Part 1 of 4: It was when her voice was devoid of emotion that I feared her the most
BY SUEANN JACKSON-LAND — I didn’t know when it started. I still don’t, and probably never will know. My mother changed. Around other people she was cheery, always a bubbly personality. Being the offspring of a master chameleon, I’ve adapted that same mask. I can smile at you with bright blue-gray eyes twinkling, when inside, my heart is in night terrors.
When I was small I wanted to know how I could just have one peaceful day. At one point I took ballet, tap, jazz, acrobatics, piano and violin. I was a Brownie then a Girl Scout. My mother did all the things that showed a mother’s love for her daughter, at least to the neighbors, anyway. Behind closed doors, when my father wasn’t home, was another matter altogether.
I can remember having makeup smeared across my lips and cheeks like a clown because I wouldn’t hold still while she was “making me up” for a ballet recital. Made garish, I watched my tears create streaks in the red rouge on my cheeks.
Or there was the time when I went to McDonald’s and my underwear touched the lip of the commode, as I perilously squatted trying not to fall in the toilet or on my face. I came out of the stall and whispered to my waiting mother what had happened because I knew it was bad. I was soundly spanked until I cried and wasn’t allowed to put “that dirty underwear” back on. I walked around all day, posing for pictures and smiling, being “Doris’ little SueAnn” with no underwear on.
Or there was the time we, my mother and I, spent the entire morning making hand-decorated Easter eggs. She would stain the eggshells with red onions, then we would take a needle and carve out designs on the shell. The last step was to put a pinhole in the top and the bottom of the egg and “blow out” the yolk.
“Careful with those eggs, SueAnn,” my mother instructed. We lived in a split-level white brick house in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I was 6 or 7 or 8 years old. My feet padded down the stairs on the olive green shag carpet. Down the first set of stairs that lead from the living room to the foyer, I just about tiptoed across the slate floor in the foyer to the carpet of the family room.
“Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!” My foot slid out from under me and I watched, in slow motion, as the carton carrying the most precious eggs fell to the floor. There was a dull crunch. My mind raced. Run? No. She’ll catch me and then it will be worse. Run out the front door to Rhonda’s house. No, Rhonda’s mother will ask questions…
Then I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and I looked up at my mother’s face. She was frowning. Oh, no, look at her eyes. When my mother got mad her eyes were frightening. She set her jaw and I knew that there wasn’t anywhere to run.
“I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean it. My foot slipped,” I stammered, trying not to cry. Here it all was. All of that work she went to, and I let her down again. She spent all that time with me and we made something beautiful for Gramam Geshan or Aunt Renie or Ruby and I had screwed it up again. Bad SueAnn. Very, very bad SueAnn.
“Go downstairs in the basement and take those miserable things with you.” Her voice was flat. It was when her voice was devoid of emotion that I feared her the most. Feared her like a trapped animal.
I picked up the open egg carton and the pieces of the eggs, the flakes, that had scattered like shattered memories on the slate floor. I could feel her staring at the back of my neck and I hunched my shoulders to shield myself against the oncoming slap. It didn’t come. I wanted it to come. “Go ahead, hit me,” I thought to myself. “It’ll be over once you hit me.”
Nothing.
I got up from the floor very slowly, thinking that lightning was going to strike at any minute. I walked over to the basement stairs and I opened the door. Below me were six cement stairs and the gray cement floor of our basement. It was a small basement and it was where we kept my pets. I had two pet turtles and a pet guinea pig down there. They would keep me company when the lights went off. The sunlight would come in through the half windows until it got dark outside. Then it would be a scary place.
The lock clicked behind me and Easter was over.
SueAnn Jackson-Land is a writer living in Sudbury, Ontario. She would like to be a chaplain, but is mostly just grateful to still be breathing, to be given the opportunity to learn, to forgive (and be forgiven) and go on.