I Haven’t the Strength to Give Up

After my mother killed herself, I lived with my aunt for a year. She gave me the bedroom of her one-bedroom apartment and took the foldout couch/bed, though the mattress was only as thick and cushioned as a little girl’s thigh.

I was six and my nightmares began as soon as I put on my nightgown. They were vague and gigantic and plotless and always to-be-continued. They were filled with all of people I’d ever met — including everyone who was at my mother’s funeral. All the people who couldn’t look at me without saying how I looked just like her and crying like a baby. When you’re six and you’ve seen grownups cry like babies, it’s difficult to imagine them doing anything else.

So I was awake mostly.

When I couldn’t stand to be alone anymore, I’d knock on the inside of the bedroom door and hope my aunt would ask me if I would come out to the couch with her for a sec.

She usually did.

After a while she decided it would save us a lot of trouble if we’d just share the real bed. And even then we didn’t sleep much. We’d talk instead. Or she did.

She’d tell me stories about my mother and her when they were little girls. She remembered everything — street names, middle names of boys they had crushes on, days of the week when kisses occurred. It seemed crazy the way she could recall things, though now I realize she was only thirty-two, the exact age I am now, barely an adult at all.