Matryoshka: The I of Me

By Rebecca Cohen
Three years ago, I declared myself my own mother. Nobody else had mothered me and it didn’t look like anybody was going to. The horde of clamoring children inside me needed somebody. I was the mother of last resort.
How did I get into this pickle? Let’s start by saying it wasn’t my idea.

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I landed in a place where I was not wanted. It wasn’t personal; she didn’t even know me. When she learned I was there, she knew she would have to send me away. The last time something had landed there she tried to send it away before it even lived, and it went so wrong that she almost died from the bleeding. She wanted to live, so she couldn’t try that again. She had to keep me around as long as I would stay. Then when I made my way to the world, she would send me off for a better life. Me? It. Whatever it was inside of her. It wasn’t me; she didn’t know me. There was a problem inside and it would grow and grow and grow, and then it would go away.

How did I end up with her?

Was my soul really swimming around in some primordial ethereal soup treading water—doing the dead man’s float—waiting waiting waiting for the right eddy to suck me down and into a human womb? Or was I floating on some wispy cloud in the sunshine, surrounded by birdsong, and the music of a thousand harps? Was I basking on my little wisp of cloud when suddenly it opened and let loose rain, rain rain, and when there was no cloud left, I fell with the rain and fell, and fell and fell, and landed in an empty womb? In an empty womb where I was not the first occupant—the fifth at least—but I didn’t know that, didn’t even know what it was, only that I landed somewhere, that the fall stopped.

There I was underwater inside of something dense, something booming, something whooshing, something rocking and cradling. There I was and I was split and split again. I kept splitting and splitting and splitting and all those split bits came into one thing and grew arms and legs and fingers and toes and face and ears. Grew all these things and organs inside skin, skin
keeping it all together and always the thump-thump, thump-thump, bump bump bump, and the songs and the music of some instrument that was not a harp. Not a harp, but something akin to a harp, with a brighter timbre, a smaller sound, but a closer one—a sound whose vibrations traveled through my blood.

The time came and I—it—went away, placed into foster care for three months to ensure it wasn’t defective. Then landed in a place where it was wanted, but the wanting was not personal. They wanted a baby, and I was a baby, therefore, they wanted me. They wanted to have a baby and I was in their possession. Therefore, they had me.

Sixteen months after they brought me to their home, the baby they wanted arrived. The red-haired one, the one that came out of her. The one that lived until it was ripe and came out squalling. It couldn’t have been personal, but it couldn’t have felt otherwise. I was not the baby they wanted. They wanted one of their flesh and that came along, thrusting my fungibility into sharp contrast. It wasn’t personal.

The I of me was never a consideration, barely an afterthought.
The I of me was the smallest Russian doll, the tiny solid one at the center of concentricity, the core buried within wooden layers of burden, commodity, burden.

The shapes that held me in place: unwanted pregnancy, wished-for baby, wrong child after all, family scapegoat. Layers upon layers of reasons why I didn’t deserve the care I so needed.

Three years ago, just before Mother’s Day, I pulled apart the last of those shells and left the halves to lie empty. Unvarnished inner surfaces exposed to daylight lives long imposed on me, now bleaching in the sun. Not mine, not a one of them.

I lifted the tiny solid I of me out from the debris, cradled her against my chest, and let her hear again the beat of a mother’s heart—of my heart—held close.


About the Author: Rebecca Cohen is a US Domestic Baby-Scoop Era adoptee, writer, artist, and musician who lives on a remote island in Washington state. Her writing has been published in Adoptee Voices E-Zine.
Music Here: https://m.soundcloud.com/user-440129867/tracks
Art Here: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/4-rebecca-cohen
Writing Here: https://adoptee-voices.com/ezine-onpaper-why-im-still-here/

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