The Night Mom’s Jealousy Reared Its Ugly Head

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you ~ Maya Angelou

“Would you care if I die?”

The sudden outburst in the middle of our conversation flitted above my head. A hummingbird of pitiful words flying, pecking their way straight into the still thick air between us.

I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t answer Mom.

Stunned by a question I was unprepared to answer, but knowing the inadequacy of yes or no to express exactly how I felt left me speechless. I was growing into my truth — no longer content with being the fearful little girl scared to speak up for herself to an abusive, narcissistic mother.

After a decade of marriage, I had entered a new phase of discovery through my mind and heart travel seeking answers to childhood quandaries and life’s biggest questions. I longed to know the reasons behind everything I had experienced.

Soon to learn, there would never be a straightforward discoverable reason for every single thing that ever happens in life. The universe is a magnificent tempering machine, spinning mysteries like fluffy cotton candy. Nothing piques my taste buds more.

My mind stuck in a sifter of gray chunky matter — there lacked a clear pathway for the right answer to flow from my head, filter through the many tiny holes in my heart left decades ago.

Who would want to hear their death wouldn’t matter?

Perhaps my silence spoke more than I could ever say out loud. Mom’s modus operandi to shift the attention to herself, garner sympathy — a classic narcissistic chess move.

Checkmate — I didn’t fall for it.

For years I had failed to liquidate the pricey real estate of resentment housed inside the bastion of my being over an incident that rocked my psyche, twisted my emotions sideways, leaving me devastated in its wake.

I was slowly putting it on the market, allowing resentment to eek its way out through an open house of mind and heart on weekends when she visited for my own self healing.

They often turned into mini therapy sessions after a glass or two of liquid courage. Not always pleasant.

Mom had moved from Las Vegas again to be closer to me. She reasoned if something happened to her, I wouldn’t need to travel — how thoughtful. Translation — so I could be close enough to take care of her in her old age.

This select weekend I asked her what the hell she was thinking when she jumped me from the back, pounded me with her fists, and pulled my hair like I was her worst high school enemy who had stolen her man two weeks before my college graduation in front of my boyfriend. I was almost 21 years old.

She stunned me with her nonchalant answer. “I don’t remember.”

“Seriously, you have the luxury of forgetting what I can’t help remembering?”

I could feel my blood beginning to boil. It’s difficult to work through something if the other person claims amnesia. I’ll never know if she was truthful and the blanket apology for everything all at once was even more difficult to digest. I felt cheated out of an explanation, excuse, or at least a dumb reason.

A Sunday night in May, 1981

My boyfriend and I were sitting on the love seat a few feet away from mom as she sat drowning in the strong amber elixir I had fixed for her moments before — she was on her third round.

We had laughed about her generosity when she was drinking — I thought I’d speed up the transformation. I asked for her Nordstrom credit card.

Her eyes glazed over. I could see fire rising, darting towards me.

“No, I’m not giving you a goddamn thing.”

“Why? I’m graduating in a couple of weeks — I need a new dress, mom.” I may have sucked my teeth and rolled my eyes. Then got up from the loveseat, walked past her into the hallway towards my bedroom.

She pounced on me as I entered the doorway. Both of us, flabbergasted — my boyfriend quickly separated the green eyed monster and me as I screamed bloody murder.

“Mom, stop!”

It had occurred to me she was envious. I didn’t know it was common back then for mothers to be jealous of their daughters. The signs were there. I could sense the rage bellowing from a pit somewhere deep inside her soul.

A rocket of demented emotion hurtling into space — coming face to face with a lifelong dream of her creation, the fruition of her clay sculpted daughter who embodied everything she ever wanted to be in her life and everything she wanted me to be in mine, crystalizing in a flash of light, blinding her sensibility.

Through intense anger and sorrow, I never once raised my hand to her — only covered to protect myself. It took the restraint of my Catholic school girl upbringing.

Tears streaming down my face, disgusted, embarrassed, and shaken, I couldn’t look at her and would always see her as less.

I grabbed a jacket, flung open the front door and ran out of the house with no intention of ever returning. We asked my boyfriend’s mother if I could stay with them until I figured out my next move.

The problem being, I didn’t have a next move. I had already moved out of the dorms, back home.

What was I to do with my grandmother and her sisters coming for my graduation in a couple of weeks — call and tell them my mother had lost her mind? Because that’s exactly what I thought.

Mom called my boyfriend’s house all times of day and night, wanting to talk to me — crying to his mother. I refused to talk to her — snuck home to get clothes during the day while she was at work.

Then one night my boyfriend’s mother called me into her bedroom. It had been a week and a half. She motioned for me to sit on the bed next to her and hugged me close.

“I think you should talk to your mother. She’s worried.”

Probably worried I wouldn’t graduate and make her look bad, I thought. I also thought, there’s no way I’d let her ruin all my hard work in school nor would I rob my sweet grandmother of seeing me get my college degree.

I took her call the next time and had nothing to say. She apologized and sounded miserable as usual after her rage fest, begged me to come home so my grandmother wouldn’t worry.

She wanted to pretend nothing happened. When I went back home, I still couldn’t look at her, avoided eye contact, but I went along with her charade to spare my grandmother any pain, who knew instantly when she arrived a few days before graduation something was awry.

We never spoke about it again. The pain wriggled itself deep inside my heart, compartmentalized with all the other childhood hurt that has finally seen the light of day through my soul’s self clearing excavation. I left home a few months after graduating and never looked back.

Did I care if Mom died? By grace, I helped prolong her life as her lone caregiver until the lights went out forever and the spirit summoned her home.

I think I cared.