Mother-Daughter Relationships and Abandonment in Self-Portrait with Nothing

The Thematic Claim: Abandonment as a Permanent Structure of Feeling in Self-Portrait with Nothing

In Self-Portrait with Nothing, Aimee Pokwatka builds the mother-daughter relationship not as a single bond but as a fractured constellation of abandonments, substitutions, and impossible longings. The novel's central claim is that maternal abandonment does not end with the mother's departure—it becomes a permanent structure of feeling that shapes how the abandoned daughter understands herself, how she relates to the women who raise her, and how she interprets every subsequent encounter with maternal figures. Ula Frost's disappearance is not the beginning of the story but the culmination of a lifelong pattern of leaving, and Pepper Rafferty's journey is not about finding her mother but about learning to see the many versions of motherhood that surrounded her all along.

The Origin: Abandonment as a Foundational Fact

Pepper's origin story is told through objects as much as through people. She was found as a newborn on a dog bed on her adoptive mothers' front porch, wrapped in a blanket, with a Polish coin with a hole drilled through it beneath her body. The coin—which her adoptive mothers give her on a chain for her thirteenth birthday—becomes the material trace of Ula's presence and absence. It is both a gift and a goodbye, a token of connection that Pepper never wears.

The evidence reveals that the coin was part of a larger set: Ula took her father's jar of Polish coins when she left, keeping all but one, which she insisted on leaving with Pepper despite Tilda's warning that it was a choking hazard. This detail matters because it shows that Ula's abandonment was not careless—it was deliberate, even ritualistic. The coin is a deliberate act of marking, a way of claiming this child even as she gives the child away.

Tilda's account of the adoption is crucial here. She tells Pepper that Ula came to her room one night and said that when the baby was born she was leaving. Tilda, who had already intuited that Ula would make a terrible mother, proposed an alternative: what if this baby could have two good mothers instead? Ula agreed. The arrangement was made before Pepper was born, and Ula left the day after.

What's striking about this account is the absence of sentimentality. Neither Tilda nor Ula frames the adoption as a sacrifice or a tragedy. Tilda describes it with the resigned competence of the responsible older sister, and Ula's agreement is presented as a practical decision. But the evidence also shows the emotional cost: Tilda reflects that letting Ula go was the only way she had to love her. This is a devastating formulation—love and abandonment become the same act. Tilda's love for her sister is expressed through facilitating her departure, and Ula's love for her daughter is expressed through leaving her with people who can actually care for her.

The Many Mothers: Ula's Self-Portraits as Fractured Motherhood

The novel's central conceit—that Ula's paintings can summon alternate versions of their subjects from parallel universes—becomes a powerful metaphor for the impossibility of a single maternal figure. Ula didn't just paint other people; she painted herself, over and over, creating at least thirteen self-portraits and summoning multiple versions of herself into her own universe.

The head Ula explains the origin of this practice: she began painting a self-portrait as a way of returning through the work to the moment when Pepper was in her arms, a moment she could never revisit in life. But instead of painting herself in that moment, she painted a version of herself someplace else—and that version showed up.

This is the novel's most complex treatment of the mother-daughter bond. Ula's art is an attempt to recover what she lost, but it doesn't recover Pepper—it multiplies Ula herself. She keeps painting self-portraits because the versions never stick around for long, so she just keeps making more. The self-portraits are a substitute for the daughter she abandoned, but they're also a form of self-abandonment: each new Ula is another version of herself that she creates and then loses.

The various Ulas Pepper encounters are each a different version of motherhood, and each is incomplete. One was a choreographer whose son hadn't spoken to her for years; she tells Pepper that it's impossible for a woman to be both a great artist and a good mother. Another was raised by her aunt after her parents died in a car accident. Another (Compact) ran a movie theater in Prague and once saw Pepper in Connecticut, looking at her as if she were nothing—but it wasn't Pepper's Ula at all. This moment is devastating because it reveals that Pepper has been carrying the weight of a rejection that never actually happened. The Ula who looked at her like nothing was a different version, from a different universe, and Pepper has been haunted by an encounter that wasn't even with her mother.

The Art as Substitute and Wound

The painting Self-Portrait with Nothing is the novel's central symbol for the mother-daughter bond. The title refers to Pepper—she is the nothing in the self-portrait, the absence at the center of Ula's art. When Pepper learns this, she feels it like a siren in her head. The painting is both an act of love (Ula painted it while trying to return to the moment of holding Pepper) and an act of erasure (Pepper is present only as an absence, a nothing).

The unfinished portrait of Pepper that Pepper finds in the church studio is another version of this dynamic. Ula began painting Pepper but never finished—the portrait is incomplete, just as the mother-daughter relationship is incomplete. The unfinished portrait of Tilda similarly suggests that Ula's relationships with the women in her family were always interrupted, always left unresolved.

The destruction of the portraits at the end of the novel is a complex act. Pepper gives each Ula her own portrait, explaining that destruction may send them home. This is both a mercy and a repetition of abandonment—she is sending the Ulas away, just as Ula sent her away. But it's also a form of completion: by destroying the portraits, Pepper is ending the cycle of creating and abandoning versions of oneself.

Tilda and the Adoptive Mothers: The Surrogate Motherhood

The novel doesn't present abandonment as the only form of motherhood. Tilda, Annie, and Lydia all function as mothers to Pepper in different ways, and the novel is careful to show that these relationships are not simply compensations for Ula's absence—they are their own forms of love.

Tilda is the most complex of these figures. She arranged the adoption, she sent the $100,000 check (with Ula's money), and she kept Ula's paintings on her walls. She stopped speaking to Ula at some point, and the novel withholds the reason until late in the story. When Pepper asks why, Tilda's face is unreadable, and she changes the subject. The outline tells us that Tilda eventually explains why she stopped speaking to Ula, and that she gives Pepper a house key—a gesture of inheritance and belonging.

Annie and Lydia, Pepper's adoptive mothers, are presented as the good mothers, but the novel is careful not to sentimentalize them. They serve Pepper ice cream for dinner when she's harassed at school, they keep cherries on hand just in case, and they build what Pepper describes as a complicated shelter built to withstand a monsoon. But Pepper also keeps secrets from them—she never tells them what she learned about Tilda and Ula when she was fifteen. The nest metaphor is telling: the family is intricately woven from stubbornness, humor, gratitude, and guilt. The guilt is part of the weave.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel's treatment of the mother-daughter bond resists easy resolution. Ula is both cruel and loving, both abandoning and seeking. She left Pepper but also sent money, painted portraits of Tilda from afar, and created thirteen versions of herself out of loneliness. When she's dying, she asks for a grand funeral and explains that she painted many versions of herself because she was lonely. Her last word is the Polish word for dragon—a creature that is both fearsome and solitary.

Pepper's own response is equally contradictory. She's spent her life fashioning herself into a person who didn't care about Ula, who didn't want her love or approval, even though she knew, deep down, she did. She's ashamed of that part of herself, but it exists. When Ula says she thought about Pepper every day, Pepper feels angry—not because she wants Ula's honesty, but because she's angry at herself for wanting the lie to be true. The novel is honest about the fact that abandonment doesn't produce a clean emotional response. It produces a tangle of anger, longing, self-protection, and shame.

The novel's ending offers a kind of resolution, but not a sentimental one. Pepper gives Boot the portrait, plans a collaborative research project to protect Ula's legacy, and reassures Specs (another Ula) who wants to try living alone. The geese taking flight at the end suggest departure and continuation—the cycle of leaving and being left continues, but Pepper is now the one who can witness it without being destroyed by it.

Study Questions

1. How does the Polish coin function as a symbol of both connection and abandonment?

The coin is the only physical object Ula leaves with Pepper, and it serves as a material trace of maternal presence and absence. It's both a gift and a goodbye, a deliberate act of marking that shows Ula's abandonment was not careless but ritualistic. Pepper never wears it, suggesting her ambivalence about the connection it represents.

1. Why does Ula paint self-portraits instead of portraits of Pepper?

The head Ula explains that she began painting a self-portrait to return to the moment of holding Pepper, but the painting summoned a version of herself instead. The self-portraits are a substitute for the daughter she abandoned—she multiplies herself rather than confronting the absence of her child. Each new Ula is another version of herself that she creates and then loses, repeating the pattern of abandonment.

1. What does the title Self-Portrait with Nothing reveal about the mother-daughter bond?

Pepper is the nothing in the title—she's present in the painting only as an absence. The painting is both an act of love (Ula painted it while trying to return to the moment of holding Pepper) and an act of erasure (Pepper is reduced to a nothing). The title captures the paradox at the heart of the novel: Ula's art expresses her love for Pepper precisely by making her absence visible.

1. How does Tilda's role complicate the novel's treatment of abandonment?

Tilda is both the facilitator of the adoption and the keeper of Ula's legacy. She arranged for Pepper to have two good mothers instead of Ula, but she also kept Ula's paintings on her walls and continued to receive paintings from her over the years. Tilda reflects that letting Ula go was the only way she had to love her—love and abandonment become the same act. Tilda's relationship with Ula mirrors Pepper's: both women love someone who left, and both express that love through the material traces of her presence.

1. Why does Pepper feel angry when Ula says she thought about her every day?

Pepper's anger reveals the depth of her self-protection. She's spent her life building a version of herself that doesn't need Ula, and Ula's claim of constant thought threatens that construction. Pepper recognizes that she's angry not because she wants Ula's honesty, but because she's angry at herself for wanting the lie to be true. The anger is a defense against the longing she's ashamed of—a longing that exists despite everything she's done to suppress it.