Assistant Editor Toni Judnitch: SJ Sindu’s essay “Mother” brilliantly captures two characters whose intersecting lives and experiences create a tension rooted in imbalance. By pairing repetition and lists as the narrative moves through time, Sindu forms a striking portrait of a mother-daughter relationship complicated by generational differences. Despite these opposing views, there remains tenderness between these two women—at the core is the desire to protect each other, even if that is often impossible. As the piece progresses, we see a shift in balance once again as both mother and daughter enter new stages in their lives, leading to an inevitable reversal in their relationship.
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Mother
My mother tells me to be careful. I’m twelve years old, and we’ve just moved to a city outside of Boston. We live in an apartment complex that my white fiancé, twenty years later when we visit, will call “shit housing.” I walk to school every day, a two-mile stroll along a busy road, and my mother tells me to be careful. What she means is, keep your head down, keep walking, don’t talk to anyone, I’m sorry.
I’m fifteen and my adolescent terrified-rabbit face is shifting into something that draws glances from older men. Their heads turn to watch me, and though I don’t notice, though I’m deep in my teenage myopia and just want my mother and the men to leave me alone, she sees them and she tells me to be careful. What she means is, the world is cruel to women, watch your back, watch your back.
I’m twenty and I tell my mother I’m in love with a woman I met at my university’s queer student group. My mother is silent on the phone, then tells me it’s a phase everyone goes through, and don’t I know what happens in the girls-only schools back home in Sri Lanka? Everyone does it, but I’ll get over it. She tells me to be careful. What she means is, this isn’t real love.
At twenty-seven I start dating an older white man, and my mother is begrudgingly happy. Better a man than a woman. Better cis than trans. Better straight than queer. Better older than younger. Better white than black. Her prayers have been answered. But she tells me to be careful. What she means is, don’t get pregnant.
At thirty I’m married, and my ovaries are growing cysts that burst in sharp pain. I need to take hormones to control them, and my partner and I decide never to have kids. My mother tells me to be careful. What she means is, too many hormones could damage her grandchildren.
At fifty-nine my mother falls down the stairs and dislocates her shoulder. Her ligaments are floating free inside her, snapped as one bone popped itself out of its socket. She needs surgery, physical therapy, and two years of healing. I call her to tell her to be careful. What I mean is, I can’t understand the fragility of your body. What I mean is, will I become soft and breakable too? What I mean is, don’t leave me.
SJ Sindu is a Tamil American author of two novels, Marriage of a Thousand Lies (Soho Press, 2017) and Blue-Skinned Gods (Soho Press and Legend Press, 2021), as well as the hybrid fiction and nonfiction chapbook I Once Met You But You Were Dead (Split/Lip Press, 2016). A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, Sindu holds a PhD in English from Florida State University and teaches at the University of Toronto.
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