When Mother Cries

The older I get

the more I see how much

of my mother is in me

she was alone

the eldest of four children

abused by their father

she once was in love

the kind that pulls you under,

two people unable to live without each other

and then she walked away for God--

because responsibilities and reasons

she swore she would never marry

and broke her promise to herself at forty

she was once a musician

a career woman,

beautiful, spirited, intelligent, strong

isolated and

reduced to this by a man

I ponder my trajectory,

search the wrinkles and spots

like a chiromancer--

her hands are soft, warm

the skin loose in folds

and cracked from decades of housework

beginning to gnarl

with arthritis and age

But that isn't what 

has caught my attention tonight

It is the slight well of tears

in the saggy, baggy cavities 

under her once beautiful, spirited eyes

now grayed with cataracts

Pain placed there

by my brothers--

my half-brothers--I was reminded

this weekend

for the first time in my entire life

I was introduced as "half"

not whole, or entire, but a fraction

less than one

and my mother was the stepmother

Bonnie

*not* Grandma

as if 32 years of her raising

and cooking

and caring 

and loving

and adoring

and praying

and laboring

could be swept aside

and I wished, more than anything

I could erase that look from her face

the shock

when she wasn't called Mom

by Peter my *half* brother

and his wife

but Bonnie

every time May said, 

*I* am the groom's grandmother

sitting next to my mother,

feeling her flinch

I wanted to yell

and *my* mother?

Did she not change his diapers

and feed him

and clothe him

and rock him to sleep?

Was he not as much hers

as he is yours?

I wished I could cradle away 

her tortured expression

when she was seated in a satellite table

far away from her son

from her grandson

on his wedding day

out here

on the edge

by the door

as if, any moment, she could be kicked out

unwanted

the words of my eldest *half* brother,

David,

echoing in Chinese in her memory

You are an undesirable woman

shortly after which, when I was born

my father and David

drove us to this wretched state, Ohio

from Chicago

and left us on my aunt's doorstep

abandoned

unwanted
(God, I hate this fucking state)

and then when I was six
learning that my father had
married my mother at church in Taiwan
but never formally divorced his first wife
here in the USA
so I was a bastard
born here
mother traveled back and forth from
courtroom to courtroom
raked over the coals by lawyers
who alleged I was an anchor baby
and threatened her with deportation
which I think she would have endured
but the assault to her reputation
a confirmation every time David called her
"aunty" instead of "mother"
which, in Chinese culture means
"my father's mistress"
to a woman whose compass was God
this she could not bear
and when she asked my father to please
please, give me back my money
so I can go to Taiwan
to get our marriage certificate
to prove we are married
to prove your daughter is not a bastard
he shrugged
who cares
it doesn't matter
you do not matter

I wish, sitting here, in the hot parking lot, 

holding my mother's hand in the baking silence

of our car

watching a woman of 74

stoic, bearing the pain

of rejection

reliving the highlight reel

of denigration

that I could wipe those memories

from her mind

but that is not something I can do

I cannot give you back 33 years

and a million unspilled tears

I do not have the skill to 

heal the fatal wounds left by men