Title & author
Heartbroke by Chelsea Bieker
Synopsis
“A mother doesn’t forget her babies, no she don’t,” writes a mother in an unsent letter to her son in Heartbroke’s namesake story In Bieker’s second book, this time a story collection, motherhood and longing are once again at the forefront. But while Godshot focuses on the world of Lacey May, Heartbroke is full of characters. Uniting them all is the haunting of motherhood, one that stems from mothers being people in their own right, with their own desires and emotions, and one that causes the children to reap the consequences.
Who should read this book
Fans of Of Women and Salt and Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer
What we’re thinking about
The state of reproductive justice in our country
Trigger warning(s)
Physical violence, sexual violence, substance abuse, self-harm, abandonment, sexism
Located between San Francisco and Los Angeles, surrounded by various mountain ranges and parched land, and bathed in scalding heat, California’s Central Valley is often considered an “in-between,” a place one traverses through to get to the other side. Impacted by the ongoing droughts, the roads are lined with dying grass and MAGA signs. This is the environment in which Heartbroke takes place, but Chelsea Bieker’s characters remind readers of the area’s three dimensionality, its existence as something more than just a through space (Catapult, 2022).
“A mother doesn’t forget her babies, no she don’t,” writes a mother in an unsent letter to her son in Heartbroke’s namesake story (Bieker, 235). In Bieker’s second book, this time a story collection, motherhood and longing are once again at the forefront. But while Godshot focuses on the world of Lacey May, Heartbroke is full of characters. Uniting them all is the haunting of motherhood, one that stems from mothers being people in their own right, with their own desires and emotions, and one that causes the children to reap the consequences.
In Heartbroke’s epigraph, Bieker cites Denis Johnson’s short story “Dirty Wedding.” “She wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.” The line effortlessly sets up the collection of stories to follow. In “Fact of Body,” Bieker writes of a mother and son living in their car by a “toxic beach,” making a living off sexual interactions with clients at the local bar (83). Bobby’s mother has dreams of being someone famous who will always have more than enough money. She makes false promises to her son about “the school…[he] would attend in the fall,” that taking clients will be “‘one time and then never again’” (85). But eventually, Bobby “stop[s] believing in miracles, and stop[s] believing anything [his] mother told” him (86). In “Lyra,” Nev is forced into a similar position by her mother, who wants to follow “the pastor’s plan, that we would all come to live with him. We would all be his wives” (137). Motivated by her own desires, she says “Vern’s kingdom didn’t want her without [her] girls” (151). Because she wants to be with Vern, she is content with forcing her daughters into marriage. And in “Cadillac Flats,” Pretty knows “even [his mother] would look at him ashamed” if he told her about his love for another boy (206).
Yet despite the heartache these characters experience by way of their mothers, they are desperate for a connection, reluctant to leave their sides. Bobby, despite having opportunities to leave, puts on his mother’s yellow cardigan, saying “this was my only. My mother, my only” (100). Nev is unable to leave the brothel; “When my little sister Maple was setting to leave the ranch, she begged me to come with her. Said everything that happened with Mama was all over and buried and that I should move on. As if such a thing was possible” (131). And Pretty, despite thinking his mother would not understand, wants to tell her “desperately about this need” for the boy Hodges (206). Just as the epigraph suggests, the love children have for their parents is able to break them.
In a flawed society that perceives motherhood to be a sole identity, one that cannot coexist with careers, self-growth, sexuality, etc., how is it possible for mothers to break beyond these boundaries? And, if they were somehow to do so, how could the children, shaped by the societal understanding of a mother’s role, exist independently? Not bear the consequences? In Heartbroke, they cannot. No matter what the mothers have or have not done, their children are haunted. Just as we might think to overlook the Central Valley, a liminal space Bieker has forced us as readers to acknowledge, we’ve grown accustomed to overlooking the space between simply being a mother and the act of mothering—the health care bills, the grocery expenses, the mental health support, the rent, the lack of childcare, etc. By showcasing these stories of mothers’ longing, we as readers can’t help but question what might have happened to both mother and child if the mothers received genuine care and support.
“And whatever it is, I believe I have succeeded. I have loved her no matter what.”
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