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Authors: Terry Spencer Hesser
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of the room, slamming the door behind me giddily.
Needless to say, my relationship with my motherbecame more and more strained. My father joked that her reactions to me were caused by PMS, which he defined as Periodically Mean Syndrome. He said not to worry and told me it would pass.
“I hope she doesn’t kill me first,” I said as a joke.
“Me too,” my dad said, but he didn’t sound as if he was joking.
To take our minds off our problems, we decided to go to a carnival together. We should have known better. It was like asking for trouble.
The St. Francis of Rome carnival is a big event in our town. It’s like a temporary Santa Monica Pier or Coney Island, I guess. When we got there, things seemed ordinary. The carnival was crowded with the usual neighborhood people. Both my parents met a lot of people they knew and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Greta and I saw kids from school and took turns on the games. Some of us won ugly little stuffed toys.
After about a half hour of pretending we were having more fun than we were, it was time for the rides. Mounting the stairs to the Octopus, I reflexively performed a quick sign of the cross. I didn’t even really know that I did it. But my mother did.
She grabbed my arm so violently that I almost fell off the platform. “Do that on the ride and I’m going to kill you.” I looked at her crazed expression and saw the fear, futility and helplessness she was raging against.
I could have cried right there, but my sister pushed me up the stairs and into the steel-grated egg in front of us. As the carnival worker strapped Greta and me in, my mother and I locked
eyes.
There was no doubt that she would try to keep her promise if I crossed myself.
I crossed myself. Not just once but again and againfor the duration of the ride. I watched my mother standing on the ground next to my dad, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
“Why, Tara? Why?” was all my sister said, but I didn’t answer her. I just kept praying and watching my mother even when we were upside down.
When the ride stopped, I was frightened. I knew it was going to take a lot more than the threat of a life sentence or even the electric chair to keep her from killing me. I was dead girl walking.
She knocked two people off the metal stairway leading to the ride and opened the door of our cage before the surprised carnival worker could get to us. Her face was a mask of rage as she pulled me out by my shirt. Crying, I tripped on the last stair and fell to the ground. In an instant, my mother picked me up by my arms as if I weighed nothing at all. She then grabbed both my shoulders and shook me and shook me and shook me, crying harder than I did the entire time.
The moment itself was an emotional stew. A blur of colored Christmas lights arced between laughing, screaming, smiling people enjoying themselves. The smells of buttery popcorn, sugary cotton candy, salty sweat and icy fear filled my sinuses as the metal taste of embarrassment trickled down my throat. Heightened but fragmented senses of sight, smell and taste vied for attention against a dull backdrop of humiliation and sorrow.
Before I knew it, my mother had released me and was sobbing into my father’s chest. I wanted to run to her and stroke her hair and tell her it was only a bad dream. But I knew it wasn’t. It had happened. It had happened in front of the whole neighborhood. Shelooked like the saddest person in the world. I was dizzy. And nauseated. My father and sister looked stricken with confusion and divided loyalty.
That moment was the saddest, lowest one of my life, and my mother’s. She was determined to fight for my sanity … even if she killed me. And I was as helpless against her rage as I was against the tyrants in my head.
That night I slept on the floor at the side of my parents’ bed again. I listened to my mother breathing and muttering to herself in her sleep while my father tossed around. I was sorry I’d made her so
Needless to say, my relationship with my motherbecame more and more strained. My father joked that her reactions to me were caused by PMS, which he defined as Periodically Mean Syndrome. He said not to worry and told me it would pass.
“I hope she doesn’t kill me first,” I said as a joke.
“Me too,” my dad said, but he didn’t sound as if he was joking.
To take our minds off our problems, we decided to go to a carnival together. We should have known better. It was like asking for trouble.
The St. Francis of Rome carnival is a big event in our town. It’s like a temporary Santa Monica Pier or Coney Island, I guess. When we got there, things seemed ordinary. The carnival was crowded with the usual neighborhood people. Both my parents met a lot of people they knew and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Greta and I saw kids from school and took turns on the games. Some of us won ugly little stuffed toys.
After about a half hour of pretending we were having more fun than we were, it was time for the rides. Mounting the stairs to the Octopus, I reflexively performed a quick sign of the cross. I didn’t even really know that I did it. But my mother did.
She grabbed my arm so violently that I almost fell off the platform. “Do that on the ride and I’m going to kill you.” I looked at her crazed expression and saw the fear, futility and helplessness she was raging against.
I could have cried right there, but my sister pushed me up the stairs and into the steel-grated egg in front of us. As the carnival worker strapped Greta and me in, my mother and I locked
eyes.
There was no doubt that she would try to keep her promise if I crossed myself.
I crossed myself. Not just once but again and againfor the duration of the ride. I watched my mother standing on the ground next to my dad, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
“Why, Tara? Why?” was all my sister said, but I didn’t answer her. I just kept praying and watching my mother even when we were upside down.
When the ride stopped, I was frightened. I knew it was going to take a lot more than the threat of a life sentence or even the electric chair to keep her from killing me. I was dead girl walking.
She knocked two people off the metal stairway leading to the ride and opened the door of our cage before the surprised carnival worker could get to us. Her face was a mask of rage as she pulled me out by my shirt. Crying, I tripped on the last stair and fell to the ground. In an instant, my mother picked me up by my arms as if I weighed nothing at all. She then grabbed both my shoulders and shook me and shook me and shook me, crying harder than I did the entire time.
The moment itself was an emotional stew. A blur of colored Christmas lights arced between laughing, screaming, smiling people enjoying themselves. The smells of buttery popcorn, sugary cotton candy, salty sweat and icy fear filled my sinuses as the metal taste of embarrassment trickled down my throat. Heightened but fragmented senses of sight, smell and taste vied for attention against a dull backdrop of humiliation and sorrow.
Before I knew it, my mother had released me and was sobbing into my father’s chest. I wanted to run to her and stroke her hair and tell her it was only a bad dream. But I knew it wasn’t. It had happened. It had happened in front of the whole neighborhood. Shelooked like the saddest person in the world. I was dizzy. And nauseated. My father and sister looked stricken with confusion and divided loyalty.
That moment was the saddest, lowest one of my life, and my mother’s. She was determined to fight for my sanity … even if she killed me. And I was as helpless against her rage as I was against the tyrants in my head.
That night I slept on the floor at the side of my parents’ bed again. I listened to my mother breathing and muttering to herself in her sleep while my father tossed around. I was sorry I’d made her so
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