Why We Write by Joanna Djos-Tobin

To begin with, you hate this piece of shit computer. Your husband bitches about it on a daily basis, but because you’re supposed to be the conscience of your home you smile pleasantly and say that the computer is fine and we’ll make due. Meanwhile, in your brain giant calculators begin to assemble budgets of when and how you’ll buy a new one. Perhaps this summer, if the car doesn’t break down or the cat doesn’t catch leukemia or the electric company forgets about you.

To begin with, you hate this piece of shit computer. Your husband bitches about it on a daily basis, but because you’re supposed to be the conscience of your home you smile pleasantly and say that the computer is fine and we’ll make due. Meanwhile, in your brain giant calculators begin to assemble budgets of when and how you’ll buy a new one. Perhaps this summer, if the car doesn’t break down or the cat doesn’t catch leukemia or the electric company forgets about you. Still, he’s at work and you have no major problems to solve, at least for the next three hours. In between keeping the kids occupied with boxes of raisins to snack on you dissect your brain for your next essay, or novel, or poem you’ll keep secret from your parents the next time they’re in town. You wonder if you have ADD and should start taking Ritalin, or maybe its just allergies. You walk back and forth like your schizophrenic uncle used to. He was a kind of Jerry Lewis hybrid in striped pajamas. In the 1970’s he thought Wolfman Jack had a contract on his life and would make disturbing phone calls to the radio station. You remind yourself that his condition was genetic.

You look out the front window and realize that it has been ages since you’ve dusted. It occurs to you that maybe you should invest in one of those ostrich feather dusters like they’re always raving about on Flylady. They are supposed to magnetically attract dust, as if a six-foot bird had positive and negatively charged polarities. But no, instead you bought a bright blue device that sheds fake feathers in all the areas you attempted to dust before retiring the fucking thing to the wastebasket and forever giving up on decent home management. You spy on your neighbor across the street. She’s yelling at her kids again and secretly you congratulate yourself on your recent self-control. You wonder if you qualify to attend the secret meetings of the Good Mother Society, which you hear meets on Tuesday mornings in an undisclosed location. Some days you feel like a member of some strict protestant doctrine where bad mothers go to hell and good mothers get to meet Jesus and purgatory doesn’t exist. You count all your sins and the monster of guilt comes in and takes a seat next to you. On the other side is the fifteen month old who is screaming and crying. So you pick her up in good Dr. Sears’s fashion, taking every effort to attend to her needs sensitively but inside your stomach aches and you wish she would just fall asleep. You wonder how some mothers manage to bake homemade bread with babies in slings and crochet quaint hats and soakers with babies in slings and grow organic mustard greens with babies in slings and you can barely write a sentence, even though the sling is packed away in the hallway closet. Despite all your new age-y beliefs and preference for organic foods and Eastern thought, you could never quite fit the earth mama vibe. You were too bitchy and your sensitivity of over stimulation rendered attachment parenting an excessively demanding lifestyle for one who possessed your introversion and need for solitude.

In the background Paul McCartney begins to sing about Eleanor Rigby. You place your fingers on the keyboard trying to recall your musings you had in the shower that morning. You might have actually had something brilliant you were to put on these pages today. You swore you had some new epiphany. You had a cheeky catch that would put you up with the likings of Sylvia and Gertrude when this piece of shit computer took eons to boot up. But now your holy gospel is lost in the cave of neurotransmitters like the Dead Sea scrolls; for you suffer from extreme short-term memory loss after years of antidepressants. For a minute you consider a class action lawsuit against Eli Lilly for theft of intellectual property. Then a strong aroma fills the air with the gastrological remnants of this morning’s breakfast…

You’re in the kid’s room wiping more poopy bottoms and kind of resenting motherhood, which you know makes you an awful person right? You remember when the fear of being a bad mother was a banshee that constantly hovered over you. You remember taking your firstborn in for her first well-child check and the doctor asking you how you were feeling. You were naive back then. You admitted that you were tired, you felt overwhelmed. You were even a little depressed. You were honest about your malaise and they responded accordingly. Next thing you know you were sitting in the examination room with the social worker, the Dr. and the lactation consultant. They pretended to have pity on you, but you knew better. They asked about your medical history. They know about your depression, your family legacy of mental illnesses spawning back 10 generations. Are you considering hurting yourself? Are you considering hurting the baby? They become larger, you feel like you’re shrinking and they pick you up from the scruff of your neck, put you into a shoebox and peer in. They strip off your clothing and examine every square inch, taking note of your emotional imperfections. Across town attorneys sit behind mahogany desks consulting them to do so.

Conjuring up the last of your depleted emotional reserves, under your breath you bring up your college education, your former job and where your parents live. Your hands begin fidgeting in your purse looking for your albuterol. You remind them that you’re still a member of their socioeconomic class, even if your husband’s been unemployed for 8 months and you make monthly visits to the WIC clinic. Nevertheless, they patronize and ignore your responses and continue mining away at your dignity asking more questions. Any history of drug abuse? Across town, child protective services awaits their call. You feel them taking notes, closing in on you as if you were the next Andrea Yates. All you wanted was integrity. You hadn’t slept in three fucking nights. She wasn’t latching on properly. You were afraid she’d starve. Hell, you’d stay up for an entire year to make sure she got enough to eat. You look in the corner of the room for a life ring from your husband, but nothing surfaces.

You leave the office holding several generic pamphlets containing stupid questionnaires and pictures of depressed Caucasian women. Most of them have advertisements for Prozac. You thank them for their help and resources, but secretly you know that will tread these waters alone.

Within three years he would accept a job out of state, elevating you to the middle class and soon enough you find yourself in the suburbs and all it’s American illnesses; which begin to give you an in depth understanding as to why Virginia Wolf drowned herself. Now you are expected to be a Mother Teresa in khakis and frosted hair but inside resentment brews. Your life is now surrounded by playgroups that reject you, the disdainful looks of the blond coifed mothers at the parks, the parade and pontificating of Mary Kay parties, paranoid fundamentalist doctrines and oblivious women chatting on cell phones, like members of a secret henhouse. It’s a sorority with a secret language you cannot decipher, even with a hired translator. You are pissed off by the suffocating sense of dullness accompanied by well-kempt streets that you stare at every day, the streetlights flickering in the daylight, the ever copulating pigeons looking from below terra cotta roofs and chemically imbalanced lawns. You cannot help but notice the imposing cliché of large SUV’s driven by prostate challenged men and you thank God that you’re not married to one of them. Still, the emptiness and loneliness hovers over you and your life has become one of chronic isolation. Once a wise British prostitute said that there were two types of women: lovers and aunts and wives and mothers; and you know somehow you fall in between. You manage somehow to hold up a cheerful façade, making you feel like a goddamn liar. You wish you could elevate out of the dark corners of your hormonal moodiness and rancid bitterness. Carefully, you try with every ounce of integrity to hold onto the woman you once were: the one who brooded in dark corners of anonymous counterculture and told provinciality to fuck off in the tradition of being uppity. Still, you wouldn’t want to leave the impression of being a bitch. For some reason the opinions of your neighbors and checkers at the grocery store cause you much anxiety. And like a child you have tantrums and complain and loathe and have conversations every evening with your husband about when you can drive to the U-haul store and get the hell out of here. But everyday the postman brings you more bills that have to be paid and the children need their doctor’s visits and you certainly don’t want to have to move in with your kids when your social security runs dry. In the midst of all this you wonder if this is too much of a sacrifice in exchange for economic stability. You worry that you’re a borderline alcoholic, popping Tylenol with a glass of wine nightly and reading yet another self-help book. Because you have harbored resentment of every therapist you’ve visited you soon learn that your only mental health antidote is the desk that you retreat to every afternoon and in between trying to ward off the kids off with snacks and Wiggles dvds you manage to find some psychotherapy and relief in the words you place upon these pages.

As you begin typing up pops a committee consisting of your big sister, all of speech class in high school, the artistic elite and every god dam writer who is better than you are. They’ve been putting together presentations laughing at your work and having thorough, concise conversations about how delusional you are for even having the gall to think you could write anything worthwhile. They also take current count of any new rejection letters you may have received and stand up and read them, laughing hysterically and deriving much pleasure from your misery. But finally you gather up the strength to instruct them to do something else for a while, like assemble a thesis on what a lousy cook you are or the newest crow’s feet appearing on your face. While they’re occupied you start digging for clues from that child in the back of your mind. The eight-year-old child with the braids who has invited you over for a while. She never says a word but sitting cross-legged on the floor scribbling you pages and pages. When you finally get the language to decipher it all, the words fall into place and you begin typing with ferocious speed. You have no clue what word will come next. She’s the current pushing these sails and now you both are on a ride. And for a minute you have a glimpse of clarity. Oh Jesus it makes sense, you say to yourself and next thing you know you’re on a roller coaster ride and the atmosphere is charged and she’s scribbling all over the place and handing you page after page. Papers start flying all over the room and everything is spinning. If only you’re fingers could type faster but you skipped that class in high school to hang out with your jealous boyfriend. Somehow you’re managing to keep pace. The words, the colors, the imagery is all there. Your mind is regurgitating volumes as the monsters come out from under the bed. It is ecstasy. Then out of nowhere it comes to a complete halt.

She looks up at you and stops scribbling. She winks at you and disappears back through the tunnel of your subconscious. You wish you could warn her about the next 8 years. She’d cling to abusive boyfriends and throw away every millisecond of her past. She’d hide the crayons and lock her secrets in impenetrable caves. Occasionally she’d write but the only feeling that would surface would be anger or the longing for an old boyfriend who’d dumped her. Still she would find herself in backseats, dark bushes and her bedroom when her parents were out of town playing sadistic games of truth or dare. Spirits whisper the rules in her ear. You lie back and your skin feels nothing, even though on the inside you itch all over. You close your eyes and cry for Mother Mary. You plead for her apparition, her eyes bleeding, a crescent moon over her. She stands above you, clutching a rose and in her other hand is a veil, which she gently places on your face. You take a deep breath and open your eyes and the world is hazy. And so you wear that veil for the next 20 years, protected by the saints you plead to nightly, with the Gods you’ll never contemplate. Despite all of this, that child forever departs to the corners of your mind. Inside she’s stirring, but you keep her from coming to the surface, lest you overflow and aspirate.

You look up. Five o’clock, house is a mess. Outside a bird picks at a dead frog. Head feels heavy and tired. You still have to work tonight. You need coffee. The baby’s screaming, the three-year is screaming. Toys are all over the damn place. You feel like a neglectful mother. Sit there and try to type with one hand, but everything is coming out jagged. You wish you could build a secret bomb shelter in the back yard for you to hide into. Perhaps it would solve your predicament of constant distraction mixed with a huge dose of guilt. You have small people climbing all over you, making faces, blowing bubbles, grabbing your hands. Then the computer overheats and switches off. Piece of shit. It’s no use. You get up, pick up a saliva-covered toy airplane and try to make the house look half-presentable before their father comes home.