My mother taught me to write in cursive before other kids had managed to scrawl their names in crayon. By the first day of kindergarden I could count past 1,000. We colored together, and did puzzles and word games, and she made me learn a new word everyday. My mother only has a high school education, but she instilled in me the love of reading as far back as I can remember. She was funny, beautiful and vibrant. And then, she began unravelling. Slowly - as if a part of her soul had been snagged, and then more quickly and violently.
As I mentioned before, my parents divorced when I was just a baby. At about age two my father remarried. My mother was desperately afraid that he would get custody of me (as she was a single parent) so she married - literally within a week - to her boyfriend at the time. It was not a good move on her part. She was so afraid of losing me that she did the only thing that she thought would save "us". To be honest, it was really the beginning of the end.
They fought - horribly. I remember after my brother was born, my stepfather beating her in the face, holding her down and spraying windex in her eyes. I remember cowering over my baby brother protecting him from the shards of glass that exploded off the wall when he threw an ashtray at her. I remember him sugaring her gas tank, breaking into the apartment when we moved out. I remember him kicking in our apartment door and taking my brother (then age 3 or so) away. We were watching Circus of the Stars, and it was so cold that night. We were curled up on the couch beneath a scratchy blue blanket with satin edging.
My mother was struggling to support us, and I know two children on her minimum wage salary must have made it nearly impossible to make ends meet. During their divorce, when he requested custody - she was penniless. She was working two jobs and to be honest, I think in a way she was just too tired to fight anymore.
My brother never really knew his mother. He didn't know how funny she could be... how the sun made her skin the color of bronze. He didn't know how comforting it was to curl into her arms - or how green her thumb was - she could make anything grow. He didn't know how creative she was, how much she loved to read. He didn't know how much she loved spicy food. He didn't know how tender she was - or what a skilled artist she was. He just didn't know her at all.
But, after about third grade I didn't really know her anymore myself.
She remarried (round three if you're counting) and unfortunately I seem to have acquired her horrific taste in men. She met him at work, and was forced to resign her job because of a nepotism policy. Her marriage lasted only a few months before he started hitting her. She was madly in love with him, and stayed - hoping that he would love her the way she loved him. I remember coming home from my dad's house one Sunday and all the furniture in the house was gone. He had gotten drunk and literally smashed it all to pieces with an aluminum bat. When he was done with the furniture, he turned to her and used the bat on her face, and then he broke her arm. They never told me what happened. She lied and said they had decided to sell the furniture. The furniture we had just gotten not a month or two before. There were still shards of glass from the curio cabinets sunk deep into the plush carpet. I knew. The entire side of her face was black. I knew she didn't just fall. If there's one thing I didn't get from my mother it is my klutziness.
He started having an affair with another woman - with the same name as my mother. He broke her down, and made her believe she was worthless. He flaunted the affair. He pointed out her failings. He made fun of her in public. In order to deal with the broken bones [literally] she turned to other outlets for her pain. She started having an affair with alcohol.
I would find empty vodka bottles hidden in my closet amongst my sweaters. He moved out, and she moved on to prescription painkillers and alcohol together. Then it got worse. She started blacking out. We had to move out of our house and were forced to jump around from apt. to apt. I became the parent. I walked to the store and bought groceries. I walked to school. I think we lived on cheetos, pickles and bologna for about a month one time. I did the laundry. I wrote the checks for the rent (I didn't realize you had to have money in the bank for them to clear). I forged her name on my report cards. She was usually drunk by 10:30 in the morning. If she didn't drink she would have horrible seizures and hallucinate.
My father tried to get custody of me. I was afraid to go live with him, afraid of what would happen if she didn't have anyone to take care of her. She checked into detox. We had to go to family meetings and the therapist told me it was my fault. Me. The chubby little ten year old. It was my fault.
She got out, and I went back to live with her. She was sober maybe two or three days. We were living in a run down apartment across the street from the hospital. She started hallucinating, and woke me up in the middle of the night and threw me out of the house, locking the deadbolt behind me. I was barefoot in my nightgown, and it was snowing. I begged and pleaded with her to let me in. She thought I was the police -coming to arrest her. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to walk through the ghetto to find a phone and it was so icy. I fell asleep on the porch, exhausted from shaking. She let me back in the next morning. She thought God was talking to her. She drove me to school shaking so bad from d.t.s that she could barely keep in the lane and dropped me off and started driving to a mental institution. They wouldn't admit her.
Over the next several months, she went back into treatment, and then out, and back in. This "program" was the most dysfunctional place she could have been. It's no wonder she didn't stop. The doctors were sleeping with the patients (I learned this from later reading her journal). She met a friend named Linda - who was in for alcohol and narcotics. They got out and we moved into a hotel with Linda for awhile because she was hiding from her husband. They started drinking and went on a huge buying binge at Macy's. I learned later that her husband finally found her. He killed her - and set her body on fire. She was buried in an unmarked grave.
On her last stint in the treatment facility, she met a man there who was in trying to recover from a heavy duty narcotics addiction. They started up a flaming romatic relationship while still hospitalized. When they got out, he moved in with us. And so did another addiction - cocaine. His brother was a dealer, and soon she was selling everything we had to feed the desperate need she had for more.
Aside from cocaine, he also had an affinity for other - more despicable - more frightening things. I would wake up in the middle of the night when he would come in my room - the hallway light outlining his shape. I tried to pretend to be asleep - hoping he would just leave me alone - my heart pounding with fear. Most of the time, he just sat there next to me. Occasionally he would lift the covers to absent mindedly stroke my feet. My heart pounding... I would pray... beseeching God to end this. My prayers went unanswered. I would cry softly into the pillows until he was done. He never said a single word.
I never told my mother what happened. I never told anyone. It was so horrible that in a way I thought that I had dreamed it up. I still shudder to this day when someone touches my feet. On the hottest nights, I still sleep with blankets on - afraid that even a part of my foot would poke out of the covers.
Finally - I had enough. She was passed out, and I went through the house and took every vodka bottle she had and stacked them on the coffee table. They were hidden in the plants, in the couch cushions, everywhere. I left a note - "this has to stop."
When she finally came to, she was infuriated. She was screaming at me - and I snapped. I slapped her hard across the face. So hard that it knocked her down. I was so full of rage - her addiction had stolen my childhood. She retailiated. It's the only time in my life that my mother ever hit me. She never even spanked me as a child.
My meager belongings had been packed for weeks in my closet. I told her I was moving in with my grandparents. She started throwing my boxes over the balcony into the parking lot below. She told me she didn't love me. That she never had.
I didn't talk to her for a long time. Without me to pay the bills on time, she was evicted. She lost her job, and bounced around sleeping on friend's couches, and then soon she had no one left to go to. Then she lived in her car. I didn't know if she was dead or alive.
She finally cleaned up. She stopped using on my 13th birthday. She stopped drinking soon after that - and has been clean and sober ever since. The beautiful glint in her eyes is gone. She is hollow now. Our relationship is still extremely strained. I love her - she is my mother after all. She doesn't remember about three years of what we went through. I do. I remember - but I forgive her. In a lot of ways, I think it's made me stronger. But there is a part of me that is still so angry.
I am afraid. I am afraid like other habits of hers that I have, such as the way I write, the hand gestures I make - that I will develop this addiction as well.
I had surgery on my hand this morning to repair a wound that isn't healing properly. The doctor told me to take 4 500 mg. of vicodin a day to ease the searing pain radiating up my arm. I don't even usually take tylenol. I'm too afraid to take this. Of the 20 pills he gave me last time, I've only taken a tiny portion of them - and only then when the pain was so bad that I thought I would black out - and then I would split the pills in half.
My hand is throbbing. But I wear the pain like a badge of honor. I have broken the cycle. I have managed to escape.
It could have been a lot worse.
