Time After Time

This is how Priscilla, my mother, talks to me. “Keep your hands to yourself, Susan.” “Stop your whining.” “Get over here!” “Stand over there.” “What do you think you’re doing? You haven’t got the sense you were born with.” “Leave your sister alone. She doesn’t need you getting after her every minute of the day.” “I’ve told you over and over! I shouldn’t have to tell you again! Pick up your feet!” “Serves you right! Haven’t I told you time and time again to look where you’re going?” “Put that away.” “Close your mouth, Susan. You look like a moron.” “I’m fed up with you! Sit still!” “Helpless, hopeless, useless.” “Leave that alone. You’ve no business with things that don’t belong to you.” “How many times do I have to tell you! Pick up your things! Put them where they belong!” I am a toddler like every other toddler, except the person I have as a mother acts more like the babysitter from hell. It starts when I get up in the morning and continues until I go to bed. It’s there when we’re alone and it’s there when the whole family is together. My mother is always cross with me. The abrupt commands and sharp-tongued scoldings go on day after day. Those are the only times she speaks to me, the only ways she addresses me. On a bus, at the beach, in a store, at a neighbor’s house, Priscilla’s displeasure with me is part of the experience. A woman who projects competence and vigor, Priscilla is short, at just over 5 feet tall, with a wide back, substantial arms and legs, breasts that fill her torso. Dark brown hair, curled loosely, falls to her shoulders. Sometimes she wears a ribbon to hold the hair back from her face; it softens her appearance, makes her look more feminine. Pale-as-arctic ice blue eyes have barely a hint of eyebrows and eyelashes. Her nose seems little on a face that has broad, flat cheeks. Her hands also look small, almost delicate with their beautifully trimmed nails. She is graceful with those hands, and dexterous. Priscilla wears a dress or a skirt and a blouse, always with an apron tied around her waist; the apron stays there all day unless she leaves the house. I used see her in pants when she was doing some gardening, or she’d put on a bathing suit when we went to the beach. Not anymore. “I’m too fat. That stuff doesn’t look good on me now,” I heard her tell Daddy one day when he was trying to cajole her into wearing some shorts. “I’ve put it all away for good.” No matter how hot it is or how much floor scrubbing she is going to be doing, she wears a girdle and nylons with the seams in a straight line up the backs of her legs. “Scrwish-scrwish-scriwsh,” the nylon-clad thighs say as her feet tap quick steps across the linoleum to the stove. “Scrwish-scrwish-scrwish,” as she steps back to the sink. She goes about her chores in flat shoes, no jewelry or make up. The exceptions are Sundays, or when visitors are coming, or when we are going visiting. Then she dresses up in what she calls her “good clothes” – usually a dress from the women’s department at Jordan’s or Filene’s – gets out her heels, dons a brooch or a necklace, clips on earrings, pencils in her eyebrows and applies a little lipstick. The signature feature of Priscilla’s presence, however, is her ingrained sense of power and superiority. She does not tolerate being challenged or denied, thinks little children should mind their mothers every minute of the day. If she sees me pushing food around my plate without eating anything, or climbing up on the couch, or putting my hand on a curtain as I look out a window, she will stare a hole through my eyeballs without flinching and break my will with a snap of her fingers. The scolding is unnecessary. Her countenance speaks loudly of her displeasures and her disapprovals. A repertoire of gestures – arms akimbo at the apron’s waist, the emphatic right toe tap against the floor, the dismissive flip of a hand – telegraph her impatience and her unwillingness to put up with nonsense and distractions, especially from me. She wears her preconceived notions about me the way she wears that apron: as a wall I’ll have to penetrate before someone of my filth can have access to a mother. Her demeanor leaves no uncertainty about my inferiority, my mewling weaknesses. “What are you doing out of your seat? Did I tell you you could get down?” “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your feet off the furniture?” “You keep that sweater buttoned up, you hear me?” “Get your fingers out of your mouth.” “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Get a move on, Susan. I haven’t got all day.” “Haven’t I told you not to put your sticky hands on the chairs? Haven’t I? Get away from there!” “I’d like to know how that dress got so wrinkled. You’d think I had nothing better to do all day but wash and iron your clothes! When are you going to learn?!” If l do something that makes Daddy laugh, right away I look at Priscilla to see if she is laughing, too. Usually she’s staring at me with cold eyes, her lips in a straight line. One time I caught her off-guard with the giggles – before she remembered that it was me who did a childishly funny thing and that she doesn’t want to ever, ever, ever show that she feels anything but animosity and scorn for me. The minute she saw me looking at her, she wiped all signs of enjoyment from her face. The mask of the anti-mother stared back at me. She needs to make everything about me appear foul. I can never anticipate what will set Priscilla off. It could be scuff marks on my white toddler shoes, or losing a bow she’s put in my hair, or getting crumbs on the floor. One minute she’s laughing with Penny or whistling the tune to a song being played on the radio, and out of the blue she catches sight of me, whips around to face me squarely with a pitiless stare and says in the voice of an army training officer barking at new recruits, “I’ve got better things to do with my time than pick up after you all day. Now get out of the kitchen. I don’t need to have you underfoot while I’m trying to get things done.” She is always trying to get things done – on the move, energetic, industrious, the epitome of a suburban homemaker in her early thirties. Priscilla organizes her chores into daily and weekly plans for getting it all done: vacuuming, dusting, washing the kitchen floor, cleaning the bathroom, hanging clothes on the line, cooking, baking, ironing. A talented seamstress, she makes many outfits for my sister and me as well as dresses and aprons for herself. Everything is done to such a high standard a machine could not do better. Her desserts are so beautifully executed they look just like the photographs on the covers of Better Homes and Gardens. She turns out dinners that make Daddy sigh with satisfaction as he sits back in his chair, splays both hands across his tummy and says, “Mummy’s a good cook.” Priscilla is indomitable, formidable in every regard. She is so smart and self-disciplined that she completed a two-year course of secretarial studies at Burdett College in 6 months. Before she married, she had been an executive secretary for several years. She is driven to achieve everything to perfection and devotes herself to taking care of her household and her family. Except for me, that is. She wishes I didn’t exist.