Like a Good Daughter, I Pretended Not to Care
when you said my pants were skintight and compared me to skinny friends, so I starved myself,
took laxatives, hid oreo cookies under my bed and stuck a finger down my throat. I wanted to
sashay in Guess Jeans so boys would like me, you would smile and tell me I looked beautiful, be
proud to stand next to me.
when you said giving birth to me was the worst pain you ever felt, after we blew out the birthday
candles on my cake, on “our birthday.” I understood you were alone and dad was in the army
reserves. And then I remembered that you gave away my dog Baron while I was at school, you
said he vomited too much. I listened as you laughed, retold the story of the 48 hours in labor,
too big to push, I took your hand and squeezed.
when you asked if I was OK but did not wait for an answer, instead you told me dad is difficult to
live with and your hair is falling out, your perfectly lined lips were moving but all I heard was
static. I nodded and smiled, stared at the credenza covered with pictures, not one inch of shabby
chic surface visible: grandparents, brothers, a family backyard photo shoot, you smiling on my
sixteenth birthday at Benihana, you were always the prettiest and best dressed.
when you told me you could not come with me for the D&C after I miscarried, after months of
fertility treatments, you told me to ask my father. But you were concerned with results, not the
process, not the details: fifty visits to the clinic, twenty-five hours in the waiting room eating
rubbery mini corn muffins, staring at women’s faces stained with tears and strained with worry.
And fifty-sixty blood draws, thirty-forty ultrasounds, eight IUIs, thirty hours of fertility support
group, fifty hours of private therapy, one adoption information session, four miscarriages, one
heartbeat, one D&C without anesthesia, one book, The Unspoken Sorrow. You wanted to talk
about baby names like Tiffany or Skylar (friends’ suggestions or soap opera heroines), I gave you
my list.
I pretended not to care when I sent you a poem about my daughters and you asked when I was
going to write a poem about you.
© Marisa Cimbal
Marisa Cimbal
The Loch Raven Review 