Pleasantly Demented

February 21, 2011

I'm writing for the Red Writing Hood memoir prompt this week.  Vivid childhood memories and what they mean.  I actually hesitated to publish this for fear that it would make me sound whiny and redundant or make it seem as though I have some sort of victim mentality.  That couldn't be farther from the truth.  I just simply like telling stories.  And it just so happens that I have a lot of them to tell.  I'm constantly reminded of the adage that all wannabe writers have heard a million times over- write about what you know.  Well, this is what I know.  I've exorcised these demons long ago.  Today, I'm simply telling a story.  Because that's what I do. 
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Being the oldest child by 3 years, and my parents having split when I was only 5, it's really amazing how many memories I have of that life.  Memories that my little sister doesn't have.  In a strange way, I feel privileged, as though I'm in an exclusive club whose members are only myself and my mother.  In another way, I feel relieved for my sister.  Her little heart was so much more tender than mine.  And perhaps I was chosen as the keeper of these memories so she wouldn't have to carry them.

In my head, the memories I have are like a silent movie that plays on a loop.  Sepia-toned with frayed corners, fading to black.  Hot Wheels cars, a swing set, playing in the snow.  A little girl in a very big world with very big faces and very big voices.  Some good.  Some bad.  Some so nondescript that I often wonder why my subconscious chose to hold onto them. 

I remember living in an apartment in Texas.  There, a family of skunks would faithfully besiege our back porch on a nightly basis, waiting for my mother to feed them our stale bread.  I was 2 or 3 years old.

I remember living in an apartment in Virginia or Tennessee.  I had a best friend named Timmy.  Timmy was a black boy with an afro hair style.  His mom would give us juice and popsicles.  One day, I decided I wanted to look like Timmy, so I painted myself black with charcoal.  Head to toe.  I was 3 or 4 years old.

By the time I was 5, several months before my mother finally gathered her babies and ran, we moved to Atlanta.  It is from this time that I have the most memories of my parents together.  And those memories are of a life nothing short of chaotic.  My father was becoming more and more emotionally unstable and violent.  Being with him at this time, and all the way up to the very last time I saw him, can be best described as crossing a bridge made of eggshells over the entrance to Hell.

I have vivid memories of the screaming.  The crashing.  The crying.  An ashtray thrown against a stone fireplace; drinking glasses, plates, and tchotchkes disintegrating into a million pieces against whatever surface was in their way.  A Big Bang.  The creation of a universe of glass and porcelain and screaming under my feet.

I have memories of my mom rushing me to my bedroom, warning me to stay quiet, and locking the door behind her.  I'd scream and cry and bang on the door, feeling utterly helpless and terrified as I listened to the wailing and screeching and panic in her voice, as I heard the smacking sound of knuckles meeting flesh.  That's a sound you don't forget.  The feeling of weakness and helplessness at such a young age, from a man who was supposed to cherish me and call me his princess, would become a cancer in my marrow and a devil in my brain.  This is the birth of hate. 

But in between his fierce conniptions, he'd put on his mask of sanity and play daddy for a while.  And I have those memories, too, although with a curious undercurrent of strain, perhaps hope unsatisfied.

There always seemed to be a sense of desperation in my mother, a concentrated fervor in her attempt to maintain status quo.  Maintain happy.  Maintain normal.  If he was happy, she'd try to grow it.  Cultivate it.  Make it stick.  But even when he was in a good mood, it was intense, like every electron in his body was vibrating on an unnatural frequency.  An unnerving high.

It's these little things she did to placate him, these silly trinkets of afterthought, that would remind me that I was a child, that would remind me that it's okay to laugh.

Little things.  Like blue mashed potatoes.  She'd use food coloring- sometimes green or red or blue.  And that would be a good day.  Or at least a good dinner.

My dad would shovel a huge glob of potatoes into his mouth.  Puff his cheeks out as far as they would go.  Raise his eyebrows in frenetic anticipation.

I'd clap and giggle and cheer him on.

And in a moment of vacuous abandon, he'd shoot them straight through his teeth.

I would laugh maniacally, stand on my chair and clap my hands until they stung.  A disturbingly familiar intensity, like every electron in my body was vibrating on an unnatural frequency.  An unnerving high.

An incipient intimacy between father and daughter.  A tapeworm he must have slipped in my drink.

It's just a trinket.

An afterthought.

A straw to grasp.

But there they were.  The blue mashed potatoes.  Dripping down his chin and onto the tablecloth.  He would throw his hands into the air in a fleeting wink of fatherhood victory.

And then I'd shimmy down into my chair, sliding forward to reach the table on my ruffled panties, and shovel a huge glob of potatoes into my mouth. 

So I could be just like daddy.