Monday, August 29, 2005

what if. Her name is Isabel. Or at least I think it is, because that's the name her mother says to rouse her from slack-limbed sleep every morning, stretched across the metal and vinyl seat. And every morning she wakes, stumbles to her feet, and climbs off the bus in a mad rush, heading for a day care across the road where her mother hands her off to someone I can't quite see in the door, and sprints back to catch the bus at the next stop. The bus driver knows she will do this, and he waits. I believe he'd wait even if she didn't sprint, but she runs anyhow, right up the stairs and back to the seat she left. Except now she is alone. But back to Isabel: Isabel is a beautiful child -- and even as I say that, I feel like I should tell you I find all children beautiful. But there is something about the giant eyes, the cafe au lait skin, and the tousle of dark hair that inspires comparisons to Shakespearean pixies or Spanish princesses. You can tell that she looks the same way her mother did at her age. Except Mama, of course, has more edges and scars now, and every day I watch her stare ahead in stony silence on the quiet early bus, small girl draped across her lap, waiting for their stop so that she can spring them into startling action to run with their host of plastic bags and backpacks. They wear new clothes in exceptionally bright colours most of the time, and often the little one's tank tops and skirts have tags still attached, and size stickers still affixed in odd places. Mama wears only tight track suits with embellishments of rhinestones or sparkly lettering, like the kind Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan might sport. Her hair is dyed ash blonde and whipped into a giant cloud of curls, and she wears an abundance of shiny pale-pink lipgloss. I think she is probably my age. And she is gorgeous, without a doubt -- but hard as a rock. Even her brown eyes have a flatness to them that contrast against the warmth I see in her daughter's face. The only time I've ever seen her smile was when someone tripped in the aisle. I believe she's Portugese, but I don't know for sure. They speak English to one another, albeit with heavy accents. The child has a gentle, placating voice, but her mother's voice is sharper, more staccato, more high-strung. Sometimes they are on my bus home, too, and it's then that they talk, and I -- being me -- eavesdrop a little. Isabel is not one to lead the conversation, but rather spends most of the time talking her mother out of things. What things? Well, just today, I heard her talk her mother out of getting a belly ring ("Mama, don't you think it would hurt?" "Not worse than giving birth!"), out of yelling at the bus driver for demanding that she find the bus pass that was buried at the bottom of her purse ("Doesn't he know me by now?" "Mama, this is not our usual driver..."), out of telling off Isabel's grandmother ("Who does she think she is? I'm a good mother, and I work so that we can have a good life!"), out of going out for dinner ("Let's just go home.") and out of throwing Isabel's backpack into the trash ("No, I like it! It's not dirty!"). For all her icy gazes, Isabel's mother is ready to take on everyone and everything with some form of fire, and her daughter steps into the role of anchor with a quiet resolve that never fails to break my heart. In the same way she lies across her mother's lap in the morning, she lies across her temper in the afternoon. I think Isabel is six years old, if a day. When I was a child, my mother and I had just the opposite arrangement. I can't imagine having to have more sense than my mother did -- I was a firecracker of a girl, always running headlong into drama. But my mom would reign me in, shaking her head, and I would figure out soon enough that she was right. This is not to say that every mother-daughter pair should have our dynamic. It worked beautifully for us, but everyone is different, and different personalities navigate the waters of parenting in their own peculiar ways. But I don't know that either Isabel or Mama is happy with their present arrangement, although they may not know that anything else is possible. From what I hear, Mama's mother thinks that she is fretfully immature, and having been told this for a long time, I think Mama believes it. In as much as she appears to be raising her daughter alone and working long hours, she does and says odd things that convince me that all this responsibility took her by surprise, and that this is not what she thought she would be doing at this age. I don't know that Isabel figured she'd be doing what she does at her age, either. One day last week, her usually artfully-mussed hair was done up into two perfect French braids on the ride home. I'd never seen her with her hair back, and her tiny face was a glorious thing when you could finally see all of it. But Mama was angry. "I didn't say they could do that with your hair!" She looked as though she were about to pull the elastics out, and Isabel looked apoplectic. "Mama, teacher thought it would look pretty! And it does!" "Isabel, your hair looks pretty as it is! You don't need to hide it all!" "It's not hidden, it's braided!" Isabel ran a finger along the silky ridges of one plait, as though trying to comfort her affronted hairstyle. "My mother always used to make me wear my hair like that. I hated it! I just wanted to wear it down, but every morning, she would yank it back, and leave me looking plain! You don't need to look plain!" But Isabel didn't look plain. She glowed. But her glow faded as she pulled out both elastics, and ran her tiny fingers through her hair, placating again. And I saw her mother smile for the second time ever. "There, look how nice your hair is..." They rode in silence for a moment, Isabel contemplating her lap. Then she spoke up. "What if I liked the braids?" "What?" Her mother turned to look down at her little girl, whose eyes were filled with tears. "I liked them. I liked the braids." One tear stole down her face. Mama looked startled. "Isabel, it's just hair. Calm down." But Isabel was calm. She was just sad. This suddenly seemed to upset her mother to no end, and suddenly, she grabbed Isabel's hair roughly, and started working a lopsided braid on one side. "You want a braid? I can do braids." But Isabel squirmed her head out of her mother's grasp, and frowned in such a severe way that the braiding ceased immediately. "That's enough, Mama." They fell into silence then, with Isabel picking at a flower embroidered on her jeans, and her mother looking as close to devastated as one can look without betraying any kind of facial expression. A moment later, Isabel set her head on her mother's shoulder and fell asleep. Then her mother began to cry, wide-eyed, beautiful, and stricken. And so did I, although if you asked me why, I couldn't have told you. 10:27:32 PM    build me up, buttercup... []

© Copyright 2005 Meg Fowler. Last update: 9/3/2005; 5:57:17 PM.