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Growing
Ellen Hagan
At 1 I made my
mom exquisite. Im sure her heart swelled to the size of her vagina when
I slid out from beneath her legs 12 months prior. It was November 1978, Kentucky.
She told me I was shaped like a loaf of bread when under my blanket and that when
she held me I felt like there were thousands of little marbles rolling round from
the insides of my chunky thighs to the deep center of my rounded out earlobes.
I was her first daughter, sliced directly from her gut, smelling of tap water
and baby oil. I had eyes the color of the dirt my mother used to plant her tomatoes
in and a swollen belly the size of my fathers outstretched hollowed out
hand. We lived together, the four of us; my mother, father and brother, in a split-level
near the Nelson county line where I am positive I grew accustomed to the weather
at an early age, 6 weeks perhaps. Heat in the bluegrass is humid, moist, snow
dripping like the freshness of an outside shower. We had a swing-set, a sandbox,
a backyard and neighbors. There were hand-me-down Batman pajamas waiting for my
2nd birthday and a courageous pummel off the city pool diving board preparing
for my 4th. A brand new Huffy with a horn and a hot pink banana seat sat in the
garage for my 7th and there was a boy who was standing in the shadows eager to
break my heart in the 3rd grade. In the wings of the house there were meals wed
all eventually consume together, holidays where wed devour red wine with
our mashed potatoes and gravy and Easter Sundays spent chasing pastel dyed hard-boiled
eggs all over the front yard. Behind doors there were X-men motorcycles and the
only real Barbie mansion. There would be nights of keeping my brother awake for
hours with tales of crocodile eating heathens and the fairy maidens that saved
them and afternoons of raiding the cabinets for canned goods to play house with,
my brother and I dressed as Lucy and Ricky. And much later there would be nights
of raiding those same cabinets, just as my girlfriends and my high was hitting
a peak. There would be field party acid trips and moments of driving so drunk
Id almost slip into the bay window of our living room. There would be nights
of hallucinations, bad sex in cars near 245, thered be hitchhiking, throwing
up, swimming naked, calling home from the police station in the middle of the
night. There would be months and months of making my mother the ugliest she has
ever been. But at 1, I am sure I made her exquisite.
© Ellen Hagan
Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer and educator. She holds an MFA in in fiction
from The New School and has received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She has self published several chapbooks and her work can be seen in the on-line journal La Petite Zine. She is currently working on her first novel, The
Kentucky Notes.
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