him being around very much. It seems that before she got pregnant with me, he and she spent a lot of time doing fun things and just being a couple. Then I came along.

Perhaps my conception did double duty. Killed her freedom, exposed the cracks in my father’s character, and forced her back into the role that she thought she had escaped when she got married – being a mother.

When I look at this part of her life, I unfortunately see a parallel with my own. Becoming a mother exposed the cracks in the ex’s character (he also didn’t want to be a father), and it killed my freedom – but I accepted that part of the bargain. It may have been a burden, but it was my burden, and I accepted it. Therein lies the difference.

Resentment

La Llorona will never admit it, but she resents her mother for getting sick and passing away, and forcing her to step up and into her place. She resents her father for being hopeless, for not doing his duty, and basically abandoning his responsibility to leave the raising of her siblings to his eldest daughter. She resents my father for being another loser who didn’t want to be a father and couldn’t wait to bail on his responsibilities either.

But my favorite of all the resentments she harbors and will never admit to: she resents me for being born. She resents me for walking in her place, wearing her face, and living a life that she wishes she could have had. I won’t say that motherhood was easy. That has never been the case. I have struggled, and still struggle with the repercussions of being a single mother.

However, I don’t hold my children responsible for my life. Whereas, she does. She will never admit to it, but her actions towards me speak louder than any of her lies. The way she treats her own siblings, and the way she has treated me. That is all the verdict I need.