T A B L E_ T A L K

When do parental beliefs infringe on their kids' rights? Draw the line in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

"The Rugrats Movie"
By Andrew Leonard
These babies rule! A 4-year-old and her dad give the new "Rugrats" brand extension a big thumbs-up
(11/20/98)

Second Thoughts: A modest proposal
By Sallie Tisdale
Hurricane Mitch offers U.S. troops the chance not to show force, but to help others -- especially those we've hurt before
(11/19/98)

Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets
By Hillary Rodham Clinton
What kids want to know about Buddy and Socks
(11/18/98)

Drama Queen Contestants
This won't hurt a bit: This month's Drama Queen candidates tell tales of their most hellish experiences at the gynecologist's office
(11/17/98)

Things are not quite what they seem
By Polly Shulman
Themes of transformation populate three weirdly hypnotic children's books
(11/16/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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FARAWAY, SO CLOSE | PAGE 1, 2
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Even the restaurant, a neutral commercial zone, doesn't allow us distance to pretend there's any kind of peace between us. Even the carefully formulated time -- no more than two hours -- can't keep still what's on my mind: At what point does a mother give up, say that though she loves her child, it's time to let go? Counselors I've gone to with Amanda say I need to see her side, to understand where she's coming from, to try to relate to the kind of culture she's attached herself to. But I can't see it, I can't explain why this has happened. What I know is that I want her back. And in the middle of the night I'm left thinking that good mothers always, somehow, find a way to rescue their children, and that I'm failing by not rescuing mine.

Amanda and I have whittled our relationship down to these few dinners a month. Sometimes I take groceries to the house across town where I know she lands now and then -- I leave the sacks on the front porch, lined with beer bottles and cluttered ashtrays. Sometimes I persuade her to go with me to a secondhand store to buy jeans and warm socks; once in a while she'll show up at one of the younger girls' ballet recitals or music programs. But the little girl who once curled around my lap, tucked her head under my chin and listened as I read to her has grown into a young woman who thinks she can only be herself if she cuts off the people who love her. What started as fury over my divorce from her father and our moving across the country has consumed her, filled her with hate, closed her down as tight as a molecule, where nothing can get in. At 17, she found kids living on the street who promised her comfort and understanding, who told her she wasn't alone anymore. She says she wants to be with them now.

The plates empty of their bright colors, leaving only smears on white ceramic. The teapot is dry. I get up to pay the bill and Amanda says she'll meet me on the sidewalk -- she wants to go for a smoke, I know, though neither of us can acknowledge even that. Inside my wallet, there's a $20 bill I've brought to give her. By midnight, I imagine the cash will be transformed into beer and cigarettes, though she might save a little for a decent breakfast. Perhaps it's best to give her nothing, to hope she'll become hungry and broke enough to come home. I'm lost about how to help.

Ten minutes later, down the stairs and into the chilly, starless night, I look for her. She's not waiting in front of the restaurant. I consider that she's simply left, but instead of allowing myself to feel stunned and hurt, I study the road, which is an intricate web of cracks. I've never seen a street fractured like this: A forked and reforked jag of lines trailing into darkness. I walk into the asphalt, lean down to get a closer look. Amanda is behind me then; I feel her. I point out the shattered pavement, but she says no, the street isn't cracked, it's just the shadow of the trees. She's right. The lights behind the bare mimosas along the length of sidewalk have cast intricate deep lines of leafless branches on the black road. I raise my arm, blocking the light. The cracks go away. Can you drop me off downtown? Amanda says, thwarting any chance I have to suggest she come to our house. I shrug, agreeing to take her where I don't want her to go.

We walk across the crooked shadows, to the other side of the street toward my car. At a well-lit table on the alley sidewalk outside a closed cafe, a couple sit, their swaddled baby in a plastic infant seat rocking gently on the bare table top. Tiny pink hands poke out of the blankets, knocking around the cold air. Seeing us approach, the man jumps up, puts out his arms. Teeth are missing from his mouth, he has no coat on. The woman, coatless too, stands, her long brown hair collapsed over her shoulders, her eyes dull and tired, drawn heavier with a ring of thick black liner. "Can you help us?" he says.

Amanda and I stop in the alley, separated from the family by a waist-high retaining wall of red brick. "Do you have one of those cards?" the man asks me, pointing to a nearby ATM machine. No, I say. Amanda knows I have one. I look over, waiting for her to reveal me to these strangers. But she says nothing. The man goes on as if he hadn't heard. The baby's godfather sent a check, he says, taking out the rectangle of paper, shaking it loose from its folds and whipping it toward us. "We're not from here, and we can't get it cashed." He wants me to deposit the check in my account and then give him the dollars. I tell him again that I don't have a card. "We needs the money," he says, rattling the check again, as if this sound and movement will conjure action, will turn the promise written there into dollars and food and comfort.

I'm sorry, I tell them both, and turn away as the man jams the check back in his pocket. Amanda has gone on. She is 20 or 30 feet down the road, her stiff torso bent into the night under the streetlights. I watch her back get smaller as she moves deeper into the alley without me. And for a moment, the time it takes to breathe in and back out perhaps, I think about going a different direction. For a second I wonder what it would mean to follow the jagged shadow cracks down the street, letting them decide the end, giving into the shadows and the darkness. But then my hands wrap around the keys in my coat pocket and my body begins, wearily, to cut through the same air, the same path, as my child. But I don't hurry. She's already too far away.
SALON | Nov. 23, 1998

Debra Gwartney is a correspondent for the Oregonian and the single mother of four teenage daughters.