Mothermorphosis
By: Shamie Rahaman Cuthbert
Between the ages of eight and eleven, my mother decided to send me to one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in New York City. It was an all-girls school, composed of spoiled, rich girls whose first names all sounded like last names. In other words, it was a wasps’ nest. I was selected to study at the wasps’ nest on partial scholarship on the basis of my half-Indian descent, which classifies me as a minority, and the nice wasps’ had to be nice to the other insects. On the insect note, I have a tale that clearly demonstrates my adventures in the wasps’ nest. Besides the torture I endured from the financially obese, for being poor and living in a one bedroom apartment, I had a poor girl’s nightmare in a rich girls dream. I was in the banquet hall having lunch. I was always the kind of girl, even at the young age of 10, who wanted to reflect normalcy despite the dysfunction in my life, and carrying a water bottle containing prepared frozen water did this. However, one day, as I sat in the dining hall next to Bronwyn and Conway, I noticed a frozen roach, presumed dead, amidst the frozen water of my water bottle. The other little girls, obliviously sipping their Evian’s in their red and white checkered pinafores, had probably never seen a roach and I did not want to wait around to hear dramatic screeches proliferating through the dining hall as pretty little fingers were pointed at me, the roach girl. Because then I would be: The poor, minority girl who lives in a one bedroom apartment and brings frozen roaches to the banquet hall. I refused to be reduced to this cliché, so assuming an air of nonchalance, I clenched my water bottle to my pudgy chest, and snuck through the chandeliered hallways to the bathroom where the roach was laid to rest. He was frozen and I was free.
Now, fourteen years later I often feel as if there are invisible roaches in my water bottles. Yet this time, I have no intentions of flushing away the element that differentiates me.
Everyone I know is a stereotype; everyone except for me of course. However, I think everyone feels the exact same way. Stereotyping can easily become quite an amusing pastime. After all, when we are obliged to depict individuals, every group of characteristics seems to hold a recognizable linkage- so much that the listener, after hearing several descriptions, will smirk and nod haughtily “Oh yes, I know that type.”
New York City is filled with every stereotype imaginable. While taking a brief stroll, you are doomed to encounter the endless pigeons emerging from their pigeonholes. We all know the middle-aged, childless women who have several surly cats and swore off men the day they broke their mirrors. We all know the ironically large men with small brains, or the small men with overly compensating personalities. We also all have met the angry woman, who carries an invisible shield in case her missing father decides to return home one day. We cannot forget the sushi-loving, Starbucks’ slaves who contemplate the petty details of their first and last dates. You have the well-dressed, wealthy homosexuals whose speech resonates with the same pitch and pitsicotoed rhythm of eye-rolling, gum-snapping valley-girls, the ghetto inhabitants who loathe the sight of affluent emergence, the affluent older woman who winces and sighs irritably at the sound of a whining child, the angry writer who reduces every situation to a conspiracy theory, the wheat-grass drinking, Ani De Franco- listening lesbian and of course the Arab taxi driver who is always screaming into his cell phone as he takes you on a costly detour through boroughs you didn’t even know existed.
When I think of the probability that I have been stereotyped, it disappoints me, and being a twenty-four year old mother in New York City, where the majority glory in “delayed motherhood”, my categorized fate is inevitable. I’m certain that during each portion of my life, I have been categorized. In elementary school I was the poor girl in the one bedroom apartment, who was underprivileged and allowed by the charity of the Catholic School to study in a “privileged” environment. In high school I was the non-conformist, aspiring writer who wanted to travel the world and escape the monotony of Queens, New York. In college I was the over-achiever, voted “most likely to succeed” and then by the mocking force of irony, was impregnated by my very first love. You know the type…
When I found out that I was pregnant I was shocked. It was eleven days before graduation, eleven days before my whole family would travel hundreds of miles to sit on hard benches and praise my academic achievements. It was eleven days before I had to change everything about my life. Looking back, shock is not nearly a formidable enough term. My brain froze, my eyes sunk inwards, my breath was doomed to the pit of my stomach and my ears rang with unbearable silence.
I didn’t want to be a cliché, and as I told my story to myself I sounded like one. “Twenty-two years old. She was on a path to success. Just graduated from college, traveled around Europe studying, aspiring writer, she was never promiscuous.” The lack of linkage also made it cliché, nauseous with irony, and the whole thing arrived in quotations. Then you can just picture the two little old ladies whispering to each other in the bagel shop. “She got pregnant.” The other one gasps. “Oh, and they aren’t even married.” They shake their heads and click their tongues, wondering where my parents went wrong. “Such a shame’
In order to avoid being the stereotypical pregnant bride, where the swollen belly becomes the marching band in a glorified parade, my husband and I decided to wait until after our son was born. We wanted to get married on the basis of us not our circumstance. I was proud of my decision, especially after hearing that when my parents got pregnant with me, yes I was a “lovechild”, my grandmother decided to call the entire family and spread the news, not that my mother was pregnant, but that she and my father had eloped and tied the knot. My mother began receiving countless wedding gifts in the mail unaware of my grandmother’s announcements. I suppose she was only trying to prevent her daughter from being reduced to a “stereotype.”
The other day, while sitting on a playground bench; where mothers and fathers bring their children, politics, frustrations, fears, scattered ambitions and urge to observe and compare other parents, I over heard a couple of older mothers. They looked as if they had over-slept their biological alarm clocks by a good ten years. One told the other that her babysitter, a nine-teen year old girl, was pregnant. She expressed her dismay, cusped on disgust, at the situation; debating whether she should fire the babysitter. Her morals were lobbed around as she questioned how she would be able to explain to her seven year old daughter that it was unacceptable to have a baby before finishing your undergraduate degree. The other woman agreed. Together they nodded their grey heads.
As I sit there, day after day, over-hearing these conversations I can’t help but wonder how the grey mothers identify me. They rarely guess that I am young. Not because I look old, but because in their conditioned minds, I look the way a mother should look with her child and a young mother wouldn’t. According to them, a young mother would wear door-knocker earrings, as her double-negatives saturated the smoke-filled air outside of the welfare office. Of course she wouldn’t have an abortion, not because it clashed with her beliefs, but because drug-store psychology confirms that she was trying to fill a familial void.
“Twenty-four years old makes no woman, at twenty-four they’re still girls.” said the middle-aged man as he pushed his toddler son on the swing. He had been referring to a neighbor of his with whom he had just conversed. I stood beside him, pushing my toddler on the swing, leaning towards the conversation half-curious and half uneasy. He continued to chortle with his peers as they rolled their eyes and sighed with equally priggish expressions, smirking and shaking their grey heads back and forth, like pendulums of superiority. I hadn’t told them my age. For they had never asked, and the mere fact that they felt comfortable indulging in this conversation in my presence implied that they assumed I was older.
Amongst the grey mothers of New York, my age is my roach. It is my roach when I am amongst a group of mothers, and fathers, who have all already accomplished their career goals. It is a roach when I go to their homes on play-dates and enviously see their success reflected through their home décor, large apartments with views and separate rooms for every task. It is a roach when I allow it to appear as a roach. At other times it’s not. It is not a roach when I put things in perspective and remind myself that I am not a stereotype and neither are they…well, let’s just say that I’m not a stereotype.
When I first began mingling with other parents, I swore that thirty-five would be my cut off age for friends, but the other day I made a thirty-seven year old friend and my limit changed. I thought that living abroad for the few years that I did, would make me feel the way that I did in that banquet hall; out of place. In fact, I felt perfectly in place. When I entered the realm of motherhood, I thought I would feel out of place with mothers and I would be forced to choose between sneering older mothers and hip-hop, hip-hugging hoodlums. Yet, neither extreme has grasped me just yet.
Not long ago, one of my best friends called from California. I was in the middle of juggling a burning dinner, dirty diapers, a whining child, and a near-due freelance project. Although I easily could have avoided answering the phone, I felt compelled to because I often remind myself that I do not want to be one of “those” women who ignores her past because of her present situation. I could barely hear her, as the sound on the phone line was abrasive.
“Hello”
“Hey Shamie, how are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m ok, but I don’t know, I’m just thinking about stuff…”
I wanted to scream into the phone “Bored? Are you calling me because you are bored?” but I couldn’t because that is what we do, we call each other when we are bored- or should I say were bored.
“I’m just wondering what to do with my life and…”
I asked her why there was so much interference on the phone line.
“Oh it must be the wind, I’m sitting on the beach.”
I momentarily removed the phone from my ear and stared, bewildered, at what I was hearing. Did she actually have the gall to call me in the midst of my circus act to whine and fret about the recess of her life, as she stretched her slender, tan body on the warm sand? When I hung up, I realized something: her life was no easier than mine; in fact it was harder. .
I love being a mother. I love hearing my son say “mama”, in that tone that says he can not survive without me. I like making him laugh, I like holding his hand, pushing him on the swings, getting him dressed, teasing him, playing with him, pretending to be an airplane, waking up with him in the morning, cuddling with him at night, taking his picture, feeding him, holding him, all of it. I feel a lot of fulfillment already and I am only twenty-four.
I recently asked my ten year old cousin, after burning his tongue on a scorching hot rack of lamb, if he would rather be burned to death or frozen to death. He looked at me, consumed with contemplation. He took my question far more seriously than I had intended. He bit the corners of his mouth, narrowed his eyes, tilted his head to the side and looked at me after an extended swallow “Isn’t there a lukewarm way to die?” he asked, trepidation and perplexity invading his innocence. “Yes” I answered. “There is.” I hadn’t meant to butcher his purity. His lamb had cooled off and he went back to eating, back to life before the question. He’s young, one day he’ll learn. And one day so will I…
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