“Przekop clearly has a gift for language.”
The New Yorker
"Penelope Przekop has keen insight into the human condition."
Terri Cheney
Manic: A Memoir (William Morrow)
"Penelope Przekop writes with gorgeous imagery, quirky characters and deep storytelling."
Melissa Walker
Author & Journalist
Lovestruck Summer (HarperTeen), Violet in Private (Berkley Trade)
What Mothers Do
by Penelope Przekop
Missy’s world brims with hot guys, cheerleading jumps, and eyeliner colors. She feels as if she’s boiling; she can no longer tolerate her mother.
Their private club of two ended on the first day of eighth grade.
As Missy stepped off the bus that day, a friendly crowd surrounded her. They moved through the locker-lined corridors, laughing and
shouting, and she drifted toward a new perspective. When the crowd finally dispersed (school bell blaring), a boy, shorter than Missy but wiry-
strong, stood nearby. Watching. She stared back, curious, and as if for the first time, felt the tips of her coarse hair tickle her bare shoulders.
Smiling to herself, she turned away, toward a place were mothers cannot follow.
Now, eighth grade is nearly over. Her mother starts in on her again. All she ever talks about is Missy’s grades, her potential, and the future.
Peyton is sick of it herself, but can’t seem to stop. She can’t help but believe a sharper focus on academics will propel Missy, unscathed,
through the next few years. “Life’s not just a big social event,” she says, shaking her head because Missy has already set up her sewing
machine, the homework still waiting. “Or a fashion show either.”
Missy doesn’t look up, hoping her mother will go away. “Why do you keep telling me that?” she asks as she cuts the legs of her old jeans
lengthwise. She plans to sew them back again, creating something new and unique. “I know stuff.”
“I realize you know stuff but don’t you think I might know a little more? It’s great to be so creative and … socially skilled, but I want you to have
choices. Even if you end up studying art, your grades will help you get into the best art school.” Peyton walks around the room, stepping over
Missy’s discarded clothes and picking up debris from the floor: candy wrappers, CDs, school papers. She hopes they aren’t papers she was
supposed to sign; she hopes they aren’t late. “Nobody told me all this.”
Missy says, “Well, you did okay; you have a good job.” She looks up just long enough to see her mother’s eyes change.
“Yeah, but I had to learn lots of stuff the hard way.”
That slight shift in Peyton’s eyes causes Missy to wonder what her mother was like back then. She doesn’t understand that the person her
mother had once been is still there, the kernel of her actions. “You don’t understand,” Missy whines. “You think I’m not trying.” Plopping down
on her bed, she tugs at a small hole in her favorite jeans, a pair she already cut and sewed back together. “You’re too old,” she says and
then, feeling a bit sorry for her mother, adds, “You can’t help it.”
“I’m not that old.”
“Well, you’re past the point of true understanding,” Missy says. “It’s too late and you can’t go back. That’s just how it is, Mom.”
Of course Peyton understands. And it hadn’t been easy, she thinks as she leaves the room. She sits down at the top of the stairs, thinking
of all the times she hadn’t felt as if her own mother understood, of all the times her religious, the world-is-coming-to-an-end philosophy still
seems to prohibit the kind of understanding Peyton craves.
Peyton first real love nearly killed her. Not the guy, but the feeling and all it inspired, all it gave and took. She was seventeen and lost,
misplaced on the way to growing up. She developed a fierce love for a boy who couldn’t love her back and because that love was all she had,
because her parents somehow failed her, there was nothing. She’d been glad when she married and her name changed and she moved far
away from the hot, stifling place where she’d grown up. Trying to understand Missy without reliving or revealing her own awful memories is
tough. Some days she sits at the top of the stairs, thankful just to be there.
She attempted suicide the year she turned eighteen because she thought there was nothing else to do, nothing to have, no one to love.
Ultimately, it was the nothingness that made her do it, that empty space her parents carved with their sharp tools of yearning, of wanting more
than what they chose and what they had.
Her father drove her to the emergency room, too embarrassed to call an ambulance. He didn’t want the neighbors to talk. Once at the
hospital, they dumped her lethargic body into a wheel chair and shoved it toward large, sliding glass doors. People dressed in green and white
swarmed around her like church greeters, eager to save her life. A voice said she’d feel a pinch just before the IV needle entered her slender,
pale forearm.
“How old are you, Honey?”
“You got any hobbies?”
Silence.
“Don’t you go to sleep.” Someone tapped her on the head. “We’ve got to keep you awake, okay? Just try and answer the questions.”
“What school do you go to?”
The boy was her hobby, her education, her age, so she didn’t answer.
A nurse forced a drink under her nose; her chunky gold rings flashed, blinding Peyton more than the fluorescent lights and the white lab
coats, sheets, walls, everything white. Peyton’s eyes slammed shut, sorry that her plan hadn’t worked. The nurse’s patronizing voice rang out
above the others. “Honey, your daddy said he’s not sure how many pills you took, so the first thing we’ve got to do is let you drink this syrup.”
Her big head shook up and down as she spoke. “It’s gonna make you throw up,” she continued, “but in the end it’ll make you feel a hundred
times better.” She pried Peyton’s left eye open with her fat finger. Its girth reminded Peyton of being full and satisfied and she hated it. She
was skinny.
But she nodded and drank from the small cup.
“I’m gonna get you a nice, big bowl,” said the fat nurse. “I know this ain’t pleasant, but it’s what you have to do when you go taking pills like
that.” Her cheerful, high-pitched voice reminded Peyton of her kindergarten teacher. It seemed like so long ago, but it really wasn’t. She knew
she had barely made it out into the real world; she felt like a failure. The nurse brought a gigantic silver bowl and helped Peyton sit up.
Another person stuck a needle in her arm; she watched her blood fill the syringe. The bigheaded nurse rubbed her shoulder until it burned.
She was trying to comfort Peyton, but it hurt. It struck Peyton as sad how adults always think they’re helping when they give you the wrong
thing, something you don’t really need and never asked for.
Sometime during the vomiting, her mother and father filled the doorway. The doctor stood just beyond. When he finally came in, he sat,
grinning at Peyton, hoping to make light of her pain, hoping to make it go away. She struggled to smile back; she was taught to be polite.
“Peyton,” he said, “I’m gonna ask that you drink ac-tiv-a-ted charcoal. It’ll bind up what’s left inside so you’ll be okay. Do you understand?”
Peyton nodded, hugging the bowl, staring past him at her parents. Her mother’s face was stricken, but Peyton didn’t know if it was grief she
saw or disapproval. Her father was still embarrassed.
“This is gonna be the worst thing you’ll ever taste, kind of thick and sandy, but you have to drink every drop. If you don’t, we’re gonna have
to put a big tube down your throat and pump out your stomach.” The doctor rubbed her leg and then pried the bowl away. “You don’t want us
to have to do that now do you?”
Peyton wondered why they were all talking to her as if she were ten. Was it because she’d done a stupid thing or because they thought she
didn’t understand? They didn’t understand her, she decided.
The lukewarm sludge stuck to her tongue like tar. The muscles in her throat struggled to swallow the thick blob.
“That’s a good girl,” the nurse said.
The charcoal slithered slowly into her, a huge mudslide coating her black.
The big, silver bowl filled with her vomit sat on the counter next to the door, just beyond her mother’s stricken face.
Looking back from the top of the stairs, Peyton finally understands her mother’s expression. Once you find a bit of true understanding, you
subconsciously begin to move away from the deep well of youth to save yourself from the agony of knowing what’s there.
“Mom, have you ever had a dream that was so real you thought about it for days?” Peyton had asked a few days prior to swallowing the pills.
“I’ve thought of some my whole life. Some dreams you never forget.” Her mother was searching for another new church she’d heard about.
They were at the center of a neighborhood they rarely visited; they’d been on the outskirts once or twice.
“Why do certain dreams seem so vivid?” Peyton asked. “It’s not just a visual thing, you know. I mean...vivid...in a different way.”
Her mother squinted to read the next street sign. “Those dreams usually come from God. That’s one way he speaks to us.”
“How can you be sure...that it’s from God, I mean?”
“You feel it,” her mother answered. “We don’t always hear when God speaks...we feel God’s voice. His words touch our soul.” The
transmission groaned as she downshifted to make a right-hand turn.
Peyton struggled to explain the dream she’d had the night before. As she spoke she tried to read the street signs that came much too
quickly. Between interruptions, she described what seemed to be a journey through the abandoned church of her childhood and her final
struggle to break free.
“Well, that sounds like God’s voice, clear as a bell, to me. Don’t you understand what it means, Peyton?” her mother asked, turning sharply
into the parking lot of the large brick church. “This place is supposed to be just wonderful. Nearly twenty people have joined every month
since it opened.” Peyton loved seeing her mother so happy, but realized she had characteristically lost their conversation to the church.
“I’m listening,” her mother said, recognizing Peyton’s disappointment.
“It was almost like birth,” Peyton continued. “I ended up crawling through a big, slimy drainage pipe sticking out the side of the church. I was
squashed and needed someone to pull me through. A doctor or something…”
Her mother shifted into park and turned toward Peyton. “Grown people aren’t born like that. There’s only one way to be reborn and it’s
through Jesus. Don’t you see? God’s really speakin’ to you. This is great.”
Oh great. Peyton braced herself.
“He knows the pain you’ve been through; he knows about the baby. He’s the only deliverer,” her mother said, placing a narrow hand on
Peyton’s knee.
Peyton wanted to move away, but couldn’t. A battle raged inside her but she couldn’t make out the opponents. It was more than merely good
and evil; that would have been easy. Suddenly, the air seemed used by her mother; she was too close. Peyton could feel her touch, yet
couldn’t break through what held her stiff; she couldn’t reach her mother. “It was more than that!” Peyton’s voice finally exploded through the
car.
“You don’t have to yell. I’m right here.” Her mother said sweetly. “I’ll tell you what, we’re a little early so instead of going in and meeting people
(like I normally do), we’re going to sit right here and talk.”
Her sweet tone infuriated Peyton. “I do have to yell! I’m trying to explain something to you and you’re not listening.”
“I said I’m gonna sit right here and listen.”
“I’m just saying that it was more than being born again. I mean with Jesus and all.”
“How can there be more, Peyton? If you think there is you’re just kidding yourself. That is the end-all. The reason we exist is to come into
his kingdom.” Her beliefs were a tight symmetrical weave that kept her warm and made her strong; she couldn’t help it. “All righteousness and
truth come from God and everything bad in us comes from Satan. Don’t you see that, honey? It’s so simple,” she said, her eyes glazed in
worship.
Peyton took a loud, deep breath. Her heart beat like feet racing toward something that made sense, or perhaps escaping from something
that didn’t. Her lips moved and she heard a strange voice that didn’t sound like her at all. Carried by the power of those running feet, it filled
the space between them. It said, “Then where the hell am I?”
“Peyton, we’re all just pawns in a spiritual war. You know that.” Her mother fought back tears, for she believed this with all her being. She’d
spent years trying to tell people, to tell her family. After all, it was faith that ultimately lifted her out of that glorious but futile well of simultaneous
finding and losing. It was the best she had to give.
“You don’t understand. I want to be Peyton Bound. I don’t want to be a spiritual battleground. I want to be me. How can there be a me
when everything good and right is from God and everything bad and wrong is from Satan? Isn’t there some kind of in-between or neutral
ground?”
Her mother didn’t like this at all. Of course she understood. “Of course there is,” she said, smiling but yet sad. “That’s what makes us
different and unique. No two people are alike.”
Peyton gave her a look filled with everything that was missing. “But I feel so empty,” she said, experiencing the pain of youth, of wanting to
be different yet longing to be the same.
“Think about the dream,” her mother suggested as if she’d found the perfect opportunity to share God’s message.
“I already belong to God. I think I need to be born into something different altogether, something new and unique.”
“But what?” Her mother looked worried. And then…“I hate to say this, but...will you hand me my lipstick. It’s in my purse somewhere.” Her
attention shifted to the rearview mirror. Peyton handed her the lipstick but didn’t answer. “I’ve told you how special you are a million times.
You’re not even close to being empty.” The words warbled their way out of her rounded, open lips as she slathered the rich, red color over
them. “You’re in an exquisite ocean.”
“Well, maybe so, but I think I’m drowning,” Peyton whispered, thinking her mother probably wouldn’t hear anyway. “Everybody I know is
sailing around on giant, colorful sailboats, feeling the breeze through their hair. I’m underneath and I’m pounding on the bottom of their boats.”
“Well, feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to accomplish anything.”
Peyton took a deep breath and tried again, a little louder this time. “It’s just me and the ocean filth. All I can see is the bottom of those
sailboats. There’s no light, and nothing, not one stinkin’ creature, can ever dream of lifting its head above water.”
“Honey, those creatures are demonic! Peyton, this is your life. You have to listen to me on this.”
“Fine, we’re back to this again. You just can’t understand. I feel so fragile ... like I’m going to break any minute.” Peyton dug through her
mother’s purse, searching for a tissue as if it were the answer. Make-up streamed down her face. “Oh great,” she whined. “It’ll take them
about a second to spot me as a person with a problem.”
“Peyton, fragility can be beautiful.”
Well, nobody appreciates how fragile the tip of a cigarette is after it’s been smoked for awhile.”
“Just stop it!”
“But it’s true, Mom. It’s like you hang on and on, hoping someone will notice that you’re just about to fall. Then you fall. Just like that.”
Peyton snapped her fingers. “Nobody cares.”
“Peyton, I love you! I care and I’m not the only one. I can tell by the way Peter looks at you that he knows you’re special. He is shorter than
you, but in the end those things don’t mean much.” She took the tissue Peyton used to wipe her eyes and stuffed it back into her purse with all
the other junk she hung onto.
“He’s a very kind person,” Peyton said, opening the car door. “Kindness is good.”
“It’s very good.” Her mother’s car door slammed and they walked toward the church, joining with the strangers who were popping out of cars
left and right.
“I talked to him last night,” Peyton said as they reached the church. But her mother bounded through the heavy wooden doors without
looking Peyton’s way, a broad smile already in place.
Church greeters instantly enveloped them. They grew like weeds from the walls surrounding them and the cracks in the floor beneath their
feet. They were the epitome of kindness and hospitality. Standing in Peyton’s personal space, their uninvited arms embraced her. Their big
smiling faces danced around her, asking questions, assuring her that God was happy to have her in his home.
Peyton straightened her clothes and frantically searched for her mother. She wondered why her mother never stopped searching for a
better church, a greater spiritual understanding, someone else to lead her toward an even stronger faith, all at the expense of those she loved,
the very people she so desperately wanted to convert.
Peyton finally caught a glimpse of her as the friendly churchgoers swallowed her whole.
Once moved from intensive care unit to a normal room, Peyton was told not to leave the fifth floor. But clutching the stair railing, she made her
way down to the fourth floor. The hallway was identical except that more people filled it. They passed without noticing or caring that she only
wore a fluffy, pink bathrobe.
Laughter came from outpatient chemotherapy unit so she stopped and peeked into the small sterile room. Three patients sat in Lazy Boy
recliners, their IV bags hanging just above their heads. Several nurses stood nearby, laughing, smiling like the ER doctor had smiled at her.
The patients were laughing a bit, too, but it failed to hide their disease. They didn’t notice Peyton standing in the doorway. One heavy man sat
clutching a Newsweek; except for the white of his knuckles, he didn’t look sick. Two frail women sat facing each other. Peyton saw a look pass
between them.
A voice blared through the hospital speaker system. “Peyton Bound, please return to the fifth floor nurses’ station.”
Peyton darted into the nearest stairwell and trudged down to the third floor. There was a tunnel-like walkway at the end of the corridor. It
led to a new building adjacent to the hospital and since the crowd seemed to be moving in the opposite direction, Peyton wrapped her pink
bathrobe tighter around her and entered the tunnel. A security guard stood at the entrance of the new building. His eyes met Peyton’s, but he
continued talking to the small group of people gathered around him.
Somebody laughed.
“Peyton Bound, please return to the fifth floor nurses’ station.”
She shuffled down the hall that led away from the security guard and soon realized that she’d come full circle; the ICU surrounded her. She
cowered behind a tall metal shelving unit that stood against the wall and searched for the ICU nurse Peyton thought of as the zookeeper.
Three tall, dark-haired men, obviously brothers, rushed past. A middle-aged woman, perhaps a sister or cousin, emerged from the room
Peyton had spent two days in and hurried to meet them. She was crying. She spoke softly, but her words crippled them. Peyton watched as
the brothers fell to the floor like bowling pins. Each grieved with his own voice; each felt his own pain. They were foreigners and wailed in a
strange language. Peyton slapped her hands over her ears.
They cried, screaming at death, while her parents stared with pinched, embarrassed faces at her attempt to show them the death inside her.
They refused to see the emptiness that would never go away, but instead find its inevitable place in Peyton’s life.
A doctor, two nurses, and the main zookeeper rushed from the cage.
“Peyton Bound please return to the fifth floor nurses’ station.”
The zookeeper’s eyes scanned the ICU. He hesitated, scrutinizing the metal shelving. Peyton wondered if he saw the anger in her eyes, but
didn’t wait to find out. She ran.
“Hey! You come back here!” he yelled.
Peyton stopped running as she approached the security guard and nonchalantly entered the tunnel. The musty smell of it filled her head
and a wave of nausea passed over her. She leaned against the wall and its coldness startled her.
“Hey! Peyton!” It was the zookeeper.
The security guard shouted, “What’s going on?”
“She’s from the fifth floor!”
Peyton ran through the other end of the tunnel. She took the stairs, two at a time, down to the second floor. Her foot missed the last step,
which threw her off balance. She crumbled to the floor, but the painful jolt left her more determined to run free. She pulled herself up and tried
to get as far away from the stairwell as possible. People swarmed around her, uncaring and she pushed through them.
Keeping her head down, she began following painted blue footprints on the floor. She never looked up at the color-coded direction signs to
see where they led. As she rounded the last corner everything brightened. The stark, white walls changed to a painted blue sky. Billowing
clouds broke the monotony every couple of feet. Peyton instantly knew where she was. Trying to catch her breath, she leaned against the big
window that took up ten or twelve feet of sky.
Three babies lay in plastic bassinets on the other side of the glass. They were as helpless as they’d been in their mother’s wombs. Each baby’
s name was neatly printed on a pink or blue card attached to its bed. As a child, Peyton had invented hundreds of names. Walking through
the house, she’d held the list, chattering to the invisible children following her. She wondered if there were any behind her now.
“You have the most beautiful peaches and cream complexion.” Peyton hadn’t noticed the elderly woman standing next to her. She was
barely five feet tall. Her wrinkled neck stretched, shoving her tiny face toward Peyton.
“Thank you. Yours is very nice, too,” she said.
“I’m 90 years old.” Her confession shocked Peyton; she didn’t look that old. “When I was your age, I spent all my time wanting to be older.”
The woman slowly drew in a breath. “When I finally got older, I went to great lengths to hide my age…you know…not tell anybody. I even
acted like I didn’t know so much sometimes,” she said, chuckling like a little girl. “Now, I’m just proud. I never imagined God would let me live
this long. I’m old, but I don’t envy you,” she said, shaking her head.
“But don’t you hate being old?”
“It’s really not so bad, once you get used to it. There are advantages.” Her face shone. Peyton gazed at the three babies.
“Does one of these little darlings belong to you?” the sweet lady asked.
One began to cry.
A hand came down on Peyton’s shoulder just as she was going to answer. “I thought I’d find you here.” It was Peter with his merry smile. He
always seemed to find her. She imagined that his prematurely balding head had radar that searched her out even when she didn’t want to be
found. She wished she could love him the way she loved his best friend.
“How’d you know?” Peyton asked as she watched the old lady shuffle down the hall, her tiny red shoes blending with the colorful footprints
splashed across the floor. Peyton wondered why she hadn’t waited for an answer.
“I just know you,” said Peter.
“But how did you know I was in the hospital?”
“Actually, I called and your dad told me.”
Peyton watched as a nurse checked on the babies. “I’m okay now, but … I’ve never been so sick. Food poisoning,” she lied. “It was
horrible.”
Peter’s eyes flashed just enough to tell her he knew she was a liar. “Well, I guess you got it all out of your system.” He smiled and squeezed
Peyton’s shoulder.
“You’re my best friend,” Peyton said, realizing that she did love him in a way.
“I know,” he said as he led her away. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor in silence. When the heavy doors parted, they stared at a
large sign that read, Floor 5 - Psychiatric / Chemical Dependency Unit.
They both pretended not to see it.
As she matured, the sharp focus of Peyton’s teenage life eventually flattened around her, clean and finally pure, with a child of her own, with
lasting love. But if it is possible to exist at the excruciatingly beautiful center of love and death and life, all at once, it was sneaking into
nightclubs, dancing for that boy on oversized speakers, and it was running from the zookeeper through that lonely hospital tunnel, that it had
happened. It swirled around her, shocking, painful, pleasing, and she frantically snatched at it. She was alive when she took those pills, when
she chased Peter’s best friend, while trying to love Peter instead.
Eventually, Peyton found her place among the memories of those three screaming brothers; the white-knuckled man clutching his Newsweek;
and her mother’s selfish grief. The depth of their pain had been the measure of their lives, and Peyton began to see how deep and true it was.
Now she lives in a different way. A way that, at eighteen, she thought would be the true death of her. A way Missy views as past the point of
understanding, past the time for possibilities and adventure and true longing. From her deep youthful well, Missy sees so little and so much.
To Missy, I’m just not cool right now, Peyton thinks as she finally descends, leaving behind her thinking spot at the top of the stairs. As she
walks through her lovely home, looking out at her in-ground pool and thinking that she can’t wait for Spring, her husband pinches her
pleasantly plump rear, smiling. Peyton smiles in return, remembering when there was nothing to hold.
“Mom,” Missy whines from upstairs, “Can you please drive me and my friends to the movies tomorrow night?”
“Okay,” Peyton yells.
While Missy texts the news to her friend, Peyton looks at her husband and says, “That’s what mothers do, right?” He doesn’t answer but
instead kisses her and, as if for the first time, Peyton feels his evening bristle on her cheek. She closes her eyes and reminds herself that
Missy’s answers will be different from hers and her mother’s; that they are out there, at the movies, past the theater, the sewing machine, the
laughing, shouting crowd, and wiry teenage boys.
Missy’s answers wait just beyond the horizon Peyton struggles to show her, all while keeping her distance from the well’s edge. That’s what
some mothers have to do.
________________________________________
Penelope Przekop is the author of ABERRATIONS (Greenleaf Book Group). “What Mothers Do” is excerpted from her yet to be published
novel, BOUNDARIES.
Penelope Przekop
Author, Consultant, Artist
Site: http://www.penelopeprzekop.com/
Blog: http://penelopeprzekop.blogspot.com/
H: 215.491.7449
C: 267.980.4566
Represented by:
Ivy Moon
Moon Publicity & Management
www,moonmgmt.com
Ivy@moonmgmt.com
917.453.7976
The New Yorker
"Penelope Przekop has keen insight into the human condition."
Terri Cheney
Manic: A Memoir (William Morrow)
"Penelope Przekop writes with gorgeous imagery, quirky characters and deep storytelling."
Melissa Walker
Author & Journalist
Lovestruck Summer (HarperTeen), Violet in Private (Berkley Trade)
What Mothers Do
by Penelope Przekop
Missy’s world brims with hot guys, cheerleading jumps, and eyeliner colors. She feels as if she’s boiling; she can no longer tolerate her mother.
Their private club of two ended on the first day of eighth grade.
As Missy stepped off the bus that day, a friendly crowd surrounded her. They moved through the locker-lined corridors, laughing and
shouting, and she drifted toward a new perspective. When the crowd finally dispersed (school bell blaring), a boy, shorter than Missy but wiry-
strong, stood nearby. Watching. She stared back, curious, and as if for the first time, felt the tips of her coarse hair tickle her bare shoulders.
Smiling to herself, she turned away, toward a place were mothers cannot follow.
Now, eighth grade is nearly over. Her mother starts in on her again. All she ever talks about is Missy’s grades, her potential, and the future.
Peyton is sick of it herself, but can’t seem to stop. She can’t help but believe a sharper focus on academics will propel Missy, unscathed,
through the next few years. “Life’s not just a big social event,” she says, shaking her head because Missy has already set up her sewing
machine, the homework still waiting. “Or a fashion show either.”
Missy doesn’t look up, hoping her mother will go away. “Why do you keep telling me that?” she asks as she cuts the legs of her old jeans
lengthwise. She plans to sew them back again, creating something new and unique. “I know stuff.”
“I realize you know stuff but don’t you think I might know a little more? It’s great to be so creative and … socially skilled, but I want you to have
choices. Even if you end up studying art, your grades will help you get into the best art school.” Peyton walks around the room, stepping over
Missy’s discarded clothes and picking up debris from the floor: candy wrappers, CDs, school papers. She hopes they aren’t papers she was
supposed to sign; she hopes they aren’t late. “Nobody told me all this.”
Missy says, “Well, you did okay; you have a good job.” She looks up just long enough to see her mother’s eyes change.
“Yeah, but I had to learn lots of stuff the hard way.”
That slight shift in Peyton’s eyes causes Missy to wonder what her mother was like back then. She doesn’t understand that the person her
mother had once been is still there, the kernel of her actions. “You don’t understand,” Missy whines. “You think I’m not trying.” Plopping down
on her bed, she tugs at a small hole in her favorite jeans, a pair she already cut and sewed back together. “You’re too old,” she says and
then, feeling a bit sorry for her mother, adds, “You can’t help it.”
“I’m not that old.”
“Well, you’re past the point of true understanding,” Missy says. “It’s too late and you can’t go back. That’s just how it is, Mom.”
Of course Peyton understands. And it hadn’t been easy, she thinks as she leaves the room. She sits down at the top of the stairs, thinking
of all the times she hadn’t felt as if her own mother understood, of all the times her religious, the world-is-coming-to-an-end philosophy still
seems to prohibit the kind of understanding Peyton craves.
Peyton first real love nearly killed her. Not the guy, but the feeling and all it inspired, all it gave and took. She was seventeen and lost,
misplaced on the way to growing up. She developed a fierce love for a boy who couldn’t love her back and because that love was all she had,
because her parents somehow failed her, there was nothing. She’d been glad when she married and her name changed and she moved far
away from the hot, stifling place where she’d grown up. Trying to understand Missy without reliving or revealing her own awful memories is
tough. Some days she sits at the top of the stairs, thankful just to be there.
She attempted suicide the year she turned eighteen because she thought there was nothing else to do, nothing to have, no one to love.
Ultimately, it was the nothingness that made her do it, that empty space her parents carved with their sharp tools of yearning, of wanting more
than what they chose and what they had.
Her father drove her to the emergency room, too embarrassed to call an ambulance. He didn’t want the neighbors to talk. Once at the
hospital, they dumped her lethargic body into a wheel chair and shoved it toward large, sliding glass doors. People dressed in green and white
swarmed around her like church greeters, eager to save her life. A voice said she’d feel a pinch just before the IV needle entered her slender,
pale forearm.
“How old are you, Honey?”
“You got any hobbies?”
Silence.
“Don’t you go to sleep.” Someone tapped her on the head. “We’ve got to keep you awake, okay? Just try and answer the questions.”
“What school do you go to?”
The boy was her hobby, her education, her age, so she didn’t answer.
A nurse forced a drink under her nose; her chunky gold rings flashed, blinding Peyton more than the fluorescent lights and the white lab
coats, sheets, walls, everything white. Peyton’s eyes slammed shut, sorry that her plan hadn’t worked. The nurse’s patronizing voice rang out
above the others. “Honey, your daddy said he’s not sure how many pills you took, so the first thing we’ve got to do is let you drink this syrup.”
Her big head shook up and down as she spoke. “It’s gonna make you throw up,” she continued, “but in the end it’ll make you feel a hundred
times better.” She pried Peyton’s left eye open with her fat finger. Its girth reminded Peyton of being full and satisfied and she hated it. She
was skinny.
But she nodded and drank from the small cup.
“I’m gonna get you a nice, big bowl,” said the fat nurse. “I know this ain’t pleasant, but it’s what you have to do when you go taking pills like
that.” Her cheerful, high-pitched voice reminded Peyton of her kindergarten teacher. It seemed like so long ago, but it really wasn’t. She knew
she had barely made it out into the real world; she felt like a failure. The nurse brought a gigantic silver bowl and helped Peyton sit up.
Another person stuck a needle in her arm; she watched her blood fill the syringe. The bigheaded nurse rubbed her shoulder until it burned.
She was trying to comfort Peyton, but it hurt. It struck Peyton as sad how adults always think they’re helping when they give you the wrong
thing, something you don’t really need and never asked for.
Sometime during the vomiting, her mother and father filled the doorway. The doctor stood just beyond. When he finally came in, he sat,
grinning at Peyton, hoping to make light of her pain, hoping to make it go away. She struggled to smile back; she was taught to be polite.
“Peyton,” he said, “I’m gonna ask that you drink ac-tiv-a-ted charcoal. It’ll bind up what’s left inside so you’ll be okay. Do you understand?”
Peyton nodded, hugging the bowl, staring past him at her parents. Her mother’s face was stricken, but Peyton didn’t know if it was grief she
saw or disapproval. Her father was still embarrassed.
“This is gonna be the worst thing you’ll ever taste, kind of thick and sandy, but you have to drink every drop. If you don’t, we’re gonna have
to put a big tube down your throat and pump out your stomach.” The doctor rubbed her leg and then pried the bowl away. “You don’t want us
to have to do that now do you?”
Peyton wondered why they were all talking to her as if she were ten. Was it because she’d done a stupid thing or because they thought she
didn’t understand? They didn’t understand her, she decided.
The lukewarm sludge stuck to her tongue like tar. The muscles in her throat struggled to swallow the thick blob.
“That’s a good girl,” the nurse said.
The charcoal slithered slowly into her, a huge mudslide coating her black.
The big, silver bowl filled with her vomit sat on the counter next to the door, just beyond her mother’s stricken face.
Looking back from the top of the stairs, Peyton finally understands her mother’s expression. Once you find a bit of true understanding, you
subconsciously begin to move away from the deep well of youth to save yourself from the agony of knowing what’s there.
“Mom, have you ever had a dream that was so real you thought about it for days?” Peyton had asked a few days prior to swallowing the pills.
“I’ve thought of some my whole life. Some dreams you never forget.” Her mother was searching for another new church she’d heard about.
They were at the center of a neighborhood they rarely visited; they’d been on the outskirts once or twice.
“Why do certain dreams seem so vivid?” Peyton asked. “It’s not just a visual thing, you know. I mean...vivid...in a different way.”
Her mother squinted to read the next street sign. “Those dreams usually come from God. That’s one way he speaks to us.”
“How can you be sure...that it’s from God, I mean?”
“You feel it,” her mother answered. “We don’t always hear when God speaks...we feel God’s voice. His words touch our soul.” The
transmission groaned as she downshifted to make a right-hand turn.
Peyton struggled to explain the dream she’d had the night before. As she spoke she tried to read the street signs that came much too
quickly. Between interruptions, she described what seemed to be a journey through the abandoned church of her childhood and her final
struggle to break free.
“Well, that sounds like God’s voice, clear as a bell, to me. Don’t you understand what it means, Peyton?” her mother asked, turning sharply
into the parking lot of the large brick church. “This place is supposed to be just wonderful. Nearly twenty people have joined every month
since it opened.” Peyton loved seeing her mother so happy, but realized she had characteristically lost their conversation to the church.
“I’m listening,” her mother said, recognizing Peyton’s disappointment.
“It was almost like birth,” Peyton continued. “I ended up crawling through a big, slimy drainage pipe sticking out the side of the church. I was
squashed and needed someone to pull me through. A doctor or something…”
Her mother shifted into park and turned toward Peyton. “Grown people aren’t born like that. There’s only one way to be reborn and it’s
through Jesus. Don’t you see? God’s really speakin’ to you. This is great.”
Oh great. Peyton braced herself.
“He knows the pain you’ve been through; he knows about the baby. He’s the only deliverer,” her mother said, placing a narrow hand on
Peyton’s knee.
Peyton wanted to move away, but couldn’t. A battle raged inside her but she couldn’t make out the opponents. It was more than merely good
and evil; that would have been easy. Suddenly, the air seemed used by her mother; she was too close. Peyton could feel her touch, yet
couldn’t break through what held her stiff; she couldn’t reach her mother. “It was more than that!” Peyton’s voice finally exploded through the
car.
“You don’t have to yell. I’m right here.” Her mother said sweetly. “I’ll tell you what, we’re a little early so instead of going in and meeting people
(like I normally do), we’re going to sit right here and talk.”
Her sweet tone infuriated Peyton. “I do have to yell! I’m trying to explain something to you and you’re not listening.”
“I said I’m gonna sit right here and listen.”
“I’m just saying that it was more than being born again. I mean with Jesus and all.”
“How can there be more, Peyton? If you think there is you’re just kidding yourself. That is the end-all. The reason we exist is to come into
his kingdom.” Her beliefs were a tight symmetrical weave that kept her warm and made her strong; she couldn’t help it. “All righteousness and
truth come from God and everything bad in us comes from Satan. Don’t you see that, honey? It’s so simple,” she said, her eyes glazed in
worship.
Peyton took a loud, deep breath. Her heart beat like feet racing toward something that made sense, or perhaps escaping from something
that didn’t. Her lips moved and she heard a strange voice that didn’t sound like her at all. Carried by the power of those running feet, it filled
the space between them. It said, “Then where the hell am I?”
“Peyton, we’re all just pawns in a spiritual war. You know that.” Her mother fought back tears, for she believed this with all her being. She’d
spent years trying to tell people, to tell her family. After all, it was faith that ultimately lifted her out of that glorious but futile well of simultaneous
finding and losing. It was the best she had to give.
“You don’t understand. I want to be Peyton Bound. I don’t want to be a spiritual battleground. I want to be me. How can there be a me
when everything good and right is from God and everything bad and wrong is from Satan? Isn’t there some kind of in-between or neutral
ground?”
Her mother didn’t like this at all. Of course she understood. “Of course there is,” she said, smiling but yet sad. “That’s what makes us
different and unique. No two people are alike.”
Peyton gave her a look filled with everything that was missing. “But I feel so empty,” she said, experiencing the pain of youth, of wanting to
be different yet longing to be the same.
“Think about the dream,” her mother suggested as if she’d found the perfect opportunity to share God’s message.
“I already belong to God. I think I need to be born into something different altogether, something new and unique.”
“But what?” Her mother looked worried. And then…“I hate to say this, but...will you hand me my lipstick. It’s in my purse somewhere.” Her
attention shifted to the rearview mirror. Peyton handed her the lipstick but didn’t answer. “I’ve told you how special you are a million times.
You’re not even close to being empty.” The words warbled their way out of her rounded, open lips as she slathered the rich, red color over
them. “You’re in an exquisite ocean.”
“Well, maybe so, but I think I’m drowning,” Peyton whispered, thinking her mother probably wouldn’t hear anyway. “Everybody I know is
sailing around on giant, colorful sailboats, feeling the breeze through their hair. I’m underneath and I’m pounding on the bottom of their boats.”
“Well, feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to accomplish anything.”
Peyton took a deep breath and tried again, a little louder this time. “It’s just me and the ocean filth. All I can see is the bottom of those
sailboats. There’s no light, and nothing, not one stinkin’ creature, can ever dream of lifting its head above water.”
“Honey, those creatures are demonic! Peyton, this is your life. You have to listen to me on this.”
“Fine, we’re back to this again. You just can’t understand. I feel so fragile ... like I’m going to break any minute.” Peyton dug through her
mother’s purse, searching for a tissue as if it were the answer. Make-up streamed down her face. “Oh great,” she whined. “It’ll take them
about a second to spot me as a person with a problem.”
“Peyton, fragility can be beautiful.”
Well, nobody appreciates how fragile the tip of a cigarette is after it’s been smoked for awhile.”
“Just stop it!”
“But it’s true, Mom. It’s like you hang on and on, hoping someone will notice that you’re just about to fall. Then you fall. Just like that.”
Peyton snapped her fingers. “Nobody cares.”
“Peyton, I love you! I care and I’m not the only one. I can tell by the way Peter looks at you that he knows you’re special. He is shorter than
you, but in the end those things don’t mean much.” She took the tissue Peyton used to wipe her eyes and stuffed it back into her purse with all
the other junk she hung onto.
“He’s a very kind person,” Peyton said, opening the car door. “Kindness is good.”
“It’s very good.” Her mother’s car door slammed and they walked toward the church, joining with the strangers who were popping out of cars
left and right.
“I talked to him last night,” Peyton said as they reached the church. But her mother bounded through the heavy wooden doors without
looking Peyton’s way, a broad smile already in place.
Church greeters instantly enveloped them. They grew like weeds from the walls surrounding them and the cracks in the floor beneath their
feet. They were the epitome of kindness and hospitality. Standing in Peyton’s personal space, their uninvited arms embraced her. Their big
smiling faces danced around her, asking questions, assuring her that God was happy to have her in his home.
Peyton straightened her clothes and frantically searched for her mother. She wondered why her mother never stopped searching for a
better church, a greater spiritual understanding, someone else to lead her toward an even stronger faith, all at the expense of those she loved,
the very people she so desperately wanted to convert.
Peyton finally caught a glimpse of her as the friendly churchgoers swallowed her whole.
Once moved from intensive care unit to a normal room, Peyton was told not to leave the fifth floor. But clutching the stair railing, she made her
way down to the fourth floor. The hallway was identical except that more people filled it. They passed without noticing or caring that she only
wore a fluffy, pink bathrobe.
Laughter came from outpatient chemotherapy unit so she stopped and peeked into the small sterile room. Three patients sat in Lazy Boy
recliners, their IV bags hanging just above their heads. Several nurses stood nearby, laughing, smiling like the ER doctor had smiled at her.
The patients were laughing a bit, too, but it failed to hide their disease. They didn’t notice Peyton standing in the doorway. One heavy man sat
clutching a Newsweek; except for the white of his knuckles, he didn’t look sick. Two frail women sat facing each other. Peyton saw a look pass
between them.
A voice blared through the hospital speaker system. “Peyton Bound, please return to the fifth floor nurses’ station.”
Peyton darted into the nearest stairwell and trudged down to the third floor. There was a tunnel-like walkway at the end of the corridor. It
led to a new building adjacent to the hospital and since the crowd seemed to be moving in the opposite direction, Peyton wrapped her pink
bathrobe tighter around her and entered the tunnel. A security guard stood at the entrance of the new building. His eyes met Peyton’s, but he
continued talking to the small group of people gathered around him.
Somebody laughed.
“Peyton Bound, please return to the fifth floor nurses’ station.”
She shuffled down the hall that led away from the security guard and soon realized that she’d come full circle; the ICU surrounded her. She
cowered behind a tall metal shelving unit that stood against the wall and searched for the ICU nurse Peyton thought of as the zookeeper.
Three tall, dark-haired men, obviously brothers, rushed past. A middle-aged woman, perhaps a sister or cousin, emerged from the room
Peyton had spent two days in and hurried to meet them. She was crying. She spoke softly, but her words crippled them. Peyton watched as
the brothers fell to the floor like bowling pins. Each grieved with his own voice; each felt his own pain. They were foreigners and wailed in a
strange language. Peyton slapped her hands over her ears.
They cried, screaming at death, while her parents stared with pinched, embarrassed faces at her attempt to show them the death inside her.
They refused to see the emptiness that would never go away, but instead find its inevitable place in Peyton’s life.
A doctor, two nurses, and the main zookeeper rushed from the cage.
“Peyton Bound please return to the fifth floor nurses’ station.”
The zookeeper’s eyes scanned the ICU. He hesitated, scrutinizing the metal shelving. Peyton wondered if he saw the anger in her eyes, but
didn’t wait to find out. She ran.
“Hey! You come back here!” he yelled.
Peyton stopped running as she approached the security guard and nonchalantly entered the tunnel. The musty smell of it filled her head
and a wave of nausea passed over her. She leaned against the wall and its coldness startled her.
“Hey! Peyton!” It was the zookeeper.
The security guard shouted, “What’s going on?”
“She’s from the fifth floor!”
Peyton ran through the other end of the tunnel. She took the stairs, two at a time, down to the second floor. Her foot missed the last step,
which threw her off balance. She crumbled to the floor, but the painful jolt left her more determined to run free. She pulled herself up and tried
to get as far away from the stairwell as possible. People swarmed around her, uncaring and she pushed through them.
Keeping her head down, she began following painted blue footprints on the floor. She never looked up at the color-coded direction signs to
see where they led. As she rounded the last corner everything brightened. The stark, white walls changed to a painted blue sky. Billowing
clouds broke the monotony every couple of feet. Peyton instantly knew where she was. Trying to catch her breath, she leaned against the big
window that took up ten or twelve feet of sky.
Three babies lay in plastic bassinets on the other side of the glass. They were as helpless as they’d been in their mother’s wombs. Each baby’
s name was neatly printed on a pink or blue card attached to its bed. As a child, Peyton had invented hundreds of names. Walking through
the house, she’d held the list, chattering to the invisible children following her. She wondered if there were any behind her now.
“You have the most beautiful peaches and cream complexion.” Peyton hadn’t noticed the elderly woman standing next to her. She was
barely five feet tall. Her wrinkled neck stretched, shoving her tiny face toward Peyton.
“Thank you. Yours is very nice, too,” she said.
“I’m 90 years old.” Her confession shocked Peyton; she didn’t look that old. “When I was your age, I spent all my time wanting to be older.”
The woman slowly drew in a breath. “When I finally got older, I went to great lengths to hide my age…you know…not tell anybody. I even
acted like I didn’t know so much sometimes,” she said, chuckling like a little girl. “Now, I’m just proud. I never imagined God would let me live
this long. I’m old, but I don’t envy you,” she said, shaking her head.
“But don’t you hate being old?”
“It’s really not so bad, once you get used to it. There are advantages.” Her face shone. Peyton gazed at the three babies.
“Does one of these little darlings belong to you?” the sweet lady asked.
One began to cry.
A hand came down on Peyton’s shoulder just as she was going to answer. “I thought I’d find you here.” It was Peter with his merry smile. He
always seemed to find her. She imagined that his prematurely balding head had radar that searched her out even when she didn’t want to be
found. She wished she could love him the way she loved his best friend.
“How’d you know?” Peyton asked as she watched the old lady shuffle down the hall, her tiny red shoes blending with the colorful footprints
splashed across the floor. Peyton wondered why she hadn’t waited for an answer.
“I just know you,” said Peter.
“But how did you know I was in the hospital?”
“Actually, I called and your dad told me.”
Peyton watched as a nurse checked on the babies. “I’m okay now, but … I’ve never been so sick. Food poisoning,” she lied. “It was
horrible.”
Peter’s eyes flashed just enough to tell her he knew she was a liar. “Well, I guess you got it all out of your system.” He smiled and squeezed
Peyton’s shoulder.
“You’re my best friend,” Peyton said, realizing that she did love him in a way.
“I know,” he said as he led her away. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor in silence. When the heavy doors parted, they stared at a
large sign that read, Floor 5 - Psychiatric / Chemical Dependency Unit.
They both pretended not to see it.
As she matured, the sharp focus of Peyton’s teenage life eventually flattened around her, clean and finally pure, with a child of her own, with
lasting love. But if it is possible to exist at the excruciatingly beautiful center of love and death and life, all at once, it was sneaking into
nightclubs, dancing for that boy on oversized speakers, and it was running from the zookeeper through that lonely hospital tunnel, that it had
happened. It swirled around her, shocking, painful, pleasing, and she frantically snatched at it. She was alive when she took those pills, when
she chased Peter’s best friend, while trying to love Peter instead.
Eventually, Peyton found her place among the memories of those three screaming brothers; the white-knuckled man clutching his Newsweek;
and her mother’s selfish grief. The depth of their pain had been the measure of their lives, and Peyton began to see how deep and true it was.
Now she lives in a different way. A way that, at eighteen, she thought would be the true death of her. A way Missy views as past the point of
understanding, past the time for possibilities and adventure and true longing. From her deep youthful well, Missy sees so little and so much.
To Missy, I’m just not cool right now, Peyton thinks as she finally descends, leaving behind her thinking spot at the top of the stairs. As she
walks through her lovely home, looking out at her in-ground pool and thinking that she can’t wait for Spring, her husband pinches her
pleasantly plump rear, smiling. Peyton smiles in return, remembering when there was nothing to hold.
“Mom,” Missy whines from upstairs, “Can you please drive me and my friends to the movies tomorrow night?”
“Okay,” Peyton yells.
While Missy texts the news to her friend, Peyton looks at her husband and says, “That’s what mothers do, right?” He doesn’t answer but
instead kisses her and, as if for the first time, Peyton feels his evening bristle on her cheek. She closes her eyes and reminds herself that
Missy’s answers will be different from hers and her mother’s; that they are out there, at the movies, past the theater, the sewing machine, the
laughing, shouting crowd, and wiry teenage boys.
Missy’s answers wait just beyond the horizon Peyton struggles to show her, all while keeping her distance from the well’s edge. That’s what
some mothers have to do.
________________________________________
Penelope Przekop is the author of ABERRATIONS (Greenleaf Book Group). “What Mothers Do” is excerpted from her yet to be published
novel, BOUNDARIES.
Penelope Przekop
Author, Consultant, Artist
Site: http://www.penelopeprzekop.com/
Blog: http://penelopeprzekop.blogspot.com/
H: 215.491.7449
C: 267.980.4566
Represented by:
Ivy Moon
Moon Publicity & Management
www,moonmgmt.com
Ivy@moonmgmt.com
917.453.7976
| The New York Optimist |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| © MMIX, The New York Optimist. All Rights Reserved. The New York Optimist & www.thenewyorkoptimist.com is a registered trademark of The New York Optimist. The New York Optimist is a registered service mark of Thenewyorkoptimist.com. The New York Optimist logo and original photos are a registered trademark of The New York Optimist . All other photos are property of the advertiser. And are rightfully protected under their copyright protections. |
SHARE
| What Mothers Do By Penelope Przekop |
