Replacement Behaviors

In place of razor blades, a hammer poised against the base of an upturned jar. I crouch on my bathroom floor—all haunches and elbows—positioning my instrument. Strike. The jar shatters across the bottom of the bathtub. I raise the hammer again, its face hovering over the largest shard. Strike. Then the next largest. Strike. Until there is a fine layer of glass silting the hollow of the bath. Laying the hammer beside the tub, I grab the broom and dustpan from the closet and lean them against the nearby wall—a reminder to my sober, morning self not to step into the shower until I have cleaned up my transmuted desire to draw blood.

In place of sweeping up the shards the next morning, a cup of tea. I like going about my day with the glass sitting there, an absurd monument that lives quietly beside me as I fill the kettle and set it to boil. The translucent dust glistens, testifying to the crystalline thing I felt seven hours before, now dulled to a fog suspended at the front of my skull.

In place of sweeping up the shards that afternoon, I call my mother. “How’s it going?” I ask as I stand at my kitchen window cradling my mug. “Oh, you know,” she says—i can almost hear her wave her left hand to cover the quaver in her voice. “Last night was a rough one.” I nod. We talk about the weather, the height of the corn in our respective states, the height of the rivers in our respective towns.

In place of sleep, insomnia. I lie in bed and watch the periodic red and blue flash of the siren lights across my ceiling. The dripping faucet slices the night into slivers. I wait. I count incisions. My rough nights are not my mother’s. Mine stretch. Hers explode.

In place of her memories, blanks. Her father took her to baseball games and motorcycle shows, on hikes and fishing trips. Years later she could remember that they’d gone but never what they’d done there. Never what he’d said or gestured. Never what it looked like. Until thirty years later, when she woke each morning to find a small lump of lead mangled heavy in her palm.

In place of my pain, hers. Most nights I can’t really remember anything bad that’s happened to me. But to her—her I can. I spend the darkness picturing her father who, in place of his wife, fucked his daughter.

In place of understanding, a series of long drives through the countryside whenever I visit home. We try to explain the inexplicable. She tells me that she’s always shivering in the flashbacks. “For a long time, I couldn’t let myself get too cold or it would bring one on,” she says. I think about the Carhartt coveralls she wears all through the winter, along with multiple sweatshirts and pairs of socks. I think about the long scalding baths and pots of coffee. “I’m so cold in all of them,” she says as we tilt through a sharp curve and a groundhog scurries for the shoulder. “You’d think he would have—” she stops, sighs. “Well I guess if you’re doing that to your daughter, you’re not really worried if she’s comfortable or not.” The trees open to a view of the river. Mom slows the car. The boards of an old barn tilt against the far bank, wreckage from last year’s flood. “I like that sycamore tree,” she says. I nod. We move through a landscape that lays like a palimpsest—trailers parked over silt laid over old farmhouse foundations built over bedrock.

In place of knowledge, a recurrence of strange longings that rip the floor out from under me on jar-smashing nights. Mom had her first flashback when I was one year old, but I don’t remember noticing any of the symptoms— fainting, seizures, anxiety—until I was fifteen. No way to know how they affected my childhood, no data to tether my occasional upendings. I imagine a young mother who, in the safety of the apartment she shares with her husband and child, suddenly becomes a girl. It is dark where the girl is, and her father is there. He starts taking off her clothes. He becomes the monster. Back in the apartment, the child starts to scream, but the woman—who is a girl trapped with the monster—cannot go to her.

In place of a mother, a girl.

In place of a grandfather, a monster in army fatigues streaked with motor oil.

In place of a present, my mother’s past, ripping through our family home one flashback at a time.

In place of home, a memory.

In place of sleep, the second season of The West Wing, my laptop sitting on the floor next to my mattress which is also on the floor. I like episode ten, where Josh fears he is suicidal and shoves his hand through a window in his apartment. His therapist diagnoses him with PTSD. I shut the laptop and roll over. It’s 4:30 in the morning. The streetlight casts shuddering impressions of the hackberry tree through my window and onto the opposite wall. The phone rings. “I had a feeling you were up,” Mom says.

In place of reality, non-reality. I cannot tell you how many times a day I think, “Did that happen, or did I dream it?” only to wake up a couple of dream-hours later.

In place of any original fantasy of self-harm, the image of an arm bursting upward through a paned glass window, a forty-five-degree angle led by the heel of the hand. Stark lighting and a black background turn the shot monochrome. I know I saw season two, episode ten when it first aired on December 13, 2000, but I don’t remember watching it. I was eight. It wasn’t until we bought season two on DVD one Christmas while I was in college that I recognized the image I’d been returning to since I was thirteen. A decade of sleepless nights fell slowly into place.

In place of smashing my hand through a window—which would break my hand and not the window—i grab the hammer from the closet, a jar from the kitchen cabinet, and head for the bathtub. The glass sounds like a window as it fractures, collapses.

In place of any original fantasy of self-harm, a love letter to my mother.

“In place of smashing jars, let’s find something else you can do when you feel that way,” my therapist says. She wonders if I wear goggles when I do it. I press my lips together to hold in a snort. Over the course of the next hour we decide that smashing jars is safer, more economical, and more environmentally friendly than any of the proposed alternatives.

In place of doing the laundry, a quote from Elie Wiesel’s Nobel lecture. “The opposite of the past is not the future but the absence of future,” he says. “The opposite of the future is not the past but the absence of past.” I think about how my mother repressed all those terrible nights with the monster until after he died. Then they all flooded back. We lost the past for a while, then regained it—jumbled, out of order.

In place of a future, retreat. I often feel relieved when I realize my current romantic relationship is no longer tenable. If you pick a new road every few years all endings stay equally in and out of reach.

In place of a relationship, a walnut tree. The poet Mary Oliver writes about an old, black walnut tree in her yard. Every year she and her mother debate cutting the tree down, selling the wood, paying off their mortgage. But as long as they let the tree stand, they could always cut it down next year. Once they cut it down, that’s it. A choice between potential and finality— And so the tree swings through another year. I used to think I was the sort of person who would cut the tree down, because I find comfort in finality. After all, I’m always the one leaving relationships. (If I don’t break up with him today, I can always break up with him tomorrow. If I break up with him today, that’s it.) But really, I would let the walnut tree outlive me. (If I leave him today, I could always become another person tomorrow. If I stay with him today, that’s it.)

In place of sex, a series of one-act plays for which I write my body’s script on the fly.

In place of a mother, a time bomb. I hold the phone to my ear thinking— who will I be when you are gone?

In place of May, March. Spring has come so late this year. The corn is flooded in the fields.

In place of a daughter, a ghost, waiting to swallow her mother’s past en route to her own future.