Heirlooms

I opened a red floral box of photos, lid broken on the short side. Crammed overly full; disorderly and chaotic. So out of place for the mother who vacuumed twice a day. I remember keeping the box under my bed after she died. I would take it out and explore its mysteries, then tuck it away, safely again.

And so it rested, first under the bed and then in a cardboard box. From the garage to a storage unit, it waited for me. In a truck across the country and inside my own garage, it waited for me. A full year after I recovered my archive, and only when I showed that I would risk everything to save my own life was I deemed ready.

I told my story in public, on the faith of my body and a belief in the desperate stories of the little girl that I carry within. Only once I accepted, truly, deeply accepted my story did the photographic evidence supporting it appear. Only once I accepted, truly deeply accepted my story, was I allowed to see. A veil lifted and photographs I had reviewed hundreds of times became clear.

With the eye of a crippled lioness, leg too long caught in a bear trap did she peer through the lens. Taking so many photographs in a time of rolls-of-film-in-the-freezer that no one thought twice. And she captured the perfect expression. A self-satisfied tilt of the lips. A man smiling at his lover in the bath, but not his lover, his daughter. Innocent, I faced forward not knowing that none of my friends bathed with their fathers. Felt his hands at my back and other sensations I don’t want to remember.

For years I dreamt of being trapped in filthy bathrooms. Excrement caked on walls and menstrual blood streaking the floor. I would sob in desperation in these dreams, needing relief and refuge yet finding none. Eyes watching but not helping, or so I thought. And I felt ashamed.

Four copies of the photographs buried deeply in a box of a decade’s worth of snapshots. A box she said she would get to one day as she developed more roles of film. A group of tiny gymnasts gathered next to my coach, his eyes glowing. A cast on the arm, on the leg. All of the different marks of abuse, she photographed. Like a forensic scientist or an investigative journalist.

I asked my mother for help in the car, driving home, and she answered. A gentle presence, an urging toward the box, recently unearthed. And I looked inside for the first time. Eyes not of a heartbroken little girl but of an extensively trained researcher. Her photographs, her journals, her calendar. A thousand clues scattered like bread crumbs. For the daughter she educated, day after day after day, at the dining room table.

She left my story, my true story for me to find. Carefully preserved. In an order that only I could understand. Like a pile of quilting squares that laid out, reveal a story that others want to hide. Like one of her masterpieces, or a protest arpillera.

She left me an heirloom quilt in photographs.