Chapter 12 #2
I always hated when I gave in to my desire to be rude to her.
I still remember the first time I’d ever talked back to her.
It was in high school. Before then, I had always responded to her with sweetness or silence, hoping indefinitely that she would see how much I loved her.
As I did every night, I cooked dinner for both of us.
That night, I had tried a new recipe that Aunt Sue had made the Sunday before.
I burnt the honey chicken, the honey becoming black and crunchy, and undercooked the wild rice.
Rose made a comment about how since I wasn’t suited to be a real man, I could at least cook enough to be a decent housewife, and obviously, I couldn’t even do that right.
I retorted that I hadn’t had a very good example of how to be a good housewife, or a man for that matter.
Even before I felt the slap across my cheek, tears had sprung to my eyes.
I spent the rest of the night shut up in my bedroom in a state of shame and guilt, a new onset of tears with every provoking comment from the living room.
I’d wanted to be better than that, live in a way that would show her God through my actions in hopes that she would become a Christian and in turn become a loving mother.
I fell asleep begging God to forgive me for speaking to my mother in such a manner, and for Him to take away the dirty desires I was having while he was at it.
However, within a few weeks of that time, I began to offer back hostile retorts to her on a regular basis.
Each comment prompted a more vicious onslaught from Rose, even though it became apparent that she enjoyed it when I would give in to my weakness.
Not the least disturbing to me was that I could hear her voice and cadence come from my own throat at those times.
It scared me more than anything she could ever do to me.
Here I was, over a decade later, and I had already resorted to the same old pattern. This time, however, I wasn’t overcome with guilt or tears. I hated her. I hated that she could make me be that person again, that I could so easily fall back into being Rose Morrison’s son.
At my words, her smile partially returned, the right side creeping up a little farther than her left, revealing a canine tooth. She looked like a mangy, diseased dog.
“Oh, I know, I know. You love it when you get me going. How you must have missed me. Who did you have here to make miserable? I’m surprised you didn’t make yourself have a stroke a long time ago, just from pure boredom.”
Her sneer crept further across her face.
Her voice cracked and caused me to shiver.
“Don’t you fucking act like you came back here for me, you ungrateful little faggot.
I don’t know why yer back here, but I know it ain’t fer me.
” It was obviously an effort to speak. Her voice sounded raw, causing rips in her throat with every word.
I just stared at her. I wanted to rip her to shreds.
Even now, she was able to see through me, see things no one else ever saw, or was at least too well-mannered and kind to mention.
We stayed like that for what seemed like hours.
Me standing perfectly still, blood making its way down my leg and soaking through my jeans, eyes blazing, heart pounding.
Rose sitting in her filthy chair, her withered hand clutched even more claw-like in her lap, her jaw clamped so tight her thin skin was stark white around her jaw.
I flinched when she spoke again. “Well, don’t stand there like the limp dick you are. Yer gonna get blood on my carpet, and you need to clean up the mess you made. I don’t need to be trippin’ over any boards scattered everywhere. Not that you wouldn’t enjoy that little show.”
I glared at her silently, using all my strength to refrain from yelling at her. After several moments, I turned away from her. I walked over to the bathroom and pushed open the door.
The state of the bathroom told me about how bad Mom’s condition had become.
No matter how bad things got, or how dirty she let the kitchen become, the bathroom was the one area that was pristine and took “cleanliness next to godliness” literally.
She would spend hours in there, doing her hair and makeup and maintaining her beauty.
On good days, she would let me join her.
I would sit on the floor and use the closed toilet as a table to color in my coloring books.
Now, it looked as forsaken as the rest of the house.
The mirror above the hair-filled sink was so splattered you could barely make out your reflection.
The center of it was smeared in a circular pattern that made it impossible to see anything.
I smiled to myself; maybe I should start my cleaning there so she would have to see herself more clearly.
A stab of guilt washed over me, and I shook off the thought.
The bathtub was stained with streaks of brown.
The hard water had always made it difficult to keep the tub white, but Mom would scrub it a couple of times a week with Comet so she could enjoy her hour-long baths.
The toilet was urine-stained and utterly repugnant.
Piles of hair had gathered behind the toilet and in the corners of the room.
Empty toilet-paper rolls littered the floor, interspersed with toilet-paper-wrapped tampons.
I shuddered and looked back to the mirror.
I wasn’t sure at what age menopause occurred in most women, but I figured it had been a while ago for Rose, especially given her health and weight.
I hated to think how long they may have been there.
I pulled the mirror open to reveal the medicine cabinet behind it.
It wasn’t in any better condition. With the exception of hair and dust, it was relatively empty.
However, there was a box of bandages, which was my entire purpose.
I took the box down and opened it up. It was empty, of course.
I placed it on top of the overflowing trash can and shut the mirror.
I grabbed a roll of toilet paper off the floor and ripped off a few sheets.
After washing the cut as well as I could, I took another sheet of paper and pressed it to the cut until it stuck there, soaking up the ebbing flow of blood.
When I walked back into the living room, Rose was bent over and searching through the empty TV stand.
Turned away from me, her harsh face hidden, she looked even smaller and more twisted than I’d noticed before.
A small pang of sympathy and sadness washed over me.
It was hard to see her so weakened, so wasted away.
With a few strides, I was beside her. “Rose, let me get that. You don’t need to stress yourself out right now.
” Her spine straightened as much as it could, and she shuffled to the side, doing her best to distance herself.
In her effort, she fumbled the object she was holding, and with a rumbled curse, she dropped it on the floor.
She made a movement as if to reach for it, then seemed to think better of it.
Better to feign indifference than to show her physical limitations.
She held my gaze, daring me to speak. I looked at the floor.
At her feet was a rusted hammer, the grip of the rubber handle rubbed smooth and bare in places.
I started to bend down to pick it up, and she skittered backward, dangerously off balance.
I straightened back up and let her get her distance.
She managed to reach the wall to support herself and straightened defiantly.
After a moment, she limped back to her chair and sat with painful slowness. I bent down and retrieved the hammer.
I turned the hammer over between my hands, feeling its roughness, and looked from it to the boards scattered across the floor and hanging from the doorframe, and back to the hammer again.
For some reason, I hadn’t thought about how the door had come to be nailed shut.
My eyes found Rose’s, still daring me to offer some rebuke.
How had she managed to nail the door shut with a gnarled hand?
She could barely stand. Where had she gotten the planks?
How long must she have worked last night?
She must have stayed up until early in the morning.
Why had she attempted to get the hammer now?
Was she going to nail me into the bathroom, trap me in the house, crush my skull?
No matter how she’d done it and what she was getting ready to attempt, one thing was certain: her determination and I-will-do-what-I-damn-well-please disposition was still firmly intact.
She continued to glower at me as I turned and walked back through the door, taking the hammer and tossing it into the car.
That’s all I needed to worry about, my mom bashing my brains out while I scrubbed the bathroom linoleum.
Of course, maybe she’d try to nail the house shut again and would overexert herself and cause a fatal stroke, or would succeed in securing the house and eventually starve.
An odd mix of relief and guilt washed over me at the thought.
This was new; I didn’t remember fixating on her death when I was a kid, even at our worst moments together.
At times, I would stay awake nearly all night, afraid to fall asleep until I would hear her come back home after meeting up with one of her new men.
Once I would hear the door shut again and her loud cursing as she stumbled into a corner of a table, I would be able to drift off, content in knowing that Mom was still safe and alive.
Even when she brought one of the men home and forgot she had a child who might be listening, I wasn’t disturbed by the thought of what the men were doing to my mother; I was just relieved that she was home and that she was safe.
This new fantasy of her death made me feel dirty and evil.
I was going to have to work through this if I hoped to be able to see this through without becoming as hateful as her.
Upon reentering the house, it was evidently clear there would be no more speaking today.
She closed her eyes and refused to look at me the rest of the time.
I got the boards picked up and stacked them outside, away from the house.
Other than holes from the nails and dents from me crashing through, the door seemed to be in fine working order.
Miraculously, not even the doorknob was damaged.
I started cleaning in the kitchen. It took me over two hours just to clean the oven, but when I was done, it gleamed like a beacon surrounded by the grime and filth of its environment.
I was able to get through half the cabinets before the sun fell.
For some reason, being in the house after dark gave me the willies.
It looked more dilapidated, and the shadows falling across Rose’s face made her more haggard and crone-like.
Early in the afternoon, I’d set out a corned beef sandwich Maudra had sent over.
Rose had refused to eat, on her own effort or when I attempted to feed her.
The amount of snarling and hissing had almost been comical when I attempted to hold the sandwich close enough for her to bite.
At the risk of losing my hand, I conceded and left it sitting on a tray beside her rocking chair.
Before I left, I managed to have a pleasant tone in my voice when I told Rose good night and I would see her in the morning.