When, exactly, did I leave? I probably could pinpoint a date when I first crossed the boulevard, the parkway or took one of the buses or trains, if I spend enough time recollecting. Or maybe not. Will I remember the day, the month, the date of the funeral: today’s date? I just might, simply because it’s hers. But after today, I’ll have no reason to remember most dates, even my birthday. It’s been a long time since I’ve been under anyone else’s command, since anyone’s had any authority over me. Which is not the same as having influence, or even power.
One who can make your decisions for you, who can decide whether and where and how you live, gains authority only through desperation and imposition. Another person can lead you to or from any place you may consider home: that man or woman seizes or gains power from you. Someone else still helps or nudges you to decisions, from what color sweater you’ll wear today to the career or lifestyle you choose: that person’s influences derives from your dreams, wishes, fantasies and tears.
For years, I’ve spent most of my time alone for many years, and I haven’t been bound to any schedules. Once I left her home, I never went back to school and stayed on jobs and in rooms or apartments only until I couldn’t, for whatever reasons, anymore. So, no-one’s had any authority over me for a long time. Mother was one of the last people, if not the last person, to have any authority over me
Some would say that’s the reason I’ve come to the funeral. Maybe. After all, now that she’s leaving, I may never again have anyone to respect. Matter of fact, I can’t think of anyone I respected besides her. The nuns would stroke my hair and pinch my cheeks, then smack them. The teachers in public school couldn’t lay a hand on me. But some of them are masters of glances, if they’ve mastered anything at all. And the gestures: the wave of the hand, the curl of the lip, as if they could wish away some odor they’d always tried to avoid.
Sometimes they’d say, “I suggest that you…” Whatever followed, it could just as well’ve been, “Get out of sight.” I’d’ve obliged them if I wouldn’t’ve run afoul of the law for doing so. Actually, I stopped going to school long before I’d passed the age of compulsory attendance. That is the one good thing about authority, or anybody who has it over you: that you can drop out of its and their sight. Once they’ve noticed that you’re gone, there’s nothing they can do about it.
Power’s another matter: You can’t break its hold without engendering some sort of rage, which can turn suicidal, from or toward you. You run from that; you have no choice. Not only that, you can’t look back, not at the force, or the ones who use it.
But aside from respect, what’s brought me to her wake and funeral? Something, perhaps, that even if I couldn’t recall it, it recalled me. It reposed in those velvet walls, in the silk lining of the casket, with her. It lies within the folds of her yellow blouse, folding and unfolding around her face, descending from eyelids clenched against the cold. Yellowish rays, disconnected from their sources, spreading throughout the room—and the faces, the shoulders and into the eyes of the women who came today.
Memories And Those Who Stayed 