I have a brilliant
ability. I can forget my own phone number, forget what I went to the
supermarket for, forget what time to pick my kids up after a class trip.
But I can remember excerpts from my very young life as clear as a
festering boil that nags in an unwashed groin.
Perhaps the first memory
is waiting for my older brother to come home from his day at school.
Sitting on the warm wooden floor of the front porch with my doll,
carefully poking tiny morsels of food into her open mouth even though it wasn’t
designed for anything other than an empty plastic bottle. She would later
be unceremoniously cremated due to the stench that I couldn’t smell because I
loved her.
Waiting for my brother loathed me for being born the wrong sex. He’d badly
wanted a brother - a disappointment that worsened when two more sisters came
after me. It made him angry and quiet. Later the guilt of his
sisterly hate contributed to youthful drinking and drugs, then endless therapy
sessions later in life.
Although (at three), I
knew he hated me, the lonely wait for his school bus was infinitely better than
being inside my house.
Today was going to be
worse.
I was in trouble. I
had hidden with Peter, the small ginger cat who was so apathetic and gentle it
took no time at all for me cut his whiskers in an effort to begin my
apprenticeship as a hairdresser.
Oh, the glamour of being a
hairdresser. They wore earrings, ones that dangled. And lipstick.
And they were beautiful - just like I wanted to be.
But poor Peter. When
Mum found him whiskerless my stomach tightened with a pain worse than hunger.
She was too busy for punishment straight away, so I had to wait.
I also remember the first
time I ever saw a horse. Right then I knew that no other animal would
ever be as graceful or as enigmatic - even though I had no idea what those
words meant. Even with the horses enormous size making it bigger than a
cow. I was petrified of cows and routinely peed my undies whenever they
got too close to me - which was often seeing as we lived on a dairy farm.
Still the horse was infinitely wonderful.
Neighs and gallops and
flying manes immensely preferable to bovine munching and staring and swishing
muscular tails in my terrified direction.
I remember baby sister coming home too. I remember Mum’s afternoon naps - where we had to
be silent.
Silent was a big word, and
it meant more than shut-up, or be quiet, or don’t make a noise. It meant
still as a statue, stay away, do not exist for some period of time in the day
so as to not have Mum know I was there, I existed.
One memory I keep in a
little packet. I have lots of these little packets. Not pretty
tissue wrapped ones - with 1960’s Polly Anna style bows mounted on top.
This one is a cardboard box, plain, inconspicuous and teeny tiny
miniscule. I try never to tell it. It’s a conversation killer.
My hair used to be the
sort of fluffy, snowy, fuzzy, immature stuff that had the misfortune of
existing before the availability of hair conditioner; something to soften the
tangles and knots and massive confusion of my pathetically fine blonde mess.
A morning ritual was for Mum to brush my hair. A horror I
anticipated daily.
I recall Mum’s smell.
A mix of morning odor coming from her armpits. And breast milk
coming from her heavy bust. I was much shorter than both, but the aroma
meant Mother.
That morning I stood
patiently, waiting as she brushed my hair. In the kitchen, bare feet flat
on the linoleum tiles. My face nuzzled into her stomach. A stomach
soft from the now four births… a new baby had joined us.
Mum was trying to brush
the wispy white fluff, or at least to tame it into social acceptance.
And I felt, even at my
young age, that her frustration was growing. The strokes became less
delicate and less languorous, not that they had been so before. Tension
was swelling.
I could tell by the tugs,
by her breath, by her disallowing the nuzzling and denying me her warmth - not
just from her body.
Her breath quickened
further. I could hear it come from her nose and it made the same sound of
expelling air that a cow’s nose would. Mum must have been getting mad if
she sounded like a cow when it emptied its lungs, it’s nostrils flaring
outwards - wet and sinewy.
The strokes became less
like strokes and more like pulls, then tugs, then yanks.
Her muttering started.
I knew to be quiet - silent.
I stood still.
Tug, tug, tug.
I could imagine her
nostrils flare outwards - open and scary, like a cow, as her breath shot out of
her nose over me in exasperation.
The tugging stopped -
briefly.
Grunt. Deep breath.
Stupid, ridiculous hair.
Pain from the first hit on
my head with the hair brush. I knew it wasn’t over.
Tug, tug.
Smack.
Grunt.
Shit hair.
Smack.
Do not move. Do not
cry. Do not let Mummy know she’s hurting.
Tug, tug, tug.
Smack, Smack…
Smack-Smack-Smack.
Stupid fucking hair.
Tug-tug
Stop crying, I’m so
stupid. Do not cry. Just breath carefully and she won’t know - just
don’t sniff. Don’t move, don’t cry, don’t let her know it hurts.
My little body buckled
when she finally gave up and shoved me away from her in disgust. I got
away without her seeing my tear stained face and went to the bathroom to brush
my teeth. I tried to ignore the burning pain that stung the top of my
head. I knew there wouldn’t be blood - Mum wouldn’t go that far.
I was too stunned to reach up and feel my tender head - what if there was
blood? I let the buzzing carry on without acknowledging it.
Face wiped clear of salty
water. To be silent meant to not have Mum know I was there. Be
invisible. Tears on my cheeks would mean she had to notice me.
I didn’t want that. Her guilt was easily transferred. Blame
was easily shared. A few smacks on the head with a wooden hairbrush was
nothing compared to guilty anger.
My hair - my fault.
Better to mutely avoid the
area where Mum was nursing baby Brenda.
The day happened without
another mention of the hitting - had I imagined it? I checked later,
while Mum napped and the house was still. In my nap time I reached up and
felt.
A lump was there, the skin
was tender, my scalp felt sensitive from the tugging and pulling.
It never occurred to me to
tell.
Because my hair was evil,
and it, simply, had to go.
As a result, all through
childhood my hair was constantly short. The glamour of hair was
experienced going to hairdressers for consistently short, boyish cuts, instead
of the highly desirable ribbons and bows and lengthy feminine styles of the
girls at school… girls I so desperately wanted to look like. I was Mrs
Brady when everyone else was Marcia.
My blonde fuzz made me the
happy recipient of years of childish questions - ‘hey, you, are you a boy or
are you a girl?’ My indignation of having to tell people my gender was
lost on my mother. In fact it was a source of amusement for her.
It was best not to let her
know you were hurting.
Everything was my fault
though. I was a naughty, bad, terrible girl.
I had a secret, one that
Mum knew and brought out occasionally to explain to others who ever thought I was
good, to prove that actually I wasn’t. I was exposed and humiliated to
friends mothers, aunts and neighbors.
My shame was in the unusual
way I slept.
Every night, because I had
trouble sleeping, because things scared me, especially in the dark, I had made
a ritual of my own. One that made my hair messy and tangled and ugly.
I had caused my own hair problem.
I would wrap my sheet around
my head and rock, and rock, and rock from side to side until I fell asleep.
It gave me comfort.
It stopped any noise from entering my head except the rhythmic gentle
rustling of sheets against my ears. It cocooned me in softness.
See? My fault entirely.
I took full responsibility
for my hair.
Years and years later,
while my family watched a documentary about the need for nurturing of animals,
rhesus monkeys were shown. Ones without mothers rocked themselves from
side to side in a rhythm I knew only too well.
The psychologists
described the rocking as a way the babies had found to give themselves comfort
because they missed their mothers so much.
Mum thought that was
hysterical.
“Oh, Wendy,” she blurted
in front of all around us, “Is that why you do it? Because you miss
me?” She brought it up several times over the following years in my
presence… even when she thought I was too old to possibly do it any longer.
But I wasn’t.
I told you I was ashamed
of it.
I was a fucking rocking
Mummy-missing rhesus monkey until I got married - to my second husband.
The only time I didn't
rock myself to sleep before then was if there was a warm body next to me or I
was too drunk to negotiate the sheets over my head. My secret addiction.
****
One of my brother's old
girlfriends was a mental health professional. She first introduced the
four of us siblings to the diagnosis Borderline Personality Disorder.
We all shared the book she
bought us.
We all agreed, ‘oh my God,
that’s Mum!’
It gave us a reason.
We finally had a ‘why’. The book even gave us a ‘how’ she managed
to be that way.
Finding ways to live with
it was much, much more difficult. Knowing there was a name for it, and
the small empathy we had for her never stopped Mum from being a difficult
bitch.
Luckily by then I was in
my 30’s and had been physically away from her for enough time to finish a
degree, get a job, marry my love, buy a house, divorce, and stand on my bare
feet again; this time in my own kitchen on polished wooden floors.
I know a lot of people are
annoyed by their mothers. I know people have examples of happenings and
subsequent consternation driven arguments.
Even though Mum is shorter
than me by half a foot she can still make my skin crawl in fear. My
decision to stop all contact is confusing to other people unless they walk in
these moccasins. So I don’t even tell people that I don’t see her
anymore.
Silence is something I’ve
been good at for years.
I could take the verbal
abuse she leveled at me. But when it inched its grotesque head towards
my children my decision was easy. I saw the monster coming, and not for
me - a comment, an argument, a look towards my children. That was when I
had to sit down and say to myself, ‘okay, that’s enough now’.
It was time to accept I
could not have a relationship with this woman if I wanted to keep my own
children safe.
After all, what if my
child gets tangled hair? One rhesus monkey per household is enough.
