Nighttime , My Time (/ Our Time )
Jae Vélez
“ It ’ s because of your mami .” My abuela and I are sitting at her kitchen table on a sunny October a ernoon , drinking coffee brewed in her moka pot that might be older than I am , and she is confidently explaining to me why I ’ ve never been able to sleep ‘ normally .’ She doesn ’ t know how bad its gotten , that I can only sleep for three or four hours at a time , and almost never at night , and that I never feel like I have real energy , but that I ’ m always too wired to want to rest . “ When you were a baby , your mami was always up real late , she was always real upset about your father . You wanted to stay up with her . Even when you were real , real little . You hear her voice , and you stay awake .”
My abuela is a cunning woman whose silver tongue frequently alchemizes into pyrite and at times mercury and back again ; not everything she says it to be trusted but this sounds like truth . A thing that I learned as an adult is that my parents ’ marriage endured multiple failed pregnancies ( and seemingly endless extended family conflict and infighting ) over several long years , only to finally collapse shortly before I was born . Having nowhere else to go , my heavily pregnant mother returned to my abuela ’ s house , where we would stay for the following decade .
I think about this o en . In the early hours of the morning , I picture my mother , a new parent and divorcee and not even 30 years old yet , exhausted but too heartbroken to sleep , pacing around her baby ’ s bedroom in her white nightgown and silk bonnet , back and forth past her crib . I stand around my kitchen in my boxer briefs and a hand-screened tee shirt purchased lifetimes ago at a friend ’ s band ’ s basement show , and then I dri back out into the living room , thinking about the final day of my parent ’ s marriage , and of how my mother ’ s devastation is one of the first things I felt . For weeks I lived in an amniotic sac that could not help but fill with my mother ’ s shame and sorrow at having been abandoned by the partner that she failed to heal . Some nights , I joke to myself , that ’ s probably why I ’ m a lesbian ; the first thing I ever felt was a woman ’ s grief , a woman ’ s love and commitment and ardent devotion that suddenly had nowhere to go , I never forgot it , and now I can ’ t seem to stop looking or longing for it … Other nights , I stare out the window and look for a moon that I can never seem to find , and I wonder how my mother survived all of that .