Tainted Orange Juice

How a seven-year-old boy survived his mother’s mental illness

I’m certain that the typical American child doesn’t need a food taster for family meals. My family was anything but typical. Mommy had usually prepared a healthy serving of oatmeal or scrambled eggs for my younger siblings and me. And this was served with a wholesome, unadulterated glass of orange juice. But when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and manic depression, they manifested themselves in unpredictable ways.

I remember sitting at the breakfast table and smelling the orange juice. My eyes fixated on the glass. Why did it smell like bleach? The strange odor gripped my heart and instantly rallied all my senses to focus. My seven-year-old self was learning to fear this woman who was casting an unsettling good-morning grin over the breakfast table.

Our kitchen had always overflowed with love, but it had quickly transformed into a suffocating place. The same woman who had exerted all her energy to push her children on the local playground’s merry-go-round, and who had shaped my artistic mind by guiding my hand to color inside the lines, was disappearing. This imposter shared the same smiling expression, but there was no motherly touch. Her hallucinations had invaded our home.

Mommy was battling the voices inside her head and, with increasing frequency, those battles were bursting through her cognitive barriers. Seemingly loving moments descended into dark interactions. These instances nearly cemented the imposter’s dominance in our household, forcing her nurturing side to dim and flicker.

Breakfasts usually signaled whether the day would be good or bad. On weekends, my siblings and I would often be left defenseless against this imposter when Daddy was at the lab conducting cancer research. On these days, I wandered the streets of Fox Chase, a Philadelphia neighborhood, with my friends.

This group of friends, unaware of what my home life was like, provided a crucial distraction from the turbulent world that I was living behind closed doors. I felt the freest when three or four of us set off on some urban adventure, such as bike treks beyond the boundaries of our block, or ice cream shopping sprees with the money I had found in my mother’s purse. Our shenanigans helped keep my childhood experiences somewhat normal.

Wrestling down streetlight-illuminated hills and pretending to smoke candy cigarettes in empty parking lots provided short vacations from visits by the police department, their arrival coinciding with paranoid episodes.

My friendships taught me how to relax in relationships, while at the same time the invasion of this raging woman destroyed the natural bond of trust between mother and son. When the voices echoed unbearably and her demons became too difficult to silence, it was my friendships that provided the one place where I could breathe.

Sprinting down the block after a round of ding-dong ditch represented more than juvenile excitement. These adventures helped me to develop a sense of self outside of the all-consuming emotional black hole that was my home. Each outing with my friends was a brief attempt to shed the trauma to which I had grown accustomed. It was during these little adventures that the carefree naïveté I desperately needed was revealed.

These friendships also helped me to maintain a level of trust in people. Any deceptions or lies were done jokingly, never maliciously. My friends gave me the power to build a family when my God-given one was unreliable. They also prevented me from completely disconnecting and retreating into my inner world.

Returning home before curfew was a stressful burden. It meant crossing the threshold into hostile territory.

The imposter who tried to pass as my mother saw her children as enemies, blaming us for destroying the life she had dreamed of living. She never failed to remind us of her youthful sacrifices. Sometimes, she grabbed our small fingers and traced the scars she gained while bearing us in her early twenties.

Our only protection when Daddy was away were either stints in the psychiatric ward or her pills.

I always wondered whether Mommy was aware of her transgressions after a schizophrenic episode ended, or if her actions disappeared under an amnesiac haze. She never acknowledged these episodes when she regained her emotional equilibrium and was fully present. I wanted to know, but I was too afraid to ask, and perhaps trigger an episode. I worked to ensure the permanence of her nurturing, maternal self by finding her antipsychotic medication when the imposter hid them. Hunting for prescription pills under couch cushions became a regular chore for me.

I grew up with the fear that my mind would suffer the same fate as my mother’s. Even when I was a child, I debated whether or not to have children. What if I had inherited her affliction? Would I continue her legacy of turning against my children?

Even today, I view orange juice as more than just a refreshing American staple that accompanies a nutritious breakfast. It is a chilling reminder of being a lost seven-year-old boy who witnessed my mother battle her own mind and learned to dodge the shrapnel.