My mother was a hot-house flower. Delicate, tempramental, lovely and fragile. I lived my life in fear of her and in fear for her. I was always afraid that something would break her, and she would die.
Though she didn't grow up in the south, she would have made the perfect southern Belle. Tennessee Williams could have written her. There was something about my mother that made people fight to protect her. Not just men, but everyone. People were driven wanted to safeguard this frail blossom, regardless of her behavior, regardless of her actions, regardless of the pain.
Protect mom was my earliest directive. It was a conspiracy.
My mother was born somewhere in Northern Michigan. She worshipped her father and hated her mother. She named two of her children after her father, as a matter of fact. She was pregnant at 16 and forced, by her mother, to abort the fetus she had named Kevin.
At 18 she married a merchant marine - she married him to get out of the house, she'd always said. There followed in quick succession a little girl named Charline, and a bit more than a year later a son named Ed.
I know nothing of her life in these years... only that her husband wasn't there much. Then her little girl got sick with a brain tumor. Mom never talked much about Char, except to tell me that I was meant to replace her. I would pour through the boxes in our basement, through the keepsakes all parents keep - and I watched in little girl horror as this sister's brain died, bit by bit.... as her spelling and drawing disintegrated from that of a bright 6 year old to that of a little toddler.
While her baby girl was sick, and her husband away, my mother met a man. He was dark, italian, married - a photgrapher who had taken her picture. Three Months later she was on a flight to alaska to meet up with her husband who was stationed there, and Nine months later she gave birth to my brother Charlie (allegedly a bit prematurly). Where my eldest siblings were blonde haired and blue eyed, Charlie was dark. Where they were academic, Charlie was funny. Strangely, Mom always loved Charlie best.
Charline died. As the mother of a young child, I cannot imagine the horror of losing your baby - I cannot imagine watching your bright and beautiful child lose a bit of herself each day until finally she is lost altogether. I cannot imagine doing it alone, as it seems my mother did.
She and her first husband divorced shortly after, and he disappeared into the sunset.
Sometime a bit later, she met my father. I believe they met at an Alcholics anonymous meeting. Why she married him I do not know. He was charming, i am sure... but he was not strong, not tall, not handsome. He was weak, as a matter of fact - and she punished him for it. He loved her, I think. He worked two jobs to buy her the things she wanted, and I don't believe she treated him very well. I was born in 1962, two or three years after Charlines death, and four years after the birth of my brother Charlie.
They were divorced by the time I was two. I hold no memories of this time, only stories told by bitter and angry people.
The facts, as I understand them are that my mother met my stepfather, and he came to live in thier home. And then there was a divorce.
Then came the awful apartments, the suicide attempts, the drinking and the violence and all the horror that followed.
I loved my mother, with the passion that any small child has for her mother. She was beautiful, glamourous, and as delicate as a fine glass vase. I wanted always to make her proud of me, to make her happy, to be the daughter she wanted me to be.
The problem was that the more I strived for this ideal, the more jealous and angry she became. As I grew to womanhood, I became as any other woman - the enemy. It was with contempt in her voice she would utter such grave insults as "No one has to worry about you - you can do anything you want." The words are the words of an encouraging mother, but the tone was always one of hatred.
To please my mother, I tried to become an actress. She never saw a single play. I became a cheerleader, she refused to help sew my uniform. I became president of the choir, she never came to hear me sing. I became a state champion in debate and speech, she missed the awards ceremony. I was in a beauty pagent, she chose that night for a suicide attempt. I was too young to understand that despite her words, my achievment was not what she wanted.
I come from a family of women who hate other women. My mother was the only neice among a large collection of aunties... these women were all drunks, all bitter, and all rather mean mouthed. I cannot remember any of them ever saying a kind word about another woman once she was out of earshot. They would call each other on the phone and gossip about each other, frequently making up stories out of whole cloth, telling lies and spreading rumours and ensuring that someone was always on the outs with someone else. It was their life.
Somewhere around the age of 10 or so, my mother started making these calls about me. I would overhear her on the telephone, telling tales - exagerrations, and occasionally out and out lies about what a monster I was. I was too little to defend myself, and experience had taught me that contradiction was a dangerous game to play with my mother. "But Mom, you said....." would be met by a backhand that could knock your teeth loose. My mother had ways of convincing everybody of everything... only her methods varied. The effect was always the same. Mom always got her way.
The outcome of this smear campaign, of course, was that it cut me off from any help. When the time came, no one would beleive anything I had to say.
So, was this on purpose? Did she hate me so much? Was this woman so very evil that she would not only allow her only daughter to be abused, but would conspire in it for so many years? Did she know her jealousy of me was sexual, was based on the knowlege that her own husband was seducing me, cajoling me, torturing me and abusing me over the course of so many years?
I don't know. I think not. My mothers right hand really didn't know what her left hand was doing. She knew, without knowing. Her disbelief seemed authentic and unshakeable.
But the truth is she pushed me into his arms. She pushed me into that semi. She pushed me into his bed, and well before she finally sacrificed her daughter in order to please her husband, she had cut off all avenues of escape.
Even after all these years and miles, I do not really fear men. My stepfather was a psychopath, a pedophile - a monster. For the most part, thankfully, men have been my freinds, my compatriots, my companions. But women - they scare me.
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