myfanwy collins

Anatomy Lesson (an excerpt)
by Myfanwy Collins

breasts

Do you want to see it?

We were standing before the long mirror above her cherry dresser when she pulled down one half of her nightgown to reveal the left side of her chest. In a place I knew well, having been weaned only a few years prior there was a concavity where once a breast had been.

I was sick and they took it away, she said, covering back up. Not repulsed, but curious, I wished I could touch it and know that what I saw was really not there.

Later, Auntie said to me, The Amazons cut off their left breasts to better shoot their bows and arrows. Your mother is a warrior.

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Once, our blood had twined and twisted from the same heart, then two had lifted in the same crescendo. Once our minds had met. Though she was broken by circumstance, dredged by time, lulled by disease, when we parted I kept hold of the one truth: my mother was a warrior whose body wore the scars of her daily battles.

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hands

Most often she held a cigarette, a drink or a paintbrush. The three served the same purpose: quell the passion, calm the nerves.

Her hands were dark as olives, strong enough to open stubborn jars and delicate enough to sew in a straight line. Her left hand slapped me across the face just once for being fresh and her right one spanked me only once for putting myself in danger. Her hands taught me how to peel an orange in one long, snaking peel. They taught me how to pull on stockings without causing a run.

Her hands were never still. They were there to learn or to teach.

See what happens when you draw a tree and a hill?

I watched as her hands drew a rounded hill and a tree on top of it.

What does that look like?

I said it looked like the tree would fall off the edge. She drew M shaped hills in the background and a long-limbed tree in the foreground.

And what about this?

I said it looked like the tree was closer to me, the hills farther away. Yes. She put a hand on my back as praise. That is perspective.