so. Beatings could go on in various increments over several days, sparked by tiny imperfections in my behavior. But I had not been in trouble for anything for some time and on this night she did not wake me from a sound sleep to hit me. In fact, if I remembered it correctly, she was ignoring me. It had been months since I incurred her wrath. My siblings and I had broken a dining room chair by taking turns sitting in it while the other two pushed it back simultaneously holding on to it so that the rider got the thrill of leaning almost to the floor. It was a terrific sensation, just as you were reaching the lowest point, that you were floating somehow. If you closed your eyes the sensation was even more pronounced. I do not remember who was sitting in the chair at the time that the back of it snapped, probably it was me. I remember the sound and I think I remember the sensation of the wood splitting next to my back. I do not think that I have imagined these things. I also remember vividly receiving the blame for the destruction of the chair and the long, brutal consequences when my mother came home from work and discovered our ruinous folly. She used a broken piece of the chair on me so that I was not only thoroughly bruised but had tiny splinters of wood in my skin for days after.
I was not focused on her at that moment, when she glided silently into my room, just on what was in her hand. She was holding a piece of wood, like a little club. I recognized it immediately as having come from that same chair but wondered where she had been keeping it all this time and why. She did not approach me, did not speak to me. She sat down in the chair at my small desk and looked across the room at the windows. She kept the piece of wood in her lap, both hands wrapped around it. I kept my eyes slightly opened, squinting so that I could see what she was doing. She did not move for about twenty minute, then rose abruptly from the chair and left the room. I went to sleep.
The next day at breakfast my mother was almost ebullient. She had gotten up early and made an enormous breakfast. This was unusual for a school day. What was even more unusual was her demeanor. My mother was very nearly dancing around the kitchen, moving herself from stove to counter to table to refrigerator and then back to stove with a fluidity that made it seem, almost, like she was dancing. She made omelets with American cheese, there was toast and bacon and orange juice. We usually ate cereal and milk on school days. She gave me tomato juice, something she knew I loved. She always had a can of it in the pantry but rarely ever gave it to me. She loved it herself and said often that it was her only luxury and that she needed it for the diet she was on perpetually.
Breakfasts like these, as I said, were not common. We ate meals like this on Sundays usually before or after church and my mother did not prepare them, my father did. Neither was a great cook, but my father had some talents in the kitchen. On this morning the food was in fact quite good and I ate every bit of what was put in front of me. Just as we were preparing to leave, my brother and sister and I putting on hats and gloves and scarves to prepare for the winter walk to the school we all attended at the time, I noticed that my hands were not doing what they were supposed to be doing. I was snapping my boots on over my shoes and suddenly realized that I was staring intently at my feet but was not moving. I was hot and felt nauseous. I ran to the bathroom with one boot on and my coat sort of hanging from my shoulders. I threw up as soon as I reached the toilet and proceeded to empty the entire contents of my stomach.
I was definitely sick, of that there seemed almost no doubt, but my mother did not come into the bathroom. I sat on the closed toilet seat when I finished throwing up and wiped my mouth off with a cold washcloth. Some time passed, about ten minutes I think. Still, she did not come in. I slowly opened the door to the bathroom and walked out into the hallway. I thought maybe she hadn’t noticed that I was sick. It seemed unlikely but why would she have chosen not to come into the bathroom? I walked back into the living room confused and still a little woozy. Oddly, I did not feel particularly sick at all. I was no longer nauseous, did not have a headache or any symptoms of a cold but something had attacked my stomach.
I turned the corner into the living room and saw my mother on the couch. When I saw her it became clear that I had done something wrong. I could tell by the look on her face that some infraction had taken place; that I’d somehow managed to deviate from the plan she constantly went over in her mind of how her life was supposed to be, from the picture she held of how our life as a family was supposed to look. It was the same as it always was: she was somehow disappointed and it was my fault. I had no idea though what I could have done. All that had happened was that I was sick. Nothing had been broken and no one outside of our home had reason to believe we were not as polished and prosperous as our neighbors, that our lives were not as rewarding and as fulfilling as theirs (something on which my mother kept a watchful eye). I had not lied that day about anything and I had not yet been to school so my brother could not have reported anything back to my mother that might have occurred during the school day. That was common enough although most of the time what my brother reported back were his own transgressions reassigned to me so that I would be the one in trouble and he would be her defiant hero. I was often her victim and simultaneously the product of their conspiracy.
“I threw up,” I said.
“I know. What is the matter with you?” she wanted to know.
“Nothing, I don’t feel sick,” was the only thing I could think of to say and with that she was off the couch and moving towards me fast. I thought instantly of running but there was nowhere to run to and no one to protect me. In a second it was over. She hit me hard across the face with the back of her hand and sent my entire body reeling into the wooden hutch that took up one whole wall of our dining room, but that was all. She did not make another move. She did not retrieve anything from the drawer in the kitchen that held all her weapons. She did not pick me up by the arm and begin to spank me. She did not hit me again. She just left me there while she sat down on a dining room chair.
“You are obviously sick. I took the time to make a beautiful breakfast for you and you decide to puke it all up. I’ll call the school. You’re staying home today. Hang up your stuff and go get into bed and stay there.” That could not have been it though, could it? She was mad because I wasted food by throwing up? I insulted her by being nauseous after she cooked breakfast? My sister and brother were not sick at all, just me. How could she be angry? Of course, she was not a rational woman. I did not know that then though. I spent my days trying not to be overwhelmed by her, to not be found somehow wanting in her eyes. I tried only to behave and be invisible. I did not yet hate my mother but I had by then begun the long and lonely process of detaching from her.
I did not see my mother for the rest of the morning. As I was getting back into bed I heard her on the phone telling the school secretary that I had the flu and would not be in that day. I was not allowed to stay on the couch and watch television as I normally was when I was sick. After that initial bout in the morning I was actually not sick at all. I felt, in fact, fine. I wanted to go to school but I knew my mother would never let me. At about eleven o’clock she opened the door to my room and asked if I was hungry. I told her that I was.
A few minutes passed and she came into my room with a small plate with a sandwich on it. White bread with butter and sugar sprinkled on, a favorite sweet snack of my siblings and myself. I was thrilled to get it for lunch.
“I put some raisins on it too, just so you get something down that’s good for you, alright?”
“I like raisins. Thanks.”
“I know. Eat the whole thing and maybe I’ll make you a milkshake later.”
I was excited at the prospect of a milkshake. I knew that we had only vanilla ice cream in the freezer, which was my favorite and that my mother would add vanilla extract to it to make it even sweeter. I was almost done with the sandwich before she left the room. She was gone before I noticed that something was wrong. The bread, butter and sugar did not taste right to me and when I looked down at the sandwich I saw little green, black an
d orange flecks. At first I thought that my mother had used the Christmas sprinkles we put on the cookies every year instead of regular sugar but remembered that my sister and I went looking for those sprinkles a few weeks before and found that they had all been used. There were not any sprinkles, of any kind, in the cupboard. I then had the thought that somehow I had cut my mouth or bitten my tongue so I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand but when I looked at it there was not any blood. Then I remembered the raisins my mother said she used to see that I at least had something nourishing for lunch. I thought that that must account for the colors I was seeing, but what, I wondered, could be green?
Then I lifted up the top piece of bread and that is when I saw them. I understood immediately what she had done. There were at least two or three in every window sill in our house. Some long dead, others that might have been alive that day.
Flies.
We always seemed to have them in the house. Not as many in the winter months but they seemed to breed indoors all the time despite the cold outdoors. There were two left whole in the remains of the bread and butter
The Rest Of Me Page 3
