Cornflower Blue: “She Tore Off My Dress WIth One Giant Slash.”

An excerpt from my book, Rain Dodging:

From Wednesday’s blog:
Oxford’s Special Collections: 
I stood up on a library stool to be able to photograph the largest [pencil skectch] and was promptly scolded by a librarian: I felt like one of the kids! It kind of felt good to be reprimanded. I was always such a good little girl.
Had to be, or there would be trouble . . .

From Rain Dodging

She tore off my dress with one giant slash, catching my twisted arm in my brass purse chain. Only five-years-old, Kathy ran into our bedroom closet, whimpering. Even Matthew cried, begging our mother to stop. I noticed his two front teeth were finally coming in. They looked like upside-down tulips. Embarrassed that my kid brother could see me half undressed, I tried to patch the torn fabric over my exposed breast. Where was Mike, I wondered? Probably at wrestling practice. He had an outlet.
             Her mouth contorted, teeth growing bigger and bigger.
             My silence never failed to make her crazy. She interpreted the silence as indifference, further fueling her rage. She was too incoherent to notice my eyes, trapped in the numbness of anger and frustration. I wanted to scream, to explode, to release my own emotions. I was stuck within myself, glued to the mat before the chance to fight. She was out of control, whipping me with the purse chain. I worried about Matthew and Kathy. Matthew was already a strange kid. Serious. Hiding behind books. Always alone. On the spectrum? And Kathy. Withdrawn. Little Kathy.

               Retreat into your thoughts. Rewind your tape . . .

                We spent my first 8 years in a red-framed wooden house on Saybrook Road until Kathy was born.  My brothers and I spent summers outside. We, three siblings, knew enough to stay away as much as possible from the lady inside.  Next to our house, down a small grassy decline, was a magical forest. Under two weeping willow trees that arched towards each other in the middle of a wooded grove, I played with imaginary fairie friends. An old rock wall was falling apart, so I picked up a few rocks to put them back. Underneath, newborn bunnies gathered cocoon-like, keeping each other warm. I watched, awestruck. The fairies danced. My brother told me to cover the bunnies with the rocks or the little ones would die, so I did.
            We loved searching for endangered praying mantises, too, in the summer, in the empty lot across the street and catching fireflies at dusk with the neighborhood kids. But we all did our best to stay away from Mikey Lipton, the neighborhood bully.
            Winters were different. One gray winter day—every day was grey for half the year—I came home from school, changed, and bounded through fresh snow down the tree-lined street, to hang out with Nancy Wiseman who lived at the other end of our very long block. I loved playing with her on her living room floor, in front of the large bay window. We played together all the time during the school year, pretending we were authors at a roll-top desk in her basement. We never played at my house.
          All the way to Nancy Wiseman’s, I pretend-smoked an imaginary cigarette, the frozen, exhaled air releasing as a steamy vapor. I loved breathing in, too. Hard. The boogers in my nose would crinkle up. It was addictive.
           I wasn’t at the Wiseman’s long when my mother called, screaming at me to come home right away. I could tell I was in for it. A few weeks before, she had tried to throw me out of our station wagon in the Atlantic Mills parking lot by doing rage-induced wheelies, with my door still open. Had I pissed her off by playing hide-n-seek in the circular clothes racks? Even in my little girl’s mind, I knew she was certifiably nuts. Which was worse, torment by Mikey Lipton or living in constant dread of punishment?
            Tragically, my brothers and I modeled the only approach to anger we knew: The violence between us shames me now. Do first memories have any significance for the rest of your life, to how screwed up you become? That is what I would ask them now, more than a half-a-century later.  If I could.

            Damn. My mental retreat ended. The inner tape stopped but my mother’s tirade with the purse chain continued. I could barely stand it. Come on Suze, go back again. I burrowed deeper . . .  

See you next time in The Cabbage Patch…