November 2003 Issue - Essay # 7
Blue
Stripes
By Charlotte
Stephens
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When my mother tucked me into bed last night, I looked into the closet and saw all those awful dark shadows- monsters- and was terrified that they were going to take her away from me. I always make her hold my hand when the bedroom is dark at night. She thinks it’s because I’m scared of the dark, but I’m really protecting her from the monsters in the closet. I hate being away from her. I cry every time she leaves for work, even though she says I’m too old for that. I love her more than anyone in the world. Most days. But then there are those days when there’s just something different about her. It’s like she just wakes up some mornings and decides she doesn’t want to be here in this house with me and my sister. Like that one time when I was four years old. I know I was about four because it was before I started school. And Audrey was still just a baby. She was yelling and screaming about something, I don’t remember what. But what I do remember is her screaming that she hated kids, she wished she could just stomp them into the ground. That’s exactly what she said. And I remember how mean her face looked and how her hair was flying straight out from her head like my Raggedy Ann doll and how big and black and scary her eyes were. I stood staring up at her, scared to death, wanting more than anything to be able to disappear so she couldn’t yell at me anymore. That’s one of the first memories I have of my mother. The day she yelled at me that she hated kids. Today’s
another one of those days. She woke me and
Audrey up screaming this morning, saying we needed to get our lazy butts
out of bed and get ready for church.
We always made her late for church.
The air had that heavy feeling in it, that feeling it always has
on days when we’re late for church or school, or when the house
isn’t clean— the days she hates kids.
I accidentally went back to sleep for a minute, and when I woke
up I thought for a just a second that her yelling had been just a dream,
that we weren’t late for church again.
But then I felt that thing in the air, that heavy feeling that
was always there on the days that she hated us.
My fourth grade teacher used to say that the air sometimes felt
thick because it’s so humid in Arkansas, but I always knew it was
because of my mother. I sat up in bed and felt the air, as thick as
honey but not at all sweet, pressing down on my shoulders.
I looked over and saw that Audrey was already out of her bed, and
a feeling of dread clenched my stomach.
Before I had a chance to scramble out of bed, she came into the
room yelling. “You
get out of bed, now! I’m
sick and tired of ya’ll kids makin’ us late for church.
All you ever do is sleep. Get up and get dressed!” She jerked a
pair of white pantyhose out of my drawer and yanked them over my feet
and up my legs. I thought
for sure she was going to rip them.
Then she told me to hold up my arms, and she pulled my favorite
blue and white striped dress down over my head so hard I thought it
might pull my ears off. She
told me to get in the bathroom, where she tried with all her might to
pull every hair I had out of my scalp with the brush.
I saw that all too familiar look in her eyes, her pupils dilated
so much that her eyes were almost completely black.
She no longer looked like my mother, but more like an alien.
A mean alien in a puffy-sleeved dress.
She yanked my hair back with the brush, scraping my ears and
forehead with the bristles, sprayed it, told me to get in the car-hurry!
After I pulled on my white sandals, I ran toward the screen door,
shoved it open, and ran onto the porch.
“Front!”
I yelled, and raced my sister down the wooden steps and to the car door.
I won. “You
always get in the front. I
never get to sit in the front! Mama,
tell her to let me in the front,” Audrey whined. “Just
shut up and get in the car!” she
screamed at us. We
got into the car, where the air was even thicker than in the house.
She cranked it up, spun it around, and sped down the driveway.
But as soon as she pulled onto the highway, she slammed on the
brakes. “Oh,
just forget it! It’s too
damn late to go!” she shrieked. I
cringed in my seat, trying to make myself invisible, wishing that just
this once I hadn’t beat my sister to the front seat.
All I wanted was for her not to blame me this time.
I didn’t want the world-ending catastrophe of being late for
church to be my fault. Despite
my best efforts to make myself invisible, my mother turned her head and
glared at me with her huge, black alien eyes.
“Get
out of the car!” she screamed at me.
“You’re walkin’ back to the house!” Holding
my shiny white Sunday purse in my hand, I timidly opened the car door
and stepped my white buckled shoes onto the grey pavement.
She turned the car around in the middle of the narrow highway and
screeched past me back up to the house.
Now
I’m walking, embarrassed, up the long dirt and rock driveway in my
blue and white striped dress, wondering how the same person who tucked
me, her ten-year-old daughter, into bed last night could now hate me so
much that she would rather watch me walk up the driveway in her rearview
mirror than let me sit beside her in the car.
If only I had gotten out of bed earlier, it might not have been
my fault this time. Maybe if
I hadn’t sat in the front, I might not be walking right now.
But then Audrey might be the one walking up the driveway, and
I’d be the one in the car listening to whatever she’s yelling about.
The tears running down my cheeks are causing my hair, which she
violently brushed and hair sprayed just a few minutes ago, to stick to
my face. I
hear her screaming at my sister as she gets out of the car and slams the
door shut. I walk slower,
dreading having to return to the house.
What’s the big deal about missing church, anyway?
It’s not like it’s any fun.
She doesn’t even act like she wants to go, but more like she
has to. I’m never going to
church when I grow up. And
I’m not making my kids go, either. I
know she’s probably in there right now yelling at my sister about how
messy the house is, making her clean our room as a form of punishment.
As I walk farther up the hill to the house, I can feel the air
get heavier, pushing down on my feet, making me walk slower.
I know she’ll eventually calm down, and she might even
apologize and give me a hug and say she loves me— she does that
sometimes. I’ll say I love
her too, and I’ll smile and pretend I’m OK and that it never
happened. Her pupils will
shrink back down to their human size, and she’ll tuck me into bed
again tonight, and I’ll hold her hand so the closet monsters don’t
take her away, and everything will be fine.
Except that I’ll still have to walk around with the tight
feeling of dread in my chest, always waiting for the next time I mess
something up, waiting for the next day she hates us. |
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Author's Biography Charlotte
Stephens is a college student studying writing in southeast |
Essay
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