After a while of still staring at the page, there’s a knock on my door. “Hon?”
“I’m busy!” I shout.
She opens the door and pokes her head inside. She has makeup on and the perfume stench gushes into my room. “I’m heading out for a bit, okay? Won’t be late, but don’t chain the door.”
“What about the pizza?”
“You said you didn’t want any.”
“Huggghh.” I sigh loudly. “I would have had some. I’m still awake.”
“Sorry,” she says. “Look, I gotta go. Night night. Okay?” She winks and doesn’t bother waiting for an answer.
I try to go back to my assignment, but now my mind is on my mom and too pissed off to think clearly, so I decide to just turn off the light and go to sleep and wake up early in the morning to finish it.
What is it about mothers that screws you up? Why can’t the story ever be about fathers? Is it because they’re always absent? My friends who actually know their messed-up fathers fall into seven categories: A) The father abuses the mother. B) The father abuses them. C) The father is an asshole. D) The father is a lazy ass. E) The father drinks. F) The father took off. G) All of the above.
All this is so overt. So easy to detect.
And my father? Trick question. Everything but B. So if this was on a test, I wouldn’t be able to answer. Anyway, my father split when I was just a baby, so there is not much more I know about him (or care to know) other than he slept till noon, he was always late, when he spilled something he didn’t clean it up, and he threw temper tantrums every once in a while. I know this because when I do all these things, my mother will say, “You’re just like your father.”
Mothers don’t fit into these simple categories. They are more complicated. They screw you up without you even knowing it. At least with fathers, there’s a definite conflict. A clear and present danger. And, hopefully, a clear resolution. Call the police. Call Children’s Aid Society. Leave.
My mother.
Youngish. Hippish. Pretty.
Had a controlling father who wouldn’t let her go to parties until she was eighteen.
And so she gave me independence at a young age. Instilled decision making. Discussed the rights and wrongs after the first time I trashed my room, at age ten, instead of punishing me. When I was fourteen, she took me to the gynecologist, who inserted a birth control capsule into my arm even though I wasn’t yet having sex. Since I was smoking ganja anyway, she showed me how to responsibly roll a joint and measure amounts. And since I was partying, she let my friends and me party under her roof because it was safer than on the streets.
But she forgot something.
I’m a kid!
My brain is different. There are articles in science magazines about this. I highlighted the points and gave them to her.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Everyone knows this one too.
My mother.
Insecure. Addictive personality. Afraid of conflict.
Had a controlling father who wouldn’t let her go to parties until she was eighteen. Then at eighteen and a half, she moved in with a boyfriend. At eighteen and nine months, she had me. At twenty-one, she had a second boyfriend, who had a small grow op in the back room beside my nursery. At twenty-two, she went into therapy and took medication. At twenty-three, she joined AA. At twenty-four, she went back to school until she got pregnant again with my little brother Bradley, who died when he was six. And then things really got messed up.
Four
Early the next morning, before school starts, I sit in the cafeteria with this guy in grade twelve, Jeremy, and have a coffee. Jeremy is a player, and all the girls both hate him and love him. He’s so incredibly gorgeous and smart, he can do whatever he wants. Him and me are just friends, but we used to fool around every once in a while, just for fun.
We sit and talk about nothing special. I have my English homework in front of me: a blank page. I have been tapping my pen over it for fifteen minutes now, as if the ink would magically spill out and write the composition itself.
“I can write it right now for you,” Jeremy finally offers. “Give me your pen.”