Mercies
When my mother told me what my father did,
or might have done,
I woke up the next day and of our conversation
could only remember my own child-words,
repeated from the tissue-paper rose
of her old mouth:
I can’t tell; he’ll get in trouble
Loyal unto silence, even then—
My first husband wanted to name our son Victor
and this shocked me the same way as
the gun in his locked drawer—
naming your child
the one who wins the war
And our daughter’s name,
the girl who would have his eyes set like
black rocks in the flat white pond of my face,
the girl who would have his eyes set like
black buttons on the ironed white cloth of my face—
When my husband left me, I couldn’t find her name.
I looked and looked in the months after,
thinking, in Ondaatje’s words:
You left me in Lodhi gardens.
Though he left me in Boston,
in February, 12 days after I finished reading
The English Patient out loud to him.
What did I want with it, anyway?
The maybe of her was gone, not even
a ghost, just hope razed into a knife.
You’re a good person, he told me once,
And a wonderful, wonderful woman.
And, well, wasn’t he right?
I was loyal unto blade, too.
I never could find her name.
My mother writes:
Only you and your father know what really happened.
Maybe every forgetting is a mercy.
Hope Henderson is a science writer in Berkeley, California. Her literary writing has recently been published in venues including The Rumpus, The Rupture, and Hobart Pulp, and she is working on a memoir about disability and chronic illness. You can find her at hoperhenderson.com and on Twitter @hoperhenderson.