I, The Divine

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The last time I saw my mother was the day of my first and only New York opening, January 19, 1995. I went to visit her in her Upper East Side apartment. I had been dropping in on her the previous couple of days, trying to talk to her, not about my painting or the impending show and my nervousness about it, but about the problems I was having with David. I thought she would be able to help. All she could talk about were her memoirs. She saw herself as an artist, a painter, although she never really painted, having all the neuroses of an artist, but none of the talent. She had given up painting for the past year to concentrate on writing. “Write, write, write,” she said. “All I do is write. It’s so liberating.” I asked to see, but as usual, nothing was ready to be shown. “I’ve hired a professional editing firm to clean things up before I’m ready to publish,” she told me.

That day she was radiant, wearing a green dress, long, to the ankles. She was in a good mood, almost manic, moving constantly, nervously flipping her red hair back every few seconds. “I’m so excited for you,” she said, “and I’m at a great place in my writing. It’s going well right now, so we have more than one thing to celebrate.” She would not elaborate. “You want to see something funny. I bought this voice recognition thing for my computer a couple of months ago. You speak into it and it types the silliest things. You know how awfully I type. I thought this would help, but it doesn’t work, and I still have to type. Anyway, it’s great fun. Come.”

She led me to her office. The desk was impeccably clean, like the rest of her sparsely furnished apartment. I sat down at the computer and spoke into the attached microphone. “My name is Sarah Nour el-Din and I want to type something.” The sentence appeared on the screen as “A cane barter poor meeting no finance upward to bin.” It was hilarious. I spoke again and again. The words typed on the page had nothing at all to do with what I said. She laughed, called it contemporary poetry. I tried to type something, hit the keys repeatedly, but nothing showed up on the screen. I asked my mother if she knew why her keyboard was not working. She did not. It was obvious to me, a non-computer-geek, that the voice recognition software was interfering with the keyboard. For her to type on her computer, a technician would need to solve the compatibility problem. I did not mention it. We parted, kissing at the door, her hand surprisingly lingering on my face. I knew she would not show up at the reception, but I thought she would come up with some excuse the next day when I called her. I was wrong. That night she cut herself with a razor in the bathtub, not just her wrists, but all over, and bled to death.