Taking up the Axe

CREATIVE FEATURE, Coming-of-Age

Written by Maya Tadmor, 18 yrs

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Taking up the Axe

My cousins learned to ride bicycles before me. This was not surprising – things go by faster in California, the years are twice as long and sand slips between fingers like ice never can. But after that, I knew I was next. Didn’t know when, but shifting dialogues would align over Shanghai-Rummy one Saturday afternoon and my aunt and uncle would divulge how their children were biking to school. This anecdote would stick to my parents like asphalt, I knew. 

There is a gate of truly ancient character behind my house. 

It is the single point of connection between our driveway and the backyard. 

My family and I – we have never held the gate open for one another. 

Balancing your possessions in the crook of your arm 

while fussing with the too-high latch is well known, here, to be a trial of the individual. 

At age seven, I feared this day perpetually. My center of gravity was two inches behind my right eye, where terror sat like a weighty stone; I knew people like that could not ride bikes. I would have sobbed when my mother dragged me out to this wobbly tricycle in the backyard if I had not been steeling myself against it. I sobbed anyway when she pinched my chin in the helmet clasp. 

The trouble comes, of course, in the winter

when water pools around the gate and freezes in the dead of night. 

My mother cannot stand a quitter. This was something I knew, unquestionably. I tried to tie this knowledge in knots around me when I first felt cowardice steal down my neck in quick, frantic breaths. She regarded my scraped palms with satisfaction. I endured the weight behind my eye gorge itself on the lingering sting. 

The ice must be weathered, continuously. 

I must overcome the temptation to sneak through the narrowing gap 

between gate and fence-post.

One morning in August, we had come to a mutual understanding that I was to have a final test. I recall my wiry fingers gripping handlebars in prayer as I considered the sidewalk by my elementary school, how it curved into a roundabout. Stress tripped my joints on the pedals, maybe, but I was going too fast when I got to the bend and I could not correct my angle before it spun me out. My knees and elbows frayed where I tried to break the fall. 

The only way is to strain the hinges absolutely, 

force the wood to scrape down ice with a violent impulse 

before it turns insurmountable.

As I lay there, gasping, gravel as a tombstone against my cheek, I was at once brutally conscious of my mother’s phantom will. Get back on. The shock must have dislodged something bitter and irrational in me. There was a shallow puddle of rainwater beside me, clear enough, at least, to catch my reflection. Anger as ink, saw it branded there. Along the line of my jaw. Contorted with my jagged fear. 

It is against the unspoken doctrine of our house 

to wrench the gate open from inside.

I believed the walk to be a revolution. When my mother saw me beaten and dying, she would hate herself for doing this to me. I made to drag this righteousness with the bicycle, behind me, but the sky was beautiful – too much so to nourish an ugly thing. I limped back, empty handed, and I saw only pity where I’d longed for guilt. I was not my mother’s daughter. 

Freeze there, or grip an axe and start to cleave.

IMG Credits: Norsegarde