Eleemosynary
By Lee BlessingArtemis - Artie for short - talks about her upbringing at the hands of her intelligent and very eccentric mother, Dorothea, and about her intelligence, which she considers a blessing and a curse. Echo is Artie's daughter, who Artie left with her mother to raise after her husband's death.
ARTIE
I have trouble with my memory. I can't forget. Anything. My social security number; poems I learned twenty years ago; the list of ingredients in Raisin Bran; what I weighed when I was twelve; what my mother said about what I weighed. Every word I've ever read. Everything I've seen, or heard, or was part of. (Taps her forehead.) It's all up here. Total recall. There are people who'd be grateful for it, I suppose. To me, it's like I'm some sort of... memorial, with all the names of the dead etched in. No way to erase.
I try not to read much anymore. I don't want to make the memorial any bigger. My daughter - Echo - sometimes thinks I'm against education. I'm not against education. I'm just against remembering what you learn.
My mother made sure I had tutors from the age of four. I remembered everything they ever said, of course - which excited them tremendously. Meanwhile my father worried that too much learning would hurt my hopes for marriage. But Dorothea told him a smart girl can hide what she knows, so there's still a chance for happiness.
When I was with my husband, I had no memory at all - of where I came from, what I'd been like, or what I was afraid of. We worked together, loved each other. Every day was independent of other days. Each day was experienced and then put away - simply put away, as though it had been a whole life in itself. And every night was a... quiet, lovely step... from one life to another.
And then my mother arrived, and my memory came back. Forever.
Artie talks about the first time she saw her daughter Echo after giving her to Dorothea to raise.
ARTIE
I saw her once. By accident. I was at a bookfair. I didn't go to buy books, really, I just went to... hold them. I was running my hand over the spine of an 18th century early edition, wishing I could smell the book more than read it, and... I saw her. She was a long way away, but I knew it was her - Dorothea had sent me pictures. But pictures don't move. She was beautiful. Just then she saw me. I immediately dropped the book and ran. I ran and ran, all the way to my car. I don't even remember driving home.
I think a woman has a right to be irrational about her children. Once she has them, she has them. They're hers. She thinks so, her husband thinks so, everyone thinks so. They came out of her body - they are her body. And anytime they want love, they can demand it. As long as she can open an eye, she'll see them. As long as she can hear a sound, it'll be them. Forever, from the moment they're born. The same is true for the one I didn't have. Only that one comes to me in my sleep, and asks for her love then. Echo calls me a bad mother. But if she could see me at night - how good I am then, how much care I take...
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