-Linds
I can see it from my mothers’ eyes: the wretched little bitch I was becoming. At age seven I was already coming home past my curfew every day after staying at the park playing Cowboys and Indians or riding my bike all over town with the other neighborhood kids when it was time to practice violin or piano.
One summer evening I came home at six thirty – five hours after the time Mom told me to be home. She grabbed my wrists way too hard and pushed me into a corner so that the back of my head had a bump later and she yelled in my face lots of words that Moms should never say. I remember she was so close to my face that I felt her spit spatter my face when she yelled. Her eyebrows furrowed together so that she looked like a real live wicked witch. She spanked me hard and sent me to my room without letting me eat anything. “Don’t you DARE come out until you’ve practiced your entire lesson perfectly for one hour. Every mistake is five extra minutes!” This was cruel and unjustified torture. “…I’ll get you my pretty! And your little dog too!”
Well. I’d rather starve. Being alone in my room was dull, and Mommy dearest would have to pay the cost of this grave mistreatment. Gasping for air filled the gaps between my convulsive sobs. I gathered enough strength to scream at the top of my lungs for an exhausting amount of time about how I would do anything to have any other Mom in the world. “I want a Mom who isn’t a wicked bitch and who doesn’t make me practice these stupid fucking instruments… and… and and has things to do besides making her daughters lives miserable!” I stammered. What a mouth I had! More sobs. Deep breath “…Just because you were a loser and didn’t have friends to play with when you were a kid and just because your mom kept you trapped inside all day long doesn’t mean you’re allowed to do it to me! …And as soon as I’m old enough I’m selling that violin and keeping the money and not giving you any of it! I HOPE YOU CAN HEAR ME YOU HORRIBLE WITCH! …I’m calling child services if you don’t stop hurting me and making me play these instruments!” I screamed just for screamings sake, knocked over bookshelves, kicked dents in my closet door, (“Go to hell you awful bitch!”) and stomped on a tube of dark gray paint so it would splatter all over the carpet and the walls. That’ll show her.
Unfortunately, she didn’t learn a damned thing. The cat-and-mouse games she insisted on playing and emotionally draining tantrums I would throw to protect myself became a daily occurrence while Dad was at work. Sure I overreacted at times, and sure there were probably worse mothers in the world somewhere (maybe?), but that was beside the point. I truly was a miserable little girl, and fulfilling my mothers’ wishes of having a musical child prodigy for a daughter was not something that I wouldn’t let happen without a fight. Many hot tears were spilled, and many cuss words and childish insults were shouted at high enough volumes for any happy couples who might walk through our neighborhood to hear on a pleasant summer evening if the windows were open. These episodes were the ‘slightly cloudy’ days in the Scarlett household compared to the ensuing hurricanes and earthquakes of my later years.
I still didn’t want to practice violin or piano, ever. Every day there was a fight. I had to practice for hours each day if I ever wanted to see my friends again. And let me tell you, making friends and keeping them was not easy in seventh grade. Never once did I feel proud after winning an award or the position as concertmaster in whatever orchestral audition I was dragged to. Never once did I harbor any sort of smug satisfaction when the high school kids in the surrounding districts knew my name and whispered to each other and shot me envious glances while waiting in line at 7-11. It wasn’t my accomplishment, it was Gails’. I sure as hell didn’t want to be wasting my weekends and summers flying all over the country and sometimes even
For years I’d concealed the anguish that swept through our house like a fever from my friends and even from my Dad. He had some idea that I was suffering, but he didn’t want to undermine Mom’s authority, and anytime I approached him for help he would be too busy reading the paper in his armchair or filling out paperwork at his desk or playing basketball with the neighbors. On the rare occasion that he wasn’t too busy doing these things and found a few minutes he could spare to hear me out, he would scold me for whining or lying or disobeying my mother and it usually ended up in another screaming match. My friends always asked me why I had to practice all the time since I was already so good, and when I tried to explain myself, they refused to believe that Gail Scarlett had a single mean bone in her body. I didn’t bother trying to convince them and excused myself every day when I was supposed to go home to avoid any humiliating scenes that would surely be the result of my defiance.
If classifying Mom’s neurotic expectations and behavior as child abuse was an overstatement then, the exaggeration became the truth when I was thirteen. I never did have the guts to sell the violin. But one day, after sobbing myself into delirium and feeling particularly resentful about my deteriorating social life and unsatisfactory parents, I did something that she never saw coming.
The violins hollow body made the most delicious cracking noise I’d ever heard when it hit the ground. Its smooth shape lay fractured and helpless in the middle of the room, like an injured antelope awaiting its inevitable doom. I’d died and gone to heaven, the joy of every kid wearing Mickey ears that day in Disney World combined was inferior to my own. My heart exploded with bliss while I destroyed pages and pages covered in thousands of black dots on lines and shredded my lesson books into snow. “I’m king of the jungle, hear me roar!”
I leapt across the field that was my room abandoning my prey to let it suffer in silence, and bounded down the stairs towards the front door with no destination in mind and no intentions of ever returning home. With the door handle just barely within my grasp, mom grabbed me by the back of the neck, whirled me around in a blur of kicking and punching and scratching, and pulled me to the ground by my ponytail. Kneeling on my stomach, she smacked both sides of my face with superhuman strength, shrieking the very words she made me scrub off the wall in my closet last Christmas, and forcing her eyebrows into that unmistakably satanic arch.
A look of horror blossomed on her face when I grinned, opened my eyes, grew ten feet taller, and let a lifetime of revenge take its course.
That was really intense, and quite good. The witch theme is solid, and the antelope imagery and words like satanic and prey drive it home. The intro is a little off just because the rest is kind of a condemnation of your mom right? But the kicker is tight. I like that she yelled all the words that you were forbidden, and the feelings of isolation and the hypocrisy were hardcore, when nobody would believe that you were being so oppressed and your fathers ineffectiveness conveyed your reason for the ‘lifetime of revenge.’ There is an awkward sentence in the fourth paragraph when you said that you wouldn’t let happen without a fight, and I’m not sure about the wicked witch of the west quote, but everything else is really well written, the fights are dramatic, the climax is satisfying, and the feeling of dissatisfaction with your successes due to them being imposed upon you are potent. It’s a dramatic story and your feelings are easy to sympathize with and the reward of the climax is unavoidable. I don’t know about the length but its good.
ReplyDeleteLindsey, this piece is really good. It was really strong. I felt like I could feel your paiin as I was reading it, or at least feel like I was present. I can literally picture the episodes of you and your mom. I would never have the courage to do something like that to my mom even if she was worse. But I'm glad you were able to talk about it and share your feelings of that part of your life. This piece is really grasping and intense. Good job!
ReplyDeleteLindsey- a little longer? Kind of an understatement. This NEEDs to be shorter, but you’re not going to get there in sections. You’re going to have to go section by section and snip unnecessary words till you’re a lot closer THEN look at weakened blocks of text…which is such a bitch to do. You’re thinking like a poet…cus I know you are! That can be a strength, but it can be a weakness too, in journalism, where you need to be very strong and punchy all the time. What you really get here is the emotional intensity of that abusive environment. I guess I just never got that ‘aha’ moment though. It jumps from the problem continuing to never wanting to practice the instrument again, and I guess that’s kind of the point, what with the incredibly ominous ending, but its one rough point to make in a piece this long. Almost experimental…avant… I like that. The cracking of the violin is sweet though. It just doesn’t have that zen-ness to it yet. But it could.
ReplyDeleteLindsey, I really like reading your piece, especially the beginning, which I found I could identify with very clearly. The look mothers have when they first identify the “bitch” that lives deep—or sometimes not so deep—within their darling baby girls is definitely one worth fearing. I enjoyed the dialogue you wrote and the way you captured your childhood ferocity. In the same vein, I felt sympathy for your being forced to play these awful instruments you clearly didn’t have any interest in, and a somewhat ironic compassion in that you had the experiences as a young child to identify your mother as a “wicked bitch.”
ReplyDeleteAt one point I was confused though about the timeline—were you seven or in seventh grade? Or has time elapsed? That was really the only place I got hung up on. The details of your misery are (awful and something no child should be subjected to), but also amusing in retrospect—I respect how you’re able to turn such an awful experience into a story that can be told relatively lightheartedly. The line “sobbing myself into delirium” is so wise; I really liked it.
Lindsey, I think that your piece is very powerful and passionate, which grabs the reader’s attention. I felt really engaged reading this. About the length, I didn’t find it as long as I thought however at points I felt that the plot could move faster. I think you might want to cut up some parts; maybe each paragraph could be reduced. The other thing is that until the very last moment I couldn’t make the connection between the title “Karma” and the theme of the story. I think it has to do more with child abuse and discharge.
ReplyDeleteOverall I think that you main strength with this piece is how you talk about extremely violent situations in a composed way; I think that touches the reader even more.