I am setting to work carving up a cantaloupe into little pieces to put into Tupperware containers to put into the fridge. This cantaloupe has been sitting on my kitchen counter for long enough that I have to peel away and carve out the areas where it has gone too soft, where the rot has attracted all the dozens of fruit flies recently invading my apartment. I am not using a cutting board like my mother always told me to do; I am cutting it up right on the Formica counter, letting the juice, the seeds, the skin drip sticky—something I promise myself to clean as soon as I am finished with this task.
The apartment is silent. My cat, Maxwell, has gone outside to hunt or go to the bathroom—whatever cat things cats do when humans are not watching. Maxwell is the only other occupant of this place. I live here alone.
When I was a teenager all I wanted was a place of my own away from my mother, all her bipolar mood-swings. Tiptoeing past her room because I’m unsure if her mood is crazily happy or crazily angry, not wanting to be her punching bag—not physically, not mentally. Sometimes I wish, in these silent moments, that my mother had done more to me in a physical way. That I had scars to prove the neglect, the abuse. Silent abuse, mental hurt, is so much harder to map out on ones body, but it scars just as deep, mayhap deeper.
Now that I am on my own, I actually miss her. I do not speak to her anymore, we had so many arguments that I announced myself through with her brand of family, her brand of sadistic love. There were still the good times, I know that, times when she and I would have a girls day out. On those days I pretended to be someone else, a game of fantasy dress-up, to be her perfect daughter where nothing bad had ever happened between us. In my acting part I loved her completely—honestly felt it—but when we were home, the glow of the outing faded, it was all back to normal.
My mother has always hated the real me. So for years, I had to hide myself.
Now that I am on my own, I no longer have to hide. I am myself through and through, but I still miss her.
There is something about a mother that is comforting to a daughter, no matter what may have happened between the two of them. No matter the hate, the lies, the hurt, there is still the love. Sometimes I feel that the love I still have for my mother is what makes me hate her the most—that no matter what she does to me I will always love her. For that I can no longer speak to her, more then anything. She abused that undying love and knows it.
Sometimes, though, in these silent moments, I feel like it was I that abused her love.
The fruit flies are trying to alight on my cantaloupe, and I wave them away with the long kitchen knife I use. I love long knives, how they glimmer in the light, how quickly they finish a task such as this. Long ago, when I still lived with my mother, I sometimes imagined taking one of these long knives and plunging it into her neck, into her chest, into her stomach. I imagined hearing her scream, and smiling, telling her sweetly, “Now you hurt just as much as you hurt me.” These imaginings burned in me, and when I remember them they make me shake. Shake so bad that I drop this kitchen knife I am using—not as fine a knife as the ones my mother had, but good enough—and grip the edge of the Formica counter.
I struggle with myself for a few minutes and, through patience, manage not to cry. I promised myself a long time ago I would never cry for her again.
I have successfully banished the bad thought into the back of my mind. I continue to chop the cantaloupe into small squares, because small squares fit better into Tupperware containers. My hands do not shake. It is only my mind that now trembles, shaken with the aftermath of an emotional earthquake—the bad memories, the bad thoughts, always do this to me.
Now my mind goes back in the years, back to being barely an adolescent. When I snooped so much. Would read my mothers journals, go through her jewelry, find things that I thought were precious. I remember finding, in the top shelf of her closet (having to stand on a stool to get up there) a green folder. A beautiful shade of green, worn to nearly white on the edges, and filled with pages and pages of paper. I sat on the stool in her closet, not scared of being found because I knew she’d be at work for another three hours, and read the pages inside of the folder.
They were stories.
Little short stories that my mother had written when she was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen (she had me that year), and nineteen (my current age at this writing). I remember being ten and being amazed, thinking that my mother had written the most wonderful things in the world. They were all story-starts, the beginning of something without an end, but there were marks by her teachers in some cases that said, “Excellent work!” and “I really enjoy your style, Christine!”. My mother had been adored, I thought, by her teachers. She had excelled and done well.
And I wanted to follow in her footsteps.
At ten I had already written many things. At ten I had read many books, at my mothers insistence that the television was an ‘idiot box’. My teachers always told me I read at a high school level when I was in grammar school, and now they were telling me I almost read at a college level. I was their little protégé. But my mother was better at writing, I saw. I wanted to be better then her.
So sometimes, in these silent moments, I feel that I abused my mothers love.
I went into her room, into her closet, and stole her dream.
I became a writer. Am still a writer to this day. I have written thousands of pages more the my mother in nine years then she has written in two decades. I feel proud of this when I’m in these silent moments. I feel like rubbing it in her face. I feel like telling her, “You’ve done nothing with your life but make children, and make horrible mistakes with them, and see? See what I have done?”
And then I remember, in these silent moments, that it was her that made me a writer. My mother that encouraged me to read, my mother that originally—until it turned into a competition—urged me to write. My mother that, for the most part, supported my craft.
In these silent moments, I remember the horrible times. I remember my mother screaming at me that I would never make anything of myself. I remember her slamming my head into the edge of a Formica counter—like the one I am currently using—when I did not make juice fast enough. I remember bleeding. I remember her dragging me out of the car by my hair. I remember her kicking me in the ribs. I remember her telling me I would be nothing. I remember her telling me I was a loser, that I would never get to where she is now, with her three bedroom house and loving (child molesting, child raping) husband.
In these silent moments, I remember who made me, who carried me in her. I remember that my mother was younger then I am when she had me, that it was so very hard for her to deal with. That she was young, she was stupid, that she did not know any better. That I should be thankful she did as good of a job as she did.
I remember the green folder, I remember thinking I could do anything, that I could do better then her, and I think—
Maybe we abused each other equally.
