So Jealous

She couldn't say it out loud or even quietly in her mind's corridors and sealed rooms. She was so jealous of Caitlyn she sometimes couldn't be in the same small space with her. A car. The kitchen. The porch. No one knew she felt that way. She hoped no one knew she felt that way. She had told herself when she was a girl that it would be different one day when she had a daughter of her own.

Her mother hadn't understood anything. He mother had sailed through her own life six inches above the ground. She left no tracks. When her mother had landed in adulthood, she was unscathed. She knew nothing of her blindfolded journey. She was an incompetent mother. Childhood was lost in the fog of her near-perfect amnesia. She never said, "When I was a girl" or "Oh, I remember what that was like," some hurt, some pang of regret. Because her mother didn’t remember.

So she had told herself many times how things would be different. She imagined long talks about the things that can flatten a child's outlook and weigh on her shoulders. The low, muttering magic that can unlock unwelcome places inside. The quicksand. She saw herself in the future as a wise mother, of infinite patience and empathy. She would learn from her own mistakes and her mother's. But almost as soon as Caitlyn was born, she felt things whose shape she didn't like. Caitlyn had a sunny hand at her back. She was born with it.

Caitlyn didn't suffer. Caitlyn had a reflex for landing on her feet. Caitlyn didn't need help from anyone. Caitlyn loved learning, on her own. Setbacks thrilled her, because she felt this was life talking back. Occasionally she would ask her mother for her opinion, or some token of her girlhood. But she didn't need it. She would never say it out loud, but Caitlyn almost pitied her own mother.