A Mother Knows

When I try to sleep, I hear a marching in my ears. Since I was little, I imagined cartoon red-coated soldiers, wearing those tall black hats, lockstepping in a never-ending line. I thought everyone heard them. Apparently not.

I lay here now, listening to the marching that is not marching, and try not to think about tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re shopping for school supplies, and other than my birthday, it’s my least favourite day of the year.

Because when I was born, my father named me Kinley, but my mother named me Thief.

My first act, at my first breath, was to steal. I stole my sister’s life, and my mother has never forgiven me. I was the twin who wasn’t. My mother has told this story a dozen dozen times, or more, it seems at random but it is a reminder.

Mom didn’t even know she was having twins. Maybe the angle when she’d gone in for that one checkup. Something in her telling implies I, the fetal me, was sneaky even then. When my mom finally went into labour, my sister was born. And as everyone crowded around my sister’s little body, trying to make her cry, I slid from my mother’s body and would have died myself had not one of the midwives finally noticed me in the gore.

Only one of us ever cried.

My mother’s blood loss was so severe they had to take her to the hospital, and there my father filled out the documentation for us both. They had chosen a name for their daughter, Kinley. So, he gave that name to me. They had expected one daughter, and they had one daughter. His mathematics left nothing to grieve.

I was so much smaller than my sister, I almost didn’t make it out of the hospital. There’s no good reason why I survived when she didn’t. I was, in all ways, inferior. So much less developed, they didn’t think I’d live either. The only explanation, as far as my mother implies, is that I’m a malicious vampire.

In the morning, I sit at the table drinking my orange juice. It has pulp, which I hate, but because I made the mistake of letting my mom know I hate it, it’s the only kind she buys now. She’s sitting across from me, smoke streaming out of her nostrils. Or maybe not. In my mind, she’s always smoking a cigarette, always exhaling through her nose, the smoke endlessly curling around her like a dragon. I don’t look directly at her much anymore, so I rely on this image.

Eventually, she grabs her keys and we get in the car. I listen to music on my headphones with my eyes closed. I imagine I’m someone else, and my mother is too. I don’t even know who she is, other than a force solely directed to oppose me. What kind of person would she be, if I was the daughter she had wanted?

We get to the store, and begin considering what to buy for “her”. Mom doesn’t say her name, but we both know who she means. Real Kinley. We are not shopping for me, we’re shopping for her, and I’ll only be borrowing what I need. I’ve borrowed my entire life from her.

“Oh, this is perfect!” Mom says, admiring a package of purple and pink pastel pens. “She’s going to love this!”, as she adds a sparkly purple notebook to the pile.

As I silently push the cart, obediently pausing when something catches Mom’s eye, I consider the pile of treasure in front of me. I think about when I was little, telling Mom my favourite colour was green, and the next morning discovering all my green clothes had vanished. Even my green crayons were gone.

But it wasn’t just that. Because when I got new clothes, they were all pink and red. When I said I was scared of horses, my birthday had a My Little Pony theme. Looking in the cart now, I remembered how last Christmas I said I didn’t like all the glitter and how it got over everything. And now all of Real Kinley’s school supplies were covered in glitter.

We continued to march through the aisles, the cart slowly filling with stuff for my sister. When we were buying a gift for my friend’s birthday, I’d vetoed a leopard print nightgown because I thought animal print was ugly. So my sister got a zebra print skirt. A while ago I made a comment about not wearing yellow since I’m so skinny, I look like a banana. So my sister got two yellow t-shirts. How did my mom remember it all? In a way, it was kind of… thoughtful.

How much energy must go into remembering everything I loved and hated? But really, was that what Mom was remembering? As I looked over all the items in the cart, I realized that Mom would never devote that much energy to me. What she remembered is what Real Kinley loved, and what Real Kinley hated. And that was whatever was the opposite to me.

Because when I was born, my father named me Kinley, but my mother named me Parasite.

I had taken everything from Real Kinley. I’d taken the nutrients she needed to survive. I’d taken the air from her lungs. I’d taken her entire life.

Eventually, I would ask questions. Like, how can Mom know I wasn’t the daughter she expected, and my sister the other, the invader?

“A mother knows,” she would say, watching me as she pulled the smoke from her cigarette, and blew it toward me in a slow, extended breath.

At the doctor the other day, at one of the many checkups I’d had to endure every three months since I’d finally left the hospital as a baby, he’d peered in my ears. Every part of me has been prodded and tested, all the health concerns of a person not really a person, but a cyst come to life. As he looked in my ears, he asked if I could hear a wooshing or thudding sound. After some discussion, I’d come to learn the marching I’d been hearing was yet another genetic defect to add to my list. A thinning of membrane allowing the pulse to beat in my ears. But honestly, I knew it wasn’t marching, of course I knew. I knew what a heartbeat sounded like.

Back home from the mall, my mom carefully unpacked everything, putting away the new items in Real Kinley’s closet, which I borrowed from. Each tag was clipped off, the zebra skirt given a light caress before being slid onto a hanger. The yellow shirts put aside for a proper clean and iron.

I had my own dresser, with gifts friends had given me or things I had convinced dad to get. Assembling an outfit everyday always involved me trying to borrow as little as possible. But watching my mom now, I saw for the first time how much she truly loved my sister. How much effort she put into making things perfectly perfect for her.

Mom pretends, sometimes, to love me. Mostly in front of teachers or other strangers. I can tell it disgusts her. I don’t like it either.

Because my father named me Kinley, but my mother named me Changeling.

I know she can’t love me. I am someone not fully formed. Not myself, but not another. I close my eyes and imagine being someone else. Of my mother being someone else.

The next morning, I walk over to my sister’s closet. I dress, and open my sister’s jewelry box. I look at my hair, the mop I leave to hide my face, and I pull it back into a high ponytail. I go downstairs, and when my mother puts a glass of pulpy orange juice in front of me, I take a large sip and smile.

“My favourite! Thanks!” I look at her, really look at her, and she smiles back.

It should’ve been harder to slide into this other skin. But it was always there, my mom kept it waiting for me. She told me for so long who I need to be: thief, parasite, changeling. Why did I keep trying to be someone else?

How else could she tell so easily that I had become who I was supposed to be? A mother knows.

That night, as I try to sleep, I hear a heartbeat, And I know what I’ve always known, that it always was hers.