When he died, every matter-of-fact thing became cruel.
I could stand it because I understood the context Nana was the context. Nana was still around, and so I could stand being told I was a horrible baby. When I was young, I prided myself on being able to tell the difference. She was a matter-of-fact kind of woman, not a cruel woman, exactly, but something quite close to cruel. I was born into the darkness that shadow left behind. I thought, Lord, what have I done to deserve this torment?” Nana was the first miracle, the true miracle, and the glory of his birth cast a long shadow. “In my stomach, you were very unpleasant, but coming out you were a nightmare. “You weren’t a very good baby,” she told me all my life. She was forty years old, and she wasn’t entirely happy with what everyone around her kept referring to as her “miracle.” But then there was the morning sickness, the tender breasts, the ballooning of her bladder. America was so expensive, barrenness was its own kind of blessing. She and the Chin Chin Man had stopped trying long before. My mother was surprised to find herself pregnant with me.
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