The Homecoming
I still remember every one of the beatings with crystal clarity, though some stand out more than others. One night when I was 10 she pulled me into the backyard and threw me into the grass. As I lay there whimpering she went back into the house, emerging a few minutes later with the kitchen garbage. That night I’d cleaned out the refrigerator in an effort to “help” and I’d made the mistake of throwing out a pan of molded, two-month-old casserole. She dumped the garbage over my head. “Who in the hell do you think you are?” She screeched. “Look around you princess, we don’t have the money to be wasting on food.” She slapped me hard across the face, making my cheek burn red. Then she smiled. “If you won’t it off a plate like a human being, then eat it out here, like a dog. I don’t give a damn either way.” I sat up, dripping with stinking filth, silent tears running down my cheeks, hating her. Red hot rage coursed through my skinny little child’s body until I trembled. If looks could kill, my mother would have died that night.
The light of the streetlamps cast yellow and orange shadows off her gaunt cheeks, giving her the appearance of a corpse. The malice in her smile was inhuman. I wondered if I was going to die. She pushed my head down roughly into the pile of rotten food. “Eat it,” she cackled. When I refused to open my mouth she punched me, smashing my face down into the offal. Finally I did as she commanded, trying not to breathe as I gagged down the rotten food. After a couple of bites I vomited into the grass while she smoked a cigarette and watched me impassively. Eventually I ate every bite of it. There in the moonlight I became what she named me, choking down garbage as she smiled triumphantly. “Now that’s a good dog,” she said when I’d finished.
I left home when I was 17, as soon as I graduated from high school. I stayed with a succession of friends until I got a job, and lived with a succession of boyfriends until I graduated from college with a nursing degree. No matter where I went, though, somehow my mother always managed to find out my address and telephone number. She always called in the middle of the night, letting the line ring until the machine picked up, leaving long, nasty diatribes until the tape ran out. I can admit that I was complicit. Sometimes I answered the phone, because deep down I knew that the things she said were true. I knew I had never been a really good daughter. Of course, I also knew enough psychology to recognize my own codependence, but I was too scared of her to do anything about it. It’s a fear that’s hard to describe, the fear of a three-year-old huddling under the covers in the dark, with nowhere to turn for comfort. It’s the fear of a human being who’s never known succor or true safety. It made me vulnerable to her psychological warfare, but towards others, it made me incapable of feeling anything.
In January she called to tell me that she’d been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. It was a surreal experience, because I couldn’t imagine her dead. She still loomed too big and powerful in my memory. What would the world be like without my mother to frame my existence? Her voice sounded vulnerable and small. I could tell she was afraid, but she insisted that she could handle her own treatment. She wanted some medical advice about a drug she was taking, but didn’t need any other help. That lasted until May.
The next call I got came from a neighbor who’d been checking in on her and wasn’t sure she should be alone anymore. She wanted to know if I’d come and stay with her for a while. Of course, I said, mentally calming the knot that was rising up in my throat. I took an indefinite leave of absence from my job, packed a bag, and went to her.
It rained during the entire four-hour trip. Her street was a long, potholed country lane, and by the time I got there it was nearly dark. I was tired, and afraid of what I’d find inside. I sat in my car for a while, trying to calm my nerves. The radio twanged a country song moodily, and the windshield wipers slapped the glass in anger. I looked at the old house where I’d grown up, and fear started to choke me. The two large windows across the front were dark, staring at me accusingly. The door seemed to be daring me to enter. Every instinct I had told me to run, just get out of my car and run in the opposite direction until I was far, far away. My hands shook as I took the key out of the ignition. My heart pounded in my chest. I took a ragged breath, and got out.
There were no lights on in the house. I opened the front door, and stepped into the darkness. A heavy pall of silence hung in the dusty air. Vaguely in the distance I could hear the tick, tick, tick of a fan, and further away, almost imperceptible, I could detect sporadic low moans coming from the bedroom. The vague smell of rotten food mixed with shit was thick and cloying, and I had to bite my lip to keep from gagging. I put my bags down, cursing as I tripped over something in the floor. When I stood up I started turning on lights, and I gasped as I saw the state of the house. Filth and garbage were piled high on every surface. My mother had never been a neat person, but what was here could not have been accumulated in the few months she’d been sick.
I made my way down the long hallway and turned into her bedroom. I turned on the small bedside lamp, and saw what my mother had become.
She was a tiny, shriveled thing, curled up on the bed like a wounded animal. Her teeth had fallen out years ago, and now without her dentures she breathed through a dry, ragged hole of a mouth. Long, sharp nails with the last flakes of red paint and the remains of her vanity curled like talons back into her hands. Her eyes were sunken, though when I looked in them I saw a flash of recognition. Beside the bed was a five gallon bucket half filled with shit and the brown, thick piss of someone in the last stages of kidney failure. Her hair, once long and glossy black, was now a matted mess cropped close to her head. She moved slightly, her hand making an attempt to point at a bottle of oxycodone on her bedside table. She must have been in tremendous pain. I stood there, staring at her, a ball of fear and pain knotted up in my stomach. She moaned, a horrible, animal-like sound, her eyes flashing impatience, followed by incredulous anger, and finally, fear. She knew. I picked up the bottle of pills, put them in my pocket, and walked out of the room.