Keeping Faith: A Novel Read Free

mother grunts. The last time she’d come into the room, it was to drag me into the bathroom and under a cold spray of water.
“You’re going to sit up, damn it, if it sends me to an early grave.”
That makes me think of her coffin table, and of the ballet lesson Faith and I never did manage to get to three days ago. I pull away from her grasp and cover my face, fresh tears running like wax. “What is the matter with me?”
“Absolutely nothing, in spite of what that cretin wants you to believe.” My mother puts her hands on my burning cheeks. “This is not your fault, Mariah. This isn’t something you could have stopped before it happened. Colin isn’t worth the ground he walks on.” She spits on the carpet, to prove it. “Now sit up so that I can bring Faith in here.”
That gets my attention. “She can’t see me like this.”
“So, change.”
“It’s not that easy–“
“Yes, it is,” my mother insists. “It’s not just you this time, Mariah. You want to fall apart?
Fine, then–do it after you’ve seen Faith. You know I’m right, or you wouldn’t have called me to come over here and take care of her three days ago.” Staring at me, she softens her voice. “She’s got an idiot for a father, and she’s got you. You make what you want of that.”
For a second I let hope sneak through the cracks in my armor. “Did she ask for me?”
My mother hesitates. “No … but that’s neither here nor there.”
As she goes to get Faith, I adjust the pillows behind my back and wipe my face with a corner of the comforter. My daughter enters the room,
propelled by my mother’s hand. She stops two feet from the bed. “Hi,” I say, bright as any actress.
For a moment I just delight in seeing her–the crooked part of her hair, the space where her front tooth used to be, the chipped pink Tinkerbell polish on her fingernails. She folds her arms and sets her colt’s legs and mulishly presses her beautiful bow of a mouth into a flat line.
“Want to sit down?” I pat the mattress beside me.
She doesn’t answer; she barely even breathes. With a sharp pain I realize that I know exactly what she’s doing, because I’ve done it myself: You convince yourself that if you keep perfectly still, if you don’t make any sudden moves, neither will anyone else. “Faith …” I reach out my hand, but she turns and walks out of the room.
Part of me wants to follow her, but a larger part of me can’t muster the courage. “She’s still not talking. Why?”
“You’re her mother. You find out.”
But I can’t. If I have learned anything, it is my own limits. I turn onto my side and close my eyes, hoping that my mother will get the hint that I just want her to go away.
“You’ll see,” she says quietly, laying her hand on top of my head. “Faith is going to get you through this.”
I make her think I am asleep. I do not let on when I hear her sigh. Or when I watch, through narrowed eyes, as she removes from my nightstand an X-acto knife, a nail file,
and a pair of embroidery scissors.
Years ago when I found Colin in bed with another woman, I waited three nights and then tried to kill myself. Colin found me and got me to the hospital. The ER doctors told him they had been able to save me, but that isn’t true.
Somehow that night, I got lost. I became another person, one I do not like to hear about, one I would certainly not recognize. I could not eat, I could not speak, I could not command enough energy to throw the covers off my body and get out of bed.
My mind was frozen on a single thought: If Colin didn’t want me anymore, why should I?
When Colin told me that he was having me committed to Greenhaven, he cried. He apologized. Still, he never held my hand, never asked me what I wanted, never stared into my eyes. He said I needed to be hospitalized so that I would not be left alone.
Contrary to what he thought, I wasn’t alone.
I was several weeks pregnant with Faith. I knew about her, knew she existed before