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my mother spends most of her life sleeping on the big fuzzy brown sofa in our living room. she buries herself in blankets and sleeps with the television turned on and up and a book resting on her face. sometimes i think that my mother needs the television blaring to sleep, that the reason she hibernates from eight in the morning until four P.M. is because at night she has to sleep in her room where there is no tv, no loss of time or uncomfortable sofa. the sofa is long and curved, winding its way around two walls of the room like a terrycloth serpent. my mother sinks into that sofa, pulls the blanket tightly around her and hides her face in the cushions. her hair is always down, and is only frizzier when she wakes up, curlier, unkempt evidence of her stolen hours of rest. she drifts in and out of sleep, waking when someone dies or gets kidnapped on her soap operas; she seems to sense the pivotal plot points the way a sleeping dog smells meat cooking and stirs.

my mother has a twitch in her left eye. "i think it�s spreading through the rest of my body," she says. "i think that i have a nerve disorder."

my mother was prescribed anti-depressants to stabilize her moods, but stopped taking them because she said they made her fat.

my mother has constant urinary tract infections and it burns when she pees.

my mother swallows fourteen mean, plasticy pills a day.

my mother has only just turned forty years old.

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thoughts about my mother sleeping keep me awake at night. i lie in bed with my sheets tucked into the mattress and yanked up to my armpits � never a blanket or comforter, even in the winter � and my hair pulled so tightly into a ponytail that i�m sure my eyes will open narrower in the morning, so tightly that when i remove the strained elastic, strands of wiry hair cling to it, caught. i lie bound in my bed and think about my mother sitting awake in hers with no televised voices to lull her into sleep, knowing that she will replace her lost slumber on our snaky brown sofa the next day. i think about the picture of my mother that sits on my fathers desk; she is dancing and wearing fishnets and a black evening gown. i think about my mother sleeping away her usefulness, slipping away from real life, from her lunches with friends and her unutilized degree in marketing. i think about how my mother seems comatose when she sleeps, how until i was six i would cry every time i saw her sleeping, certain she was dead. i try to banish these ruminations, to think about anything but serpentine furniture and pills that look like vinyl. but it is no use -- these thoughts clutch at my mind, snatching my own sleep away from me bit by bit. i sleep for less than three hours every night. i am afraid to sleep.

i never nap.