The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mother Wound by Gauri Awasthi

---

The Story’s Story

Reading  Baldwin’s  The  Fire  Next  Time  on  the  road,   I  highlight  sentences
that   seem  most  relevant.  The  principles    were  Blindness,  Loneliness,  and
Terror, the first principle necessarily and actively  cultivated in order  to deny
the   two   others.    And   this     loneliness   and   terror  I’ve  felt  deeply  in  the
last  few  days  with  you.  It’s   hard   to  dissociate  the reality of  your dreams,
you  tell   me.  You   dream  repeatedly,  one   picture:   you’re  burning   in   hell.
Being    tortured.   And   somehow   this   one   poet    sings:  You  ask,  my  love,
about  my tears / But don’t you recognize the fears / That  agonize  my heart?
/ Were  not  your infidelity  / Torturing  me   so  cruelly  /  My  sorrows would
depart.    I  don’t  even  try   to   memorize    the   lines   but  go  back  to reading
and  marking  Baldwin,   who  says  They were afraid  of  going  to  Hell. And  I
pull  out  and  insert  in  the   margins   the   s tory   of  god  you  told  me  about.
And   you   tell    me,   during    our    car-chair    psychoanalysis   of  this   dream
that    it’s    not   just    about  religious   guilt   but   more.  And   I   am  confused
because   you’re  driving  at   100   when    the   speed  limit is 60. And the depth
of a merciless resolve to kill my  father rather  than allow my father  to kill me
– is  what  I  feel  somedays,   and   you   do  too.  And   I   keep   thinking  of  the
many  excuses  I  have  to  make   for  you,  to hold  your  hand  across  the   gear
system   of   the  car   while   you   continue   speeding,    flustered  from dreams.
And  I  think  if  Baldwin   were   a   woman,   would  he  agree    that   the  man’s
heaven,  any   man’s  heaven   is  the   woman’s  hell? Maybe  he   would,  maybe
he wouldn’t. But someone needs to bear witness.

---