Disclaimer: This view contains spoilers for the show and descriptions of suicide. Read with care and caution.
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I tasted blood from biting the inside of my cheek. My hands couldn’t stay still. My shirt felt tight around my chest, and I forgot how to breathe. I stood outside the building of my first big internship in Los Angeles.
It was the first day. I should be happy. I’m not. I’m numb. I don’t hear anything except for my heartbeat rattling my bones with each pump until the pressure made my eardrums pop.
My sister wailed on the phone, and I returned to earth. From Texas, she asked for help as my mother locked herself behind the bedroom door with a knife and a promise to harm herself. Sirens blared through my phone. From the West Coast, I felt helpless — unable to kick the door down. But honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I were there. Maybe I’d be just as numb, clawing at the wrinkles in my clothes until the friction distracted me from the potential of a dead mother.
When the police arrived, my mom got help, and my sister got comfort from our relatives. Meanwhile, I went back up to the 13th floor of the building and pretended nothing happened. Like I said, it was the first day of my first big internship, and I had more to lose as a young Latino professional in this pond of privilege.
There’s no easy way to depict the unimaginable.
Sara Porkalob has some of these dissociative tendencies, too. In her latest, largely autobiographical solo show, Dragon Mama, she doesn’t directly depict her mother’s attempt at self-harm. Instead, she recites it like a report. Dragon Mama is the second play in her intergenerational trilogy, The Dragon Cycle. In it, Sara dramatizes her mother’s upbringing until the point of Sara’s own birth and childhood.
Most of the play centers on the relationship her mother, Maria Porkalob Jr., had with her four siblings and the sacrifices they made to take care of each other as Maria grappled with life as a single mother. As she came into adulthood, the pressures of sex and sexuality surfaced along with her own introduction to single motherhood. What makes this second installation shine is its brutal honesty and dedication to sharing the darkest sides of motherhood.
Up until this moment of profound tragedy in Dragon Mama, Sara had been quick and detailed with her physical movement. She plays 28 characters across multiple settings throughout the piece and paints a picture of each environment with every character’s mannerisms. Maria’s brother Jr. sniffles, pushing his palm against his nose. Her younger brother talks like a tough guy with his chest puffed high, regardless of his age. Her sister Lily hides her face at the beginning of each conversation, revealing her shyness. And Charlie is the baby of the family. Sara strongly embodies them and brings them to life, moving with swift steps and flares of the arm. The strength of Dragon Mama is in Sara’s ability to tell a story through her physicality.
She creates a rhythm out of it. We sit in this groove she’s created. It’s comfortable, so much so that as she halts the story to give a disclaimer about her mother’s psychological break, it’s jarring, not only because of the content, but also because of the shift in Sara’s physicality. She is no longer theatrical. There is no character hoisting her shoulders up and transforming the tone of her voice. It is just her.
Sara is nearly frozen as she explains the events of the night her mother prayed to God to kill her and her children. She explains how her mother pulled her hair and caused her harm. She doesn’t need to act it out, not because it would be a trigger — though I’m sure that was a factor — but because she evokes the emotions in her face and the way her fingers fidget beneath her breath.
Similarly, I don’t need to describe what happened behind my mother’s bedroom door. The heart of the story happened outside. My sister and the police in the moonlight. Me in the afternoon sun thousands of miles away. Opposed to popular belief, the weight of a story about family trauma isn’t in the dark moments; it’s in the moments of normalcy. It creates a heartbreaking juxtaposition with history.
Near the conclusion of Dragon Mama, Maria is healed, enters into a nurturing relationship, and lives in Alaska. After spending time in a different state to establish stability and support Sara, mother and daughter are ready to be reunited. Everything feels normal: a mother awaits her daughter, and they’re both happy to see each other. Sara shows Maria the newly cared-for doll in her hands, with hair brushed and skin cleaned, and explains to her mother that she learned how to take care of her toy so she knew how to take care of her.
In sharing her story, Sara captures the realities of single motherhood. There is no one there to help you. Without realizing it, the mother and the kids are one another’s source of mutual aid, regardless of age.
When my mother struggled, I was there to pick up the call, even when it was midnight. I didn’t share much about my life with her. It was never the right time to share the big developments of my career, personal life, and education. Instead, I tucked each accomplishment in my back pocket.
At my college graduation, after my mother spent time at a mental health clinic, my professors sang my praises for the work I had done. They shared things she never even knew were happening. As we walked back to the car, my mother paused, looking over at the palm trees swaying above. Parents laughed in the distance. Little siblings ran across the quad. College friends hugged. We stood in silence.
“Am I a bad mother?” she asked. “I didn’t know about any of that.”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
“I feel like one,” she continued. I reassured her she wasn’t. She was here.
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Dragon Mama is running at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles through April 12.
