Choking down my fear, I sat down on the steps of the church, put my chin in my hands, and waited. And waited. As the minutes ticked by, my anxiety mounted into panic. Had something happened to Mommy? Had she left me all alone because I was bad? Where was my Mommy?!
At the point where I could no longer contain what was quickly becoming blinding terror, I got up and wandered down the street sobbing, looking for home. I found it easily enough. I climbed up the stairs, jerked open the screen door, and turned the knob on the front door to go in – and it was locked. I didn’t believe it at first. I twisted it both ways. I jiggled it. I beat on the door. When it became evident that no one was there to answer my knocking, my fear truly did blind me: I saw white. For a moment, I thought I would faint. The worst thing that could possibly happen had happened. I was abandoned. I was all alone forever.
I started to bawl. I wailed and spluttered and paced the porch, trying to figure out what to do. I was gasping for breath, leaning on the railing for support as the world spun, when a car pulled up next to the house. The door opened, and out leapt my father’s sister Dorothy.
Registering the state I was in, she ran up onto the porch and pulled me tightly into her arms. “I’m so sorry I was late,” she said into my hair. “Tiffy, I’m so sorry. It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m sorry, baby. I’m really sorry.”
The relief that I was not truly abandoned almost floored me. I clung to Dorothy so tightly my knuckles went white and cried till I slumped against her, exhausted. I would not allow her to move an inch for fear of losing my grip on her. Eventually she had to pry my fingers off her blouse, pick me up, and carry me to the car. She explained to me where my mother had gone, but I don’t remember what she said. I just remember not letting her out of my sight for the rest of the afternoon. I followed her from room to room in my grandparents’ house, trailing so closely she bumped me every time she turned around. And I never again blindly trusted my mother to be anywhere she was supposed to be when she was supposed to be there. I steeled myself for her absence every single day, and I slept even less at night than usual. It didn’t take me long to become a tired, cranky, resentful, fear-riddled mess of a child who couldn’t do anything to my mother’s satisfaction. A bad situation got progressively worse.
The name of the game was Hostage. I christened it thus myself: it wasn’t hard to figure out a name for a ritual that involved a gag, a roll of masking tape, and a belt. Naming the horror helped me a little: it pulled a thousand shards of inexpressible fear into a cohesive whole with boundaries, with rules. I had some kind of power over it after the naming; I knew what I had to do to survive.
Since we lived in town in 1990, it was important that any screaming produced as a result of my mother’s evermore corporal punishments not be heard by the neighbors. It was also important that Matthew not be woken from his nap, lest she have to go care for him and thus disrupt any discipline she was meting out. This is how Hostage was born.
First, the gag. She’d roll up a dirty sock and shove it into my mouth. To keep me from spitting it out, she’d tape over it with the masking tape: and not just a little. She’d unwind half the roll, walking in a tight circle around me and wrapping it around and around my head. Then she’d use more tape to bind my wrists in a supplicant’s position, hands clasped together. Thus bound, I could do nothing but stand before her and wait.
Hostage had one major rule: whatever you do, do not cry. I would say it over and over to myself in my head: Tiffany, don’t cry. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. But my mother knew my weaknesses, and for Hostage she used them.
I was afraid of my father’s belt, so she looped it in her hand and swung it lazily through the air in front of me, bringing it closer and closer with each arc until it brushed my skin. I’d jump like I’d been electrocuted, and she’d laugh: a low chuckle in her throat.
I have forever been possessed of a tender heart: insults and harsh words will bring me to tears faster than anything else. Knowing this, she used her words: I was worthless, I was a disgrace, no one loved me, she should’ve thrown me away the minute I was born, and oh, did she mention how much it would hurt if I cried and she was forced to hit me? I tried so hard not to let my tears betray me. I’d stand there unblinking till my eyes burned like a desert. I’d throw my head back and stare at the ceiling, using gravity in my favor. But my mother was relentless. She’d pace in front of me and hiss out those evil words, caress my forearm with the belt and laugh at my attempts not to break. Against every ounce of my will, a tear would drop from my eyelashes and roll down my cheek.
My mother’s strike was faster than a cobra’s. The very second the first tear left my eye, she’d brand my arm with a long, red welt from the strap of leather in her hand. The pain was so intense, I’d scream behind the gag – which, of course, was the perfect excuse to hit me again. And again. And again.
There is nothing worse in the world than being subjected to torture and being unable to cry out for help. No matter how I screamed, the sound never left the room. Sometimes I’d cry so much the tears would loosen the tape around my mouth so that it would droop, and quick as lightning I’d spit out the sock and start shouting for help as loudly as I could. My mother was fast, though. Often I’d barely get the word out before the sock was back in place and fresh tape applied.
She’d beat me till I started to lose my balance and stagger from exhaustion. Then she’d put down the belt and remove the tape, ripping it from my long hair carelessly, making my scalp burn with pain. Then, as nonchalantly as Becky pushing Tom Sawyer off the bridge and into the river, she’d give me a shove and turn to leave the room. I’d sprawl to the floor and lie there gasping, knowing that if I let a sob escape before she was out the door, she’d turn around and connect the toe of her shoe with my belly. “If I hear one peep out of you, I’m coming back,” she’d say, and then close the door and leave me.
At the click of the latch, I’d descend into a depression so deep it rendered me motionless. I’d lie there, half in and half out of shock, and the world would literally darken and turn so many shades of gray. My body would lose all feeling. All conscious thought would stop. My breathing would slow. I would not blink. I’d stare out the window without seeing anything on the other side. I’d stay in this nothingness, this limbo, for time untold: maybe minutes, maybe hours. It didn’t matter, because in limbo there was no time. Eventually the door would open again and my mother’s voice would issue forth a command, and I’d rise from the floor like a wooden puppet bewitched and do as I was told, silently. I was always incapable of speech for a good while after a game of Hostage. My jaws would not operate, except when I forced them open to obediently choke down my dinner, which tasted like cardboard. My head was a blank space: my mother programmed in orders, and I carried them out robotically. Eat your food. Take a bath. Brush your teeth. Go to bed. I’d climb under sheets my legs couldn’t feel and stare into the darkness, incapable of any more fear. I’d sleep, and dream of nothing: just blackness – impenetrable, never-ending night.
Things got better for a while when my mother started babysitting to make extra money. She was stellar with other people’s kids – still is, actually. When I was in my last two years of high school, she got a job at the Head Start in Loogootee, Indiana, in the classroom with the Special Needs kids. She works there to this day: she went back to school and got some kind of degree after I left for Evansville for my first two years of college, and now she’s a preschool teacher. I try not to think too hard about this level of unfairness on the part of the universe. It makes me want to hack her into little pieces and scatter her over the Northern Hemisphere. Sometimes I still lose sleep over the thought of what she might be doing to those kids, though if I had to guess I’d say she’s a perfect angel. Teacher of the Year. Next in line for sainthood. My mother can charm the sense out of anybody in the blink of an eye. All she has to do is smile, and that’s it: they’re gone, brains and all.
When I was in high school, my hatred for her – she could love other people’s kids, but not me? She could accept their flaws and limitations, but not mine? – was mixed with equal parts of relief. I’d get off the school bus and have an hour with no punishment looming. I could exist in relative peace – grab a snack from the kitchen and sit on the porch writing poems, or sprawl out on my bedroom floor with my homework and turn the stereo up. Having someone else’s children in the house was largely the same. I escaped most of the things she liked to throw at me in private, because as the saying goes, “Little pitchers have big ears.”
The kid I remember most from the time on Plum Street was a little boy named Benjii. He was older than me – eight or nine to my five and six – but he was a stick of dynamite with unruly red hair, blue eyes, and a mass of freckles. He was always doing something so decisively boy.
Benjii would play house with me, but only if he was allowed to be the daddy or the doctor and describe the imaginary bodily functions in as much detail as he could possibly muster. Puke and poop were his favorite things. So was dirt. Benjii also loved to boss me around like I was his own personal slave, but I didn’t put up with it much. We quarreled, and I learned to hold my own in a fight, for which he held some grudging respect for me. Soon enough, we were able to play together quite amicably for long periods of time.
(P.S.: Still backlogging you.)
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