I. Tug Of War
Scientists say that when babies are in the womb, they have some degree of auditory processing, meaning that when mothers sing or talk often during pregnancy, it builds the likelihood that their child will recognize their voice after birth. They begin hearing around eighteen weeks, and around twenty-five weeks, they are even able to form some sort of response to what they can hear.
Tara cannot recall her mother’s voice now, but she wonders if she were to hear it, if she would recognize it like she did when she was born. Her mother is not dead, but when Tara ties her worn down sneakers to take herself to her final soccer game of the season, she catches a glimpse of something blue, a magnet their real estate agent had given them in 2009, holding up a note. On the counter beside the fridge lies a grocery list on gray-blue paper, the corner missing like a piece missing from a jigsaw puzzle. Her eyes drift back to the fridge, catching sight of the slate colored paper the note is written on.
“TAKE OUT THE TRASH. WON’T BE BACK TILL LATE.”
Sometimes, Tara wonders if she should write a note back. Today, she does.
“No need to write a new note everyday. It’s a waste of paper to say the same thing each time.”
Tara hates her mother. And she hates her house. Still, when she’s at school, all she wants is to be home. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to her, the aching feeling of needing to be home, even though home isn’t a welcoming place. Like gravity brings her back to the floor even when she jumps, she feels some sort of pull whenever she’s too far away from home. This pull strays her away from her friends, who she knows she won’t keep in touch with after high school. She’s bound to her mother until she turns eighteen (547 days away), but she never sees her mother in her own house. Their connection is a game of tug-of-war, withered and pulled taut, yet still the strongest connection Tara has. Her hands are calloused in some places and bleeding in others. Still, her grip on this connection is constant and unforgiving.
II. Neural Network
Scientists say that for the first two years of a baby’s life, the number of synapses in their brain grows exponentially. Then, from ages two to ten, the brain undergoes rapid neural pruning, where synapses are removed because they are unused. This process continues throughout a child’s adolescence, sometimes until the age of twenty.
Tara moves out the day after she turns eighteen. Her mother bids her farewell in the morning, a simple good luck and goodbye, before she hears the all too familiar sound of the front door closing shut. Those words, though few, plant seeds of guilt in her body for leaving. It feels as if the unused synapse is firing to escape its inevitable fate. Finger skimming over her checklist of things to pack, her eyes fall on the magnet on the fridge door. There is no paper shoved under it today. Tara hastily unties her shoes, kicking them off haphazardly. One hand finds the thick cardstock of a letter from college, and another finds a blue pen. With some resistance due to the quality of the paper, she tears the corner of the letter and writes.
“Sorry. And for what it’s worth, thank you. Probably won’t be back soon.”
Pen hovering in the air, she stares. The previously sown guilt urges her to draw a heart on top of the sentence as a final show of apology. The synapse fires again. Clicking the pen shut, she brings the note to the fridge, left hand grabbing the magnet. As she adjusts the paper so that her words can be clearly seen, she realizes the magnet covers up the heart she drew. She stares. Shifts her eyes to the clock, indicating that she has two minutes to leave to make it to the bus station. The guilt hasn’t grown enough for her to fix it.
She drowns out the guilt with music on her way to the bus stop, trying to resist any urge to turn back and fix the magnet. There’s another urge, deeper, that wants her to not only fix the magnet, but to stay, to not get rid of this synapse she’s been fostering for eighteen years. She turns the volume up even higher. When Tara finally settles onto the bus, she thinks again of her mother. This is her first step to freedom, right? As the landscapes that paint the window to her right grow less and less familiar, her heart sits heavy with the sobering realization that home will no longer be home for her. Now, Tara’s neural network undergoes its own kind of neural pruning. As the number of miles between her and her mother grows, the connection is broken. The child has matured into adolescence. She is removing the synapses she no longer needs, growing into a more ideal body.
III. Contagion
Scientists say that when a person’s friends are happy, the person is more likely to be happy. A person with only a few happy friends is better off than a person with many not-so-happy friends. Friendship creates a sense of belonging and personal fulfillment. So, joy is contagious.
Near the end of her junior year, Tara decides to return home, just once. She doesn’t inform her mother of this. She breathes slowly as she walks, hoping that the guilt that haunted her when she was a freshman has died out now. A part of her hopes her mother’s car isn’t in the driveway. It’s not. Relieved, she takes her key (which she still has, after almost four years) and walks in, embracing the smell of sandalwood and honey. She feels like a stranger in her own home even though it looks the same. Her heart begins to beat a little faster.
Melancholy overcomes her as she continues to walk through the house. It’s getting harder to think straight. Has her mother been okay? Guilt grows again like a weed in the ridges of her brain, wrapping around her limbs and holding her to the old floorboards in the kitchen. Her vision is growing blurry, but she can still see that stupid magnet on the fridge. Her note is still there, tilted slightly so the heart is visible. The same feeling that her mother’s goodbye evoked in her four years ago takes her over again upon seeing that her mother cared enough to do that. As if all strength is pulled from her body, she falls to the floor and breaks. Everything she had avoided for the past three years—the detachment, the self-doubt, the fear of abandonment—hits her in waves, a forceful wind meeting her carefully built house of cards. Her phone pings with a text from Florence.
hi, did you make it home okay? love you!!
Tara cries. She types.
can you come get me
She doesn’t know how much time passes, but soon there’s a knock at the door. She knows it’s a courtesy, because the door swings open moments after. Her head hurts, the world is blurry, and her heart is beating faster than it ever has before. Some shuffling noises, and then there is a hand in her hair and another holding her right hand. The hand in her hair goes down to press against her eyes, the cool palm a relief to her red eyelids.
Soon, she’s in the backseat of Florence’s car, head on her shoulder. “How did you even know where I lived?”, Tara asks. Florence chuckles, “I have your location, remember? Plus, if I really needed to, I could probably find a way to hack your phone and find your address.”
Tara laughs, and Florence’s hands move to take out the braids in her hair slowly. Her fingers run over the slightly curled strands of hair, lightly massaging her scalp in the process. She tells stories about the dog she saw on her way to get coffee today, the essay she wrote for her class, and the movie she just started watching. Tara wonders if she’s been cared for like this before. It seems like the kind of thing mothers do to their daughters to get them to sleep. She hates herself for thinking of her mother again in this moment. It’s over, right? She’s replacing what she should’ve had with her mother with her friends. She is finding new voices to become familiar with and new individuals to form synapses with, seeking out joy through connection like it is a contagion.
IV. Oxytocin
Scientists say that a person’s levels of oxytocin increase in reaction to physical touch. Higher levels of oxytocin are associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression. This is why people call it the “love drug”. Oxytocin works in a positive feedback loop—its release provokes an action that further stimulates its release.
When she’s thirty-two, Tara marries a boy. She met Anwar in her senior year of college, and though she had been unsure of a lot of things in life, she felt very certain about her future with him. He holds her when she cries and surprises her after long days. She buys him flowers on her way home from work and kisses the mole above his lips. They wed in July. Florence’s dad walks her down the aisle. Tara isn’t sure if she’s allowed to feel as loved and pampered as she is in those moments, but she embraces it wholeheartedly.
After the reception, when all the guests have left and the couple and their families are left to pick up fallen decorations from the floor, Anwar’s mother, Suhana, approaches Tara, who prepares to say “thank you” for the millionth time that night. Suhana waxes poetic about how beautiful the wedding was and how grateful she is to have Tara in their family. She gives her a necklace with an ornate heart-shaped pendant and clasps it on her nape. His mother turns her around, holds her hands in hers, and looks, just looks, at her for a moment. She brings her in for a hug and remarks, “I’m so happy to have another daughter in our family.”
That comment stays with Tara for the rest of the night, even the next morning when she and Anwar are sitting in the airport terminal waiting for their flight. There is a pang in her heart, an aching, bittersweet feeling, when she thinks about the way her mother-in-law had held her the previous night. It begins to remind her of her own mother, who she hasn’t seen since high school. Still, she isn’t sad. She’s fascinated by how she has managed to fill the void her mother’s neglect created with her own chosen family, people who welcomed her with open arms when she had nothing else to offer them. Her husband’s hand holds hers as if it is second nature. Her heart floods with love at the tender feeling of skin on skin. She can’t help but to wonder what sixteen year old Tara—who, despite how much it hurt her, held onto her connection with her mother because it was the only one she had—would think of this. She holds Anwar's hand a little bit tighter. The positive feedback loop continues on.
V. Family Line
Scientists say that when babies are in the womb, they have some degree of auditory processing, meaning that when mothers sing or talk often during pregnancy, it builds the likelihood that their child will recognize their voice after birth.
Throughout her pregnancy, Tara speaks to her stomach as much as she can. She sings lullabies, she tells stories, and she goes through her daily list of tasks. She makes sure that her child will recognize her voice when she is born. Tara reminisces on her adolescence and how eager she was to forget her mother after moving out, blocking her number and submerging herself in classes and clubs. She knows now that it was the better decision for her future, but a part of her wishes she could know how her mother is now. She can still remember her voice. Sixteen year old Tara would’ve scoffed at this—all she wanted was to cut her mother out of the picture. How would she feel knowing that, even at this age, she still thinks of her mother everyday? She holds this thought close to her heart as she keeps talking to her stomach.
Tara cries a lot after giving birth. She holds her daughter, counting her five fingers that curl around her own, and realizes that this is life now. She was Layla’s first home, and hopefully, she will be someone her daughter can always come home to when she needs. She thinks of junior year, crying on the floor within minutes of coming home. All her efforts to forget her and to leave it all behind proved futile as the mother-shaped hole in her heart still remained. She attempted to patch it up with as many people as she could, with the most golden friends and lovers. Nothing ever seemed to fully replace that space in her heart. Moving out was meant to be the end of the connection they shared, but Tara still endlessly seeks to find that connection in all the new ones she makes. Cradling Layla in her arms, she figures that maybe connections can’t ever be broken. Maybe it’s impossible to ever cut your mother out of the picture she created. Maybe, despite your efforts to cut her out and paint over her, removing the synapse and calling it unnecessary, her presence will always be felt. And maybe it’s better that you paint over her with every color, build over your family line with someone more family than your mother could’ve ever been. Tara kisses her daughter’s head.
Also published here.
Thank you to Conan Gray for writing “Family Line” and ghostwriting this story for me.
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Love,
Aarushi.
AARUSHI. my heart :'( you are incredible
u r amazing. this is incredibly well written