Many of these writings were lost in their electronic version and were retyped from hard copy. I haven't had a chance to proofread and edit the entries the way I would like to. Please forgive formatting inconsistencies and gross errors and typos.
I recently wrote an editorial based on a recent work event for my department’s statewide newsletter. Because she’s part of the story, I shared the editorial with my boss. When I left the office tonight, she hadn’t had a chance to read it, but she said, “I can’t believe that you are okay sharing this with all 20,000 of our employees.”
“Really? Have you not figured out that I don’t give sh*t what people think of me?” I asked as I walked out the door.
It got me thinking—I mean more than I usually do, although I’ve been working to try to “tuck and roll” more and not analyze life as much as I used to. It’s actually kind of ironic. We are encouraged to pursue education, and if you want to get a good grade in school, you are told to think critically. What they don’t tell you is that unless it’s for school or maybe work, you gotta leave that shit in the office or classroom, because over thinking life and thinking too critically about personal relationships will either drive you crazy, drive the people around you crazy, and too often—drive people apart.
In addition to friends, mentors, and my therapists (professional and personal), I have to give Father Time much credit for my relaxed attitude. There’s something beautiful about wrinkles, sagging skin, gray hair, and bad vision that make you just not give a rat’s ass what people think—or you care a whole hell of a lot less than you did when you were younger. I think while you get much more patient in life, you also have a lot less tolerance for B.S. You finally start to learn and believe in your worth. You start to realize that you are too valuable to let people toy with you or waste your time with games and drama. At least I know that’s true for me. If you can’t bring something positive and valuable to my life, then I don’t have time for you.
Before you start thinking I’m shallow and judgmental and you get your britches knotted up, relax. Positive and valuable are subjective, and I’ve had some of my best conversations and received some priceless information from homeless people. So when I say that people have to bring something positive and valuable to my life, I don’t mean that they always have to be sunshiny bright and have lots of bling. And, I try to be the same in others’ lives—positive and valuable, and I also try to be sunshiny, but I’m human, and some days I might be not-so-sunny. But, the only bling they’ll ever get from me is gonna be in the form of some sparkly, glittery handcrafted gift that has little or no monetary value, but is rich in love and time.
So, back to my boss’s comment…
Why would I care that 20,000 people know I swallowed my tooth and that it’s still making its journey through my body. Well, I don’t know for certain that it’s still making its trek, but based on time (it’s only been one day) and that I haven’t felt anything “biting me in the ass,” I’m assuming (yeah, that’s a pun) it’s still making its way through the labyrinth of my colon.
I have no shame in saying that I am the product of rape. I’m a survivor of child sexual abuse, and I was also raped in high school. I’ve cared for dying loved ones, and I am pedigree crazy, meaning I have been officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and those are just the highest level events in my life. I’m not trying to throw a dead kitty on anyone’s porch. Everyone has their hand that life dealt them, and that’s been mine. But guess what? Despite all of that, I like who I am. No. I take that back. I love who I am. Do I still have issues that creep up now and then? You betcha! But, I will always courageously face them and refuse to be defeated or defined by them. I challenge you to find someone who doesn’t have challenges creep up every now and then. I dare you to find someone who has never dealt with any painful events, and I challenge you again to look inside those groups and find someone who has absolutely no scars. Oh, I’m not saying those people don’t exist, but you sure aren’t going to find many of them.
I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and the truth is, I like who I am—enough so that I love to spend time alone, because I enjoy my own company that much. Sure, I love hanging out with the people I care about, but I care about me too. Think it sounds arrogant? It’s not. It’s just that I know my worth, and if more people felt they were worthy of being treated well, and that they deserved to live a happy, peaceful and loving life, the world would probably be a hell of a lot nicer place to live in.
I don’t hate my biological father. I’ve never known him, and I have no desire to know him. Do I think it was horrible that he raped my mother? Absolutely, but then again, if that horrific incident hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here, and if I wasn’t here, then I would never have been able to meet all the wonderful people who have come into my life, and I certainly wouldn’t have been blessed with my amazing son, who has been the highlight of my life.
I don’t hate my grandfather for molesting me, and I don’t hate him for abusing my mother. I think what he did was horrible, but guess what? I forgive him. I’ve seen his photographs from World War II, and I’m sure he was a very, very sick man. I can’t hate someone who is sick, and even if he wasn’t sick, hating him only gives him power over my happiness. I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna let him—or anyone else who tries to break me—win by taking my spirit from me.
I don’t even hate the men who raped me that March night in 1985, just weeks before I turned 18. It was a very painful night for me, and at the time, I wanted to die. But guess what? My mother’s response that night made me forgive much of her dysfunctional parenting all those years before. And when I was able to forgive her, I was able to begin to heal.
I don’t hate any of the men who broke my heart or betrayed me. It is from those relationships that I learned the most about myself and did the most growing. And, I know that in every relationship—whether familial, platonic, or romantic—I have a role. I’ve yet to find one of those relationships where I was perfect and couldn’t have done something more or something better or reacted differently.
Caring for and watching the people closest to me die taught me the importance of life, and the importance of staying present in the moment with the ones you love and the importance of letting them know how much you love them.
And, for more than a year now, I’ve been living with bipolar disorder completely medication free—and that’s with my doctors’ blessings. In fact, my doctor is the one who first approached me about getting off medication, because he thought I was a good candidate. Why? Because I worked hard to learn all I could about the disorder. It was scary to re-learn how to live life like a “normal” person, which if you ask me, some of the most “normal” people are some of the most screwed up—they’re just in denial about it. Part of learning to live successfully with bipolar means that I have to take care of myself. I have to not only give myself permission to take care of myself , but I have to make me my top priority—before anyone else and before my job. I am only as good as I am healthy. I owe that to myself, and I owe it to the people who love me and who’ve always been there for me.
That’s another thing. I have a large circle of loyal and devoted friends who love me and I love them. Some of those friendships span nearly 40 years. Just as they say that our children are a reflection of who we are, and that you can tell a lot about a person by the company she keeps, well, I figure that even with all my flaws, I must be one hell of a person, because I have an amazing child, and I have an incredible group of friends. If I was that crazy, that screwed up, or that much of a bitch, I wouldn’t be surrounded by that that many people and that much love.
Speaking of love, isn’t it sad that we are a culture that is afraid of love? When people hear the word love, they might find it comforting like a warm blanket wrapped around them on a chilly night, or they might become afraid that someone is trying to possess them or change them. Why? Why can’t we just learn to stay present in the moment? Why can’t we just be happy that in that moment, someone is letting us know that they care very much for us and that we are an important part of their life?
Why do I say these things? Because I’ve experienced them all—at all levels. The pain, the fear, the ager, and worked through them to find a place of peace, love, contentment, and happiness—and that comes from within—not based on what a handful of readers are going think about me and my missing tooth. In fact, if I’ve learned anything in my nearly 45 years of life, it’s that people actually appreciate when people share their “vulnerabilities.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shared one of my stories and had someone pull me aside, email me later, call me, or in some way confide in me and say, “I’ve never told anyone this, but that’s happened to me too.”
So that is me, in all my proud, toofless glory. Love me or leave me, but either way, I’m not gonna hide who I am or change for anyone but me.
Sometimes when I sit down to write, I think to myself how happy I am that my mother isn’t sitting next to me as a co-author. If she were, she would insist that I mention what a spunky, independent, smart alecky, and determined child I was and how crazy I drove her and my father. Nevertheless, she is a mother, so she would also throw in a few subtle praises—just enough to let you know that despite how much I exhausted her, she loves me and is very proud of me.
From what my mother tells me, I’ve always had an I-can-do-it-by-myself and you’re-not-the-boss-of-me attitude. If she told me to take a nap, I would get up and down from my bed, sing, go potty, read, get a drink of water, and do anything else except sleep. However, if she told me, “Angela, I want you to go lie down and rest, but I do not want you to go to sleep. Do you understand me? ” I would be unconscious before my head hit the pillow. Common scare tactics also didn’t work on me. I didn’t care if she told Santa I wasn’t behaving. I knew I was a good kid, and if Santa couldn’t see that, then I didn’t need his stinkin’ presents. And, I questioned everything.
As a kid, I also learned how to disarm my mother when she was angry with me, or at least diffuse her anger. My weapon? Humor. I learned early on that humor can help you through many of life’s difficult situations. Think about it, it’s really hard to be angry with people and yell at them if you’re laughing. It’s even difficult to be angry when you’re smiling. It’s also really tough to dislike people who make us laugh. Don’t believe me? Try it sometime. Other people learned how to fight with their fists, I learned how to disarm with humor—it made punishments much less severe.
My Childhood took its natural course and led me to adolescence, which was, as it is for many people, a tumultuous time. My mother still says she is convinced I was possessed by demons during those years. And, adolescence eventually led into young adulthood, where I became as my mother says, “human”—at least most of the time, she notes.
The truth is she was right about something. What I fought vehemently to keep from everyone was that not only was I possessed by demons, but they never left. Sometimes they behaved better than other times, and sometimes they even went into hibernation, but they were always with me.
Throughout my adulthood, life delivered its ups and downs to me. That’s the nature of life, right? I felt that life must have liked me a lot, because it dealt me more ups than downs. It wasn’t until I was 40 and sought help for depression that I was told that my ups weren’t part of any fortune, but instead they were part of a silent disability—my demons. “Angela, normal people need more than one to three hours of sleep each night,” my doctor said. “Angela, slow down,” she told me as I quickly bounced my leg and talked with the speed of a seasoned auctioneer. “Depressed people don’t have the energy that you have. It’s often difficult for them to even find the will to get out of bed.”
“Well if I’m not depressed, then what’s my problem?”
“We (she had another doctor working with her) think you have a mood disorder.”
“I know." No shit, I thought to myself. "That’s why I’m here. I’m depressed.”
“No, we think you have bipolar disorder.”
“Oh.” I replied nonchalantly, while I cursed her silently. She didn’t know what she was talking about. I was not crazy. I earned my bachelor’s in psychology; I knew plenty of manic-depressives, and I certainly was not one of them. I was angry with my doctors. They didn’t know what they were talking about, and I was determined to prove them wrong.
I started to read everything I could find about bipolar disorder. I had a basic understanding of it from when I studied it in school, but unlike when I was in school and learned about the disorder from a clinical perspective, I read stories written by people who were living with the disorder. In many of the books I read, one book seemed to be referenced more than any other: Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison’s, “An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.” I decided to read her book so I could finally prove that I was not crazy. After reading less than five pages, I was sobbing when I realized I had violently thrown the book: I was reading the story of my life. It was as if Kay Jamison had lived it with me—the good times and the bad.
It took about a week for my shock to dissipate, but once it did, I felt a sense of relief. Suddenly my life of ups and downs made sense. I also went back and read years of my personal journals. In reading my own writing, which dated back to when I was 10 years old when I received my first diary, I could clearly see that the disorder was always there, and at times, I knew something was wrong, even if I had no idea what to call it, although I had sometimes referred to it as madness.
I’ve always had a fighter’s spirit, refusing to let myself be defeated. Bipolar disorder was going to have its hands full with me, just as my parents did. I refused to let it be the boss of me. I had no fear of my demons, but I did have some fear. I was terrified that with this label, people would think I was different, and not in a quirky way. It wasn’t the fear of being ostracized for being “crazy” that scared me. I mean if I didn’t care what Santa thought of me when I was a child, do you really think I would care what anyone else thought of me? No, my fear was that the people who knew me and loved me would suddenly think that I was incapable of taking care of myself, that I would lose my independence. That’s what scared me. I didn’t want to be treated any differently than I had been or than they would treat anyone else. Different can be good. We are a world of very different people, and that’s what makes life so exciting and beautiful, but treating people differently because they are different is not good.
When I began treatment for my disorder, the first thing I did was tell everyone close to me. Why? It’s harder to hide in plain sight. Not only that, if I suddenly started needing less and less sleep, or I began spontaneously calling people at 2 a.m., my brain was probably driving the wrong way on a one-way street. If I came up with some of the cockamamie ideas I was famous for—like my plans to rid the world of all its ills, live out of the trunk of my car, and “home school” my kid from the road, then those close to me would know it was time for a road block—whether I liked it or not.
In the beginning, some of my friends and family members tried to be sensitive to my illness, and I appreciated their respect. They were very careful how they treated me or how they referred to my illness. But, I’ve always felt that life really isn’t that serious; it goes on with or without us, so why make it more difficult than it has to be? I told them, not to walk on eggshells around me. I explained, “you’ve been calling me crazy my whole life, and I have even called myself crazy (although we usually meant it more as quirky than mentally disabled), there’s no reason to stop now that I have the pedigree papers to prove it.” Some people may not take it so lightly, and I respect that. Everyone has his or her own attitudes and experiences, and I want to honor that, especially since I know firsthand the torture that bipolar can inflict. I also know that it is very much a silent disability, because many people who knew me said that they never would have suspected that I had such a disorder. I was good at hiding my misery when I was depressed, and my brain tended to spend most of its time traveling in the hypomanic lane. I know that many of those “disbelievers” meant well. They wanted to be supportive, but sometimes in denying my disability, I felt they were trivializing my challenges.
My personal choice is that I don’t like the word disabled. Although bipolar is a disability because has the potential of disabling me, I refuse to be disabled by it. I spent about a year working with a team of doctors to learn how to live my life with bipolar, and I spent a lot of independent time learning as much about the disorder as I could. My biggest challenge was learning how to travel “in the middle lane,” instead of riding the bipolar rollercoaster.
Don’t get me wrong, bipolar disorder is a very serious illness. Some people spend their entire lives battling it. Some people’s disorders are such that their bodies don’t respond well to many of the medications, or it’s difficult finding the correct dosage for their treatment. I’m lucky. Very lucky. I responded well to the first medication my doctors prescribed, and I’ve had no problems. It’s been several years now, and I’ve become used to a “normal” life. A very peaceful life. Enough time has passed that while I remember that I enjoyed the amazing highs that came with the manic moments, and I remember that I felt so incredibly hopeless during the down times, I can’t remember exactly how they felt. I only remember whether I liked them or not.
My point of sharing this with you is not to solicit your pity, sympathy, or praise. My disorder is what it is, and I’m only doing what most people would do when faced with a challenge in their lives: deal with it. What I would like you to take from this is the following:
As annoying or strange as some people may be, we never know what may be going on beneath their surface. We all have our own challenges, be they cultural, physical, mental, or emotional.
Not everyone who has a mental illness is scary or dangerous. One of my friends once told me, “You shouldn’t tell people you have bipolar disorder. It might scare them.” I confidently told my friend, “I’m not going to hide or deny who I am. Society wouldn’t think anything was odd if I were diabetic or had high blood pressure. Besides, I’m not the person they need to be afraid of. I take my medicine, and I am under the regular care of a team of doctors. They should be more scared of the people who deny that they have any problems.”
Some of the world’s most brilliant writers, poets, composers, and artists suffered from manic-depression: Edgar Allen Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Michelangelo. The way I see it, I’m in very good company.
I did not want to get out of bed this morning. My bed is comfy; I feel like an angel sleeping in a fluffy cloud. Okay, so maybe I’m not an angel, and I’ve never slept in a fluffy cloud, but it feels the way I imagine it feels to sleep in a fluffy cloud.
Yet, I forced myself to crawl out of my heavenly place—as I do every day—and almost every day, it goes something like this:
As I walk out of my bedroom, I get slapped by my dopey dog’s gator-like tail and almost trip over her, who by the way pretends she doesn’t understand English commands, but somehow can read English thoughts—if they involve her receiving treats, going for a walk, or going for a ride. Then I open the door to my 16-year-old son’s room and get smacked across the face with the smell of dirty teenage gym laundry. I wake the kid and then let the dog out to take care of her business. I groggily try to jog across the yard to grab her before she jumps the fence—in yet another of her escape attempts. I drag her back into the house. I make coffee, and I wake the kid again. I make breakfast, eat, and pick out my clothes. And, I wake the kid again. I walk into the bathroom, trip over the kid’s dirty clothes that he left strewn across the bathroom floor the night before. I take a shower, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and dream of dumping a bucket of ice water on the kid to wake him. I decide to be nice and instead yelled at him “WAKE UP!” to which he grouchily responds, “You don’t have to yell.” I force myself to remember the little boy who used to live with me—the one that this big grump replaced—the little boy who woke the first time I went into his room and who thought I was the greatest thing that ever graced the planet. I’ve heard rumors that that someday that sweet little boy will return in a man-sized version, but I have a hard time believing it.
Then I go into the kitchen, feed the dog, dream of the day the kid’s grown, out of the house, and has his own teenagers, give the dog water, fix my lunch, and then walk down the hall to remind my now half-dressed son that we need to leave in 15 minutes. I check my e-mail, pack all items I need for the workday, and threaten to make the kid go to school half-dressed if he isn’t ready in five minutes. Exactly five minutes later, he saunters down the hall, shoes and unmatched socks in hand, teeth unbrushed, and announces that he is ready to go.
“Where’s your backpack? Did you eat something for breakfast? Did you grab something for lunch? What about your teeth? Do you have your gym clothes? Wallet? Cell phone? Did you take your vitamins?”
“Oh, I forgot.”
He just said two of my five least favorite words: “I forgot” and “I don’t know.” I look at my Houdini dog with a look that says, “And you, with all your escape antics, are the easy one.” She looks back at me as if to say, “Yeah, I know, so can I have a treat?”
The kid walks back to the bathroom brushes his teeth, and decides he needs to use the restroom. Five minutes later, he comes out, goes to his room to get the rest of his stuff, returns, and says, “I can’t find my wallet or my phone.”
“Fine. Then you will have to walk to my office after school.”
“I’ll just walk to the gym,” he says and walks back down the hallway. On his return, he says, “I found my wallet and phone.”
“Amazing that you can find things when your freedom is at risk,” I say as I feel my lips purse, my nostrils flare, and my right eyebrow arch.
By now, you’re probably thinking, that I should leave without him. Well, let me tell you, the thought runs through my mind almost daily. But, then I remember when I was 16. I would have thought I won the lottery if my mom left without me on a school day. What kid wouldn’t want a day to sleep in, talk on the phone, draw, play video games, go wherever he wants, and watch TV? Nope. This kid isn’t getting off that easy. He hates school, so leaving him would be the same treat it would have been for me. If I need to, I will let him be late, march him into the principal’s office, and make him tell the principal why he’s tardy.
“Let’s go,” I say, and I tell the dog, “Please, no escape attempts today.”
I finally get the kid and his bare, size 15 pedal flappers into the car, where he begins to put on his shoes and socks.
“Son, you are 16. We have this same challenge every day. You need to get it together, because I’m not going to be that mom who calls you when you’re 40 and runs through the list with you to make sure you are ready every morning.”
As I finish speaking, I realize that if I didn’t know otherwise, I would think he’s completely deaf and blind and doesn’t know I exist.
We are two strangers inching our way through rush-hour traffic in near silence—me who knows nothing, and my teenager who knows everything—at least that’s his opinion. The only noise comes from the radio and the sound that leaks from his iPod earphones.
I pull up to his school to drop him off. “Have a good day. I love you,” I tell him, while thinking to myself, “but the jury’s out on whether or not I like you today.”
“Mmm…hmm,” he grunts as he slams the car door.
I drive away to meet my carpool partner, who also happens to be my friend and my parenting guidance counselor.
“Good morning, sunshine!” She says as she pulls up. “Do you need some coffee? How is Kut Master Kane?” (Kut Master Kane is my son’s DJ name. He’s got it all planned; he’s going to be an international success as a DJ, and he doesn’t understand why he needs school to do it.)
I pass on the offer to get coffee. We drive to the parking lot and meander to the office, where on our walk to and through the building, several smiling faces and hellos greet us.
I sit down in my quiet cubicle, put on my earphones, turn on my iPod, and escape into the peaceful world of writing, researching, and editing, and I realize that although I wouldn’t trade the kid or the dog for anything in the world, I need breaks from them. I need to feel a sense of achievement separate from them and that I’m contributing to the greater good, and as a public servant, I can do that. Home and work offer me the balance I need.
Now why didn’t I want to get out of bed this morning?
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote poetry, nonfiction, and the novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Romance. He also wrote numerous short stories, many which appeared in magazines and were later complied into two volumes: Mosses from an Old Manse and Twice-Told Tales. Hawthorne is one of America’s literary legends, paving the way for many modern-day writers, as well as writers of his day. He and Edgar Allen Poe are credited with the development of the American short story. In his literary criticism of Twice-Told Tales, Poe stated, “Of Mr. Hawthorne's Tales we would say, emphatically, that they belong to the highest region of Art--an Art subservient to genius of a very lofty order....” (par. 5). Hawthorne, in a letter to one of his publishers, is also credited with referring to women writers as the “damnd mob of scribbling women” (Baym, Again, 20). In a letter to his wife, Sophia, Hawthorne discusses fellow writer, Grace Greenwood, by saying:
My dearest, I cannot enough thank God, that with a higher and deeper intellect than any other woman, thou hast never—forgive me the bare idea!—never prostituted thyself to the public, as that woman has, and as a thousand others do. It does seem to me to deprive women of all delicacy; it has pretty much an effect on them as it would to walk abroad through the streets, physically stark naked. Women are too good for authorship and that is the reason it spoils them so. [Emphasis added] (qtd. in Baym, “Again” 24)
Given these comments, one could easily dismiss Hawthorne as a man who detests women writers or perhaps creative women. This paper will argue that although Hawthorne was antifeminist, he did not truly despise women writers, and in fact he respected them; however he simply did not want to compete with them as writers.
To get an adequate understanding of Hawthorne and the development of his attitudes about women, it is important to review his life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (or as I like to call him, “Nate”) was born to Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. and Elizabeth “Betsey” Clarke Manning. The Hathorne family had a long history in the Salem area. In fact, Nate’s great-great-grandfather was one of the judges during the Salem witch trials. (This lineage has been considered as one of the reasons Nate would later add a “w” to his family name.) Nate’s father, Nathaniel Sr., was a sea captain and was at sea during the birth of all three of his children: Elizabeth “Ebe” (1802), Nate (1804), and Maria Louisa “Louisa” (1808). Captain Hathorne died in 1808, two months after the birth of Louisa and three months before Nate’s fourth birthday. Widowed and the mother of three, Betsey returned to her family for assistance and support. Having come from a large family, Betsey’s children were surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. After his grandparents died, and his uncles left, Nate was the sole grandson of the Manning family. Wineapple notes that a childhood injury to his foot, “afford[ed] him a certain guilty pleasure, the injury kept [Nate] the center of attention.” As a result, Ebe noted that Nate “was particularly petted,” and would later come to “identif[y] not with just the men but with the women of his household, particularly his mother and two sisters” (Wineapple 26-27).
Nate had a very close relationship with his mother and his sisters, all of whom were supportive of his endeavors. Ponder and Idol note that “such a childhood in the midst of a variety of girls and women gave Hawthorne an antipatriarchal, feminist perspective on life. He knew firsthand about the cruel impoverishment of single women” (4). They further state that “Ebe was also his competitor, no doubt spurring him on to his early publishing attempts. He wrote to Louisa, ‘Tell Ebe she’s not the only one of the family whose works have appeared in the papers’” and that “he [Nate] and Ebe evidently traded their writing samples” (5).
So now we see the early beginnings of the great Nathaniel Hawthorne, a boy doted on and pampered by his family, encouraged in his endeavors, and surrounded by girls and women—intelligent women at that.
Nate became acquainted with Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Peabody was a devoted supporter of Nate’s work, despite their sometimes differing views on such issues as slavery. It was through his association with Peabody that Nate met Sophia, Elizabeth’s sister. Sophia spent the majority of her life sickly, but when Nate came to the Peabody home to visit, Sophia would make an appearance, and in 1842 they married. Sophia was intelligent and artistic. While Sophia had her own artistic talents in painting and eloquent letter writing, she preferred to focus her energies on her husband and children. In a letter to her husband, Sophia wrote, “I do not need to stand apart from our daily life to see how fair & blest is our lot. . . . Every mother is not like me—because indeed no other mother has such a father of her children, & and such a husband as herself” (qtd. in Hurst 54). Hurst explores the many ways that Sophia supported her husband, including allowing him to isolate while he wrote and making attempts to keep their children quite and away from their father.
Hawthorne went from the adulation of his mother, sisters, and his mother’s family to the worship of the Peabody women, most notably Elizabeth and Sophia. In his family, he was the star, and the women around him were his audience. He learned to perform for them. He wrote those things in which they would find a sense of identity. During his life, Nate became accustomed to having his way with the women around him. His foot injury allowed him to be able to stay home from school. His wife permitted him to alienate himself to produce his writing. So while Nate had a favorable view of the women around him (he was not only very close to the women in his family, but he also frequently asked their opinions on his works, and eventually Sophia became his critic), he nevertheless did not want to share the spotlight with them. Sophia drew an illustration for “The Gentle Boy,” and Nate dedicated the story to her, but he also talked her out of having her writing or paintings published (“The Wife and Children” par 2). Knapp describes Sophia’s “Roman Journal” as “a living document of the soul,” but Nate did not want the world to know of his wife’s talent (par 1).
Although Nate spent his life surrounded by girls and women, many of them talented and educated, he also wanted to remain in the lead role on the stage of his life, with the females around him in supporting roles.
In many of his short stories, Hawthorne’s female characters resemble the women in his life. Frequently, they are devoted and strong in their own way, but ultimately they give in to the men in their lives, even when their judgment warns them against it.
“The Artist of the Beautiful,” is the story of a watchmaker who finds himself alienated in his attempt to create the beautiful from machinery, Annie, the female character in the story, is described as being both “pretty” and sensitive enough to remind her father to stop his criticisms of Owen Warland because “He hears you! . . . His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and you know how easily disturbed they are” (249). Hawthorne further creates Annie as an “emotional” being, more “befitting” of a woman as “the thought stole into his [Owen’s] mind that this young girl possessed the gift to comprehended him better than all the world besides” (258). Annie is the object of Owen’s devotion, but she is also devoted. She doesn’t really challenge her father: she marries the man her father admires more, the blacksmith, Robert Danforth.
“The Birthmark” is one of Nate’s short stories that deals with the theme of science versus nature, and man’s search for perfection. In this case, it is Alymer who is married to the lovely Georgiana, who has a small, hand-shaped birthmark on her cheek that keeps her one breath from being “perfect.” Alymer tries to convince Georgiana that he can remove the birthmark from her face, ultimately rendering her truly perfect. Initially Georgiana declines, stating, that “it has been so often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so” (176). Nate doesn’t create her to be strong and independent, but rather, Georgiana describes herself as simple enough to believe what others have told her. She doesn’t decline her husband’s offer to remove it because she likes it or feels that it is a part of her. Rather, in time, she becomes so desperate for her husband’s attention, because he has come to resent her and the tiny hand that she consents. She gives in to her man—and the procedure kills her.
Elizabeth, the “plighted bride” of Mr. Hooper, the minister of “The Minister’s Black Veil,” shows a little more independence. After being denied her request that her love remove his veil, she tells him, “Then, farewell!” (155). Although she did not give into Hooper, she also did not show true strength. Her real reason for wanting him to remove the veil was “what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an innocent sorrow,” reminding him that “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers, that you hid your face under the conscious of a secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do away with this scandal!” (152)
Then there is the story of “Wakefield” who:
[A]bsented himself for a long time from his wife. . . .when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed form memory, and his wife, long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening, quietly, as form a day’s absence, and became a loving spouse till death. (124-125)
Upon his departure, Mrs. Wakefield seems to think nothing of her husband’s flight. She is “indulgent to his harmless love of mystery,” and only “interrogates him with a look” (126). Again, Nate does not paint the female character as especially weak, but he does depict her as especially accommodating and faithful.
The beautiful Beatrice in “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” is another subservient woman who seems content in her ignorance. Her father, Signor Rappaccini, a scientist, has created plant life that is poisonous, and raised his daughter around the plants, causing her to develop immunity to the toxicity the garden contains. However, in doing so, Beatrice is also toxic to all other forms of life: plants, animals, and humans. When Beatrice first meets Giovanni, she doesn’t question or seem angry with her father’s choice—a choice that has sentenced her to a lifetime of alienation. Not only is she devoted to her father, but in time, as she spends more time with Giovanni, Beatrice begins to “watch for the youth’s appearance and flew to his side with confidence as unreserved as if they had been playmates from early infancy” (305). After Giovanni realizes that he has been cursed with the same fate as Beatrice, he blames her and scorns her, but being ever loyal to him, she responds, “It is my father’s fatal science!! No, no, Giovanni; it was not I! Never! Never! I dreamed only to love thee…” (313).
Hawthorne’s female influences from his early years carried over into his adult years, not only making him understand women’s issues, but as Margaret Fuller commented in a letter to Sophia about her engagement to Nate, “for if ever I saw a man who combined delicate tenderness to understand the heart of a woman, with quiet depth and manliness enough to satisfy her, it is Mr. Hawthorne” (qtd. in Kesterson 65). Kesterson indicates that rather than detesting Fuller, Nate and Fuller were both personal friends and professional associates who shared a “mutual respect and admiration” (72).
Baym points out that in his children’s books, Nate makes the “adventure stories…directed toward boys, the domestic stories toward girls, and that they exhibit a conventional socializing didacticism, inculcating feminine and masculine virtues appropriate to the places assigned to the sexes in society” (Hawthorne’s Myths par. 10).
Budick, as quoted in Ponder and Idol, explains:
Hawthorne acknowledges his own origins within the female body; he graphically demonstrates (in her language) that his story is the extension of hers, that he (and perhaps all men or, for that matter, all women) only edit and retell the stories their mothers tell them…When Hawthorne puts himself in his mother’s line of inheritance and declares himself her heir, he accepts and explicitly acknowledges that his power derives from hers, that he is empowered, and even as he is engendered by his mother.
This accounts for Nate’s understanding of women. He appreciated women. If he didn’t, the female characters in his stories would not have come across as they did. We the readers feel a sense of pity or empathy for the women in his stories. Why couldn’t Alymer accept Georgiana as she was? Why did Rappaccini have to poison his own daughter? These were the women in his stories, his image of what a woman should be. She could be intelligent and even slightly strong, but she should always be loyal and faithful. That is the way the women in Nate’s life were: they let him have center stage.
Nathaniel Hawthorne admired women, and he loved intelligent women, but he did not want to compete against them on his stage—the literary stage. Like an actor, he struggled enough to make ends meet. Just as Elizabethan theater forbade women from playing the roles of women, Hawthorne did not want women writing stories. He wanted that to be left to men, and if it remained a man’s world (even if it was a woman’s world that was being written), his competition was only half what it had the potential of being.
Was Hawthorne a chauvinist? Most likely. A misogynist? No way.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina. "Again and Again, the Scribbling Women." Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. Ed. John Idol, Jr., and Melinda Ponder. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1999. 20-35.
---. "Hawthorne's Myth for Children: The Author versus His Audience." Studies in Short Fiction 10.1 (1973): 35-48.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Artist of the Beautiful." Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. New York: OxfordUniversity, 1998. 248-272.
---. "The Birthmark." Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. New York: OxfordUniversity, 1998. 175-192.
---. "The Minister's Black Veil." Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. New York: OxfordUniversity, 1998. 144-158.
---. "Rappaccini’s Daughter." Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. New York: OxfordUniversity, 1998. 285-316.
---. "Wakefield." Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. New York: OxfordUniversity, 1998. 124-133.
Hurst, Luanne Jenkins. "The Chief Employ of Her Life" Sophia Peabody Hawthorne’s Contribution to Her Husband's Career." Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. Ed. Idol Jr. John, and Melinda Ponder. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1999. 45-54.
Knapp, Bettina. "But It Is Impossible in Such Hurried Visits to Immortal Works, to Give an Adequate Idea of Their Character." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 22.1-2 (2002): 47-58.
Kesterson, David B. "Margaret Fuller on Hawthorne: Formative Views by a Woman of the Nineteenth Century." Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. Ed. Idol Jr. John, and Melinda Ponder. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1999. 65-74.
Poe, Edgar Allen. "Review of New Books: 'Twice-Told Tales'." Graham's Magazine May 1842: XX. :298-300. LiteratureResourceCenter. Thompson Gale. NationalUniversity. 31 May 2005
Ponder, Melinda, and John Idol Jr. Introduction. Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition. Ed. John Idol, Jr., and Melinda Ponder. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1999. 1-19.
"The Wife and Children of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Introduction." Hawthorne In Salem. NorthshoreCommunity College. 01 Jun. 2005.
Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne: A Life. New York: Random House, 2004.
Pork chops. Thick, center-loin pork chops dipped in egg, coated in my breadcrumb-Parmesan mix with my secret blend of spices. The pork chops fry while the small red potatoes and carrots roast in the oven. With fresh salad and French bread, oozing with real butter and gobs of fresh garlic and parsley and Italian seasoning, it is a dinner to make us all fat and happy—except I am cooking this meal for lunch.
Amara and Mike always elect me Queen of the Kitchen. I love to cook, and we all love to eat.
“I need to go to the store. Will you stay here with the girls? I don’t want to wake them from their naps,” Amara asks as I carry dishes to the sink. She and I met at the beginning of the year when we were working for the legislature. Her boyfriend is in jail, and Mike is one of his best friends. When Amara and I aren’t at work, the three of us are inseparable. On this particular day, we are at Amara’s house. She and her boyfriend have two beautiful little girls; the older one is three, and other is still an infant.
“Girl, you know you don’t have to ask. Of course, I’ll stay with them. Besides, I want to finish cleaning the kitchen.” I say as I wrap leftovers. “What’d you think of those pork chops?”
“They were awesome—like always. I probably gained twelve pounds!” She says chuckling. “I’ll be back in a little bit. I just want to get some diapers and pay the phone bill. You sure you don’t mind staying?”
“I don’t mind at all. Go. Don’t worry.” I reassure her. “We’ll be fine.”
“Okay then, I’m gonna go. I’ll be back in a bit.” She says, picking up her keys. Mike decides he wants to go with her. As they walk out the door, I walk into the hall, peek into the girls’ room to make sure they are still asleep, and return to my post in front of the sink to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. The soapsuds tickle my skin while the warm water caresses my hands. An occasional cool breeze, uncommon for an early August afternoon, dances through the window, bringing a cleansing and invigorating life to the entire house.
Amara and Mike are only gone minutes when from the kitchen window I see a man about my age, whom I don’t recognize. He walks up to the front door, and without knocking, walks in. It flabbergasts me that he feels comfortable enough to enter a home he doesn’t live in. I turn as he enters the kitchen and casually asks me, “I’m looking for Amara and Mike. Are they here?”
Perturbed by his lack of manners and failure to introduce himself, my response is assertive and business-like, “No. They went to the store. They should be back in a while. I can tell them you stopped by. Who are you?”
“Oh, they know who I am. I’m a friend.”
“Well I don’t know who you are, and Amara isn’t here, so I think you need to leave. I’ll have her call you when she gets back.”
I’m not sure if he doesn’t hear me or if he’s ignoring me, because he continues to walk, across the floor, toward the hallway perpendicular to the kitchen. “I need to use the restroom.”
“No. You need to leave.” His presence in the house is unsettling. My heart pumps harder, faster. I am apprehensive about him going into the same hallway as the girls’ bedroom. As I come closer to him, his dirty smell overwhelms the freshness of the breeze meandering through the house.
“I just need to use the restroom and then I will leave.”
My irritation shifts to terror, as a sense of urgency overcomes me. My body becomes defensive, my stance uncompromising. I move to block his entrance to the hallway as I say in an overwrought voice that escalates to a shout, “No. You aren’t going in there. You need to leave now!”
“Damn! Quit trippin’! I am just going to the bathroom.” Not taking my rejection serious, he tries to push me to the side. Resisting each other’s efforts, he tries to get into the hallway, and I try to keep him out. Realizing that I am unable to overpower him, and that he does not intend to leave, I hurry to the sink. Surprised by my sudden abandonment of our struggle, he turns to see what I am doing. Before he can comprehend that my hand has found a large chef’s knife, with fierce determination, I drive it into his abdomen.Leave. Those. Babies. Alone. I won’t let you hurt them.
His skin provides some initial resistance, but it quickly yields to the force of the weapon. Once it penetrates the surface, it goes in effortlessly. It continues to go in. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! Each pierce of the glistening blade becomes easier. The knife enters his body rapidly, as if he were a pincushion. In and out. In and out. My motions, automatic. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! My hand, a fist around the handle of the blade, pummels his chest…again and again and again, the same way I chop parsley and garlic—quickly, mechanically. I have no idea of how many times the knife pierces him, or how long it takes his body to wilt. Time means nothing to me; it is nonexistent. Although I am here, I have also left. Both present and absent.
My awareness returns as I look down on the punctured, shredded, and motionless body of a man I have never met, a man whose name I don’t know, but whose blood journeys across the kitchen linoleum. It forms branches and creates rivers and streams of deep, rich crimson from a larger lake whose floodgates have opened—like fingers reaching out for me, calling me to it, trying to grab me—chasing me. Come here...
I won’t touch him. I don’t need to. I already know he’s dead. I just killed him. Oh my god! He’s dead, and I killed him! Why…why…why? He didn’t give me any reason to hurt him. The pools and lines of blood rapidly grow in size, and come closer and closer to me, trying to capture me. What am I going to do? How am I going to explain this? I know he wasn’t going to go into the bathroom. He was going into the girl’s room to get them. The police won’t believe me. He didn’t even make it into the hallway, let alone their bedroom. Did he have any weapons on him? He wanted to hurt them. I couldn’t let him damage those precious babies! What am I going to do? My gaaaawd… what am I going to do?!”
I think of prison—my entire life—and as horrible as it feels, I feel triumphant. I protected the girls—protected them from him.
My eyes snap open. Sweat seeps from my skin as I lay trembling and unable to breathe. It feels like a huge cork has been wedged into the dryness of my throat. I want to cry, but I’m unable to release tears or sound. My chest aches as it works strenuously, feebly, to suck air into my cast-iron lungs. The harder I try to breathe, the more suffocated I feel. My heart is a fist—punching its way out of its confinement. Blankets that cover me are now binds holding me captive; I am a paralyzed prisoner. The whole episode was vividly real. The sound of the water running as I filled the sink to wash dishes. The feel of the warm water and soapsuds on my hands. The smell and feel of the breeze on my face and in my nose. And…the feel of the knife penetrating him, the satisfying feeling of penetration, the rich color of his blood, and his dirty smell—so authentic in fact, that after all my questioning, I’m still uncertain.
Was it really a nightmare? Is there any chance I might have killed someone? I replay the scene. Again and again and again. I realize that although I was at Amara’s house in the dream, in reality the house belonged to my uncle.
I begin to feel thankful for the awareness that I didn’t commit murder, but I’m still distressed by the fact that I could think such morbid, realistic thoughts. Do I, somewhere deep inside myself, have secret desires of killing? Am I really a psychopath? How could I so easily kill another person—even in a dream? I must to be crazy. What if I really killed someone? What if I open my door and there he is, lying dead and savagely destroyed outside of this room? I stay in the darkness of my room, confined to my bed. I know that no person of any level of sanity would dream such a horrible thing, and yet be so comfortable with slaughter the way I was, satisfied, as if it were perfectly natural, second nature—expected.
Part 3
Dreams of death and dying. Stabbing. Sword impaling. Impaling. Impaling. Impaling. In and out. In and out. In and out and…in. Mangled bloody body. Second-hand flesh. Cold, limp, lifeless form, hurting no more. Free. Free. Free...
Help me! Someone help me… pleeeeease! He’s going to hurt me! Please, someone… anyone! Screams try to escape me. My icy body trembles with terror. The harder I attempt to scream, the more silent I became. My mind hears the shrieks and cries, but my ears hear nothing. My mouth is sealed shut, unable to move. My throat is unable to create sound. Open your mouth! Work damnit! Scream! No one is going to hear you if you don’t make some noise. The rest of my body follows the lead of my mouth—rigid, cold, petrified. I want to run. I want to hide. I want to beg for help, but all I can do is sit—sit motionless and wait—wait for him—for him to come and get me. I stay, cemented to the big chair in the living room, heavy and immobilized by the weight of the concrete that has been poured into my body.
“The kitchen window is open too,” I tell Megan as she walks through the house shutting and locking widows.
“Well get your ass up and close it. Damn! Why do I have to close all of them? Your legs aren’t broken!” She says with a blend of humor and annoyance. Please don’t make me get up. Please. If I just sit here quiet, maybe he won’t know I’m here. Shhh…be quiet. Shhh…shhh…
Somehow, I manage to release myself from the hold of this invisible perpetrator. I make my way, zombie like, to the kitchen window, close it and lock it, and move away as quickly as I can—just to be safe. Megan, my roommate, and I were watching television, on this warm, sultry August evening, just before midnight, when the house unexpectedly filled with blackness. Logic reassures me that there is no reason to be alarmed. From our living room window, we see that the lights are out on the entire block.
“Someone must have hit a power pole,” Megan says, “but we should shut and lock the house just to be safe.” Although rationally I know it’s nothing more than a power outage, something inside me tells me he’s coming to get me—to hurt me. Boogey Man’s gonna get you… I don’t feel like he wants to kill me, and I didn’t know who he is. I only knew that this predator is a man who desires to hurt me somehow, someway.
“Well since we don’t have any electricity, I am going to bed.” Megan says matter-of-factly. Isn’t she afraid of him?
“No! I know! Let’s pretend we’re having a slumber party. You know, we can take flashlights and tell stories—just like we did when we were kids and we were supposed to be sleeping. Ah, come on! It’ll be fun!” Act normal. Act normal. Normal? I’m not afraid. I’m not. I’m…not....
“Are we going to tell ghost stories too?” Megan asks with tired cynicism.
He’s not a ghost—he’s the Boogey Man! “I guess we could, but what if we get ourselves too scared?” I force a chuckle that only I know is fake. “Besides, what if there’s some weirdo running around? Please, whatever you do, don’t let him get me. You know, there’s strength in numbers.” You have to convince her to stay with you, or he’s gonna get you. Boogey man gonna get you! “Just think, if we go to sleep some psycho ax-killer might come in and hack us into tiny, unidentifiable pieces just like in those horror movies.” I force myself to laugh and make it sound like a silly, far-fetched idea—a sales pitch to stay awake—especially since I rarely sleep before dawn, but I know the truth. “Anyway, you know there is no way I am going to be able to sleep this early, and with no light or electricity for me to read or watch TV, I’ll be harassing you to wake when I’m bored and can’t sleep.” Keep going. She’s almost convinced, but do not, under any circumstances tell her the secret. “Come on…It’ll be like when we were kids.” I can’t tell her what was really going on with me. She’ll certainly know that I’m crazy—that I’ve crossed the border into complete madness.
Megan and I grew up next door to each other, like family. We fight and curse each other, and yet we have an unbreakable loyalty to each other. I am the sister Megan never had, and she is the sister that I wish my sister could be.
“Okay, I will stay up for a while, and then I am going to bed.”
“It will be fun!” Still shaken and terrified, I am soothed by the knowledge that Megan will stay up with me. I know he won’t prey on me with someone else around. I’m safe as long as I’m not alone.
I have no idea how long the power remained out. I can’t recall what Megan and I talked about during the darkness, but I can remember I found security in the distraction and my fear passed by the time the electricity returned.
Megan and I said good night, and I went into my room and fell asleep.
Part Four
Greasy, jet-black, baby-oiled hair. Hamm’s beer, old and nauseating. Smell of stale cigars enveloping, choking. Buried alive beneath weight unbearable. No air to breathe. Small, coarse, curly black wires. Purple-headed, spitting snake, slithering, slithering—strike! Be still! Shhhh…be still. Fly away, fly away…little watcher from the sky.
Mere days separated my dream killing and my fear of falling prey to my unknown predator, but there had been countless other dreams and nightmares. Sometimes, terror would visit me in the middle of the day, sometimes in a public place, and always without warning. The demons that lived in my mind would seize me and hold me hostage. I would become stiff, and rendered powerless by a smell or a sensation, and once again I would be unable to breathe—numb—lifeless, my body torpid, with not a lone tear able to find an escape.
I had always felt my mental stability was anything but stable, and at times, even as a small child, I wondered if one day I would go completely crazy. It seemed that lunacy was finally making its appearance—at the young age of 24. I spent every day waiting, just as I had waited for him. Waiting for the day that I would truly go over the edge—to become one of “them”—the crazies who were damned to institutions, thewalking dead. I carefully presented myself to the world as every bit a person of sound mind. It would only complicate matters if people really knew what was going on in my head, my own prison, my very own hell—all mine. All mine…
Part Five
Prince of Death, take me from this hell. Prince of Death, liberate me from these demons so they can harm me no more. Rescue me. Rescue me. Rescue me…
I had one friend I could share my secret with. One friend who I could tell about the prison riots of my own mind. One friend who made me feel better. Made me forget the pain. Reassured me of my sanity. Al. Al and I spent countless nights together. Sometimes we hung out alone. Frequently we hung out with some of my friends, but he never, ever, told anyone my secrets. Shhh…it’s a secret. Our secret. You can’t tell anyone. Promise? He never mentioned the murder or madness. He never spoke of the pain or my predator. My secrets were safe with him—until one night, that night. We partied with friends after work from 7 o’clock in the evening until we decided to head home at 5:15 in the morning.
Driving home, I see the flashing illumination of red and blue. The siren shrieks. I pull over. The officers approach my vehicle. They see me; they don’t see Al. They only smell him.
“Ma’am, have you been drinking?”
“I had a couple.” I learned from my first time to never admit the exact amount.
“We need you to step out of the car please.”
On the side of the freeway, cars race by. Zoom…Zoom…Zoom..Zoom. Zoom. I can jump into the lane. If I time it right, they won’t be able to stop me. This will all end. I’ll make sure I do it right this time. I’ll defeat them! No more madness. Do it! Do it! Do it! Now! Jump, jump, jump … jump …….. jump ……… jump ……… ……..what are ‘ya…chicken?
“Ma’am, we would like you to stand on one foot, bend your other leg at the knee, put your arms out like this, and tilt your head back” says Officer Goode.
“Did you take her license?” Officer Mau asks. I recognize him. He’s one of them. I can see the evil behind his eyes. He’s a demon too, but he’s disguised. I know. I’ve seen demons before. I can smell you. He hurts people, but I won’t let him hurt me.
“Yes. She already gave me her license.”
“We’re taking her in, right?”
Officer Goode places the cuffs on me as gently as he can, and guides me to the center of the back seat in the patrol car. He gets in after me and sits to my right and begins questioning me. Officer Mau makes degrading, humiliating, comments to me from the driver seat. One, two, three. Three people in a police car. He doesn’t realize that I knew who he is. Even though I have never seen him before, I know him. He’s one of them.my time to strike, “Hey, Asshole,” my stare solidifies. My demons are geared up for battle. Through the rear-view mirror, Mau and I make eye contact. Our gazes lock. It’s
“You think you’re a tough guy, don’t you. I know you. I know who you are. I know your secret. You get off on little girls, don’t you. They make you feel soooo good, huh? They make you feel strong, don’t they? I bet they make you feel in control.” Suddenly he’s silent, refusing to look at me. His silence confirms what I know. “Do you like sticking your big man dick into little tiny girl holes? Does that make you feel good? Do you tell them that if they tell anyone, they’ll have to go to jail? What do you tell them? Do you have a daughter? Do you and she have a secret—just between the two of you? What’s the matter, tough guy? You sure are quiet now. Talk your shit now. Say something, fucker. Say something! Say something, dammit!!! What, you’re not such a tough guy? Are you scared? Did I just tell your big secret? Say something.” From the depths of my stomach I bellow, “Talk, bitch!” Mau doesn’t take his eyes off the road. As quickly as my roar came, my cool demeanor returns. I finish my interrogation with, “Or are you scared because I just hit the nail on the head?” My eyes remain locked on him, while my mouth forms a smirk of cocky victory.
Officer Goode, with his calm patience gently repeats, “I know you’re upset. Calm down. Just settle down. Settle down.”
I spend the night at the newly built main jail. Unlike my last visit, I have a private room, no prostitutes or dope fiends. There are no bars, only glass and concrete. I sit in my temporary dwelling—alone. I sporadically slam my head into the glass and the concrete walls. Maybe I am angry because I didn’t have “Mama,” the old street walker, to watch over me like she did last time. Maybe it is because I felt that Al had let me down. After all, it is just as much his fault. He promised me I would be okay. He told me he would take care of everything. He promised. He had penetrated me— at a level of 0.18, albeit his invasion was by my invitation.
My visit in the tank is a little longer than it was in the past. Maybe it is because I let Officer Mau know that I know who he is. Maybe it was because they know I am a lunatic. Am I? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know…
I am finally released on my own recognizance. When I walk out into the daylight, Amara is parked in front of the jail.
Lonely child with pinpricked and poked flesh…carved covering…sliced skin. Demons be gone! De-part! I will control the pain. Hear me! I will control the pain. I will…I will…I will…
Amara and I exchange few words while she drives me to my house. I’m exhausted, physically sick, and emotionally beaten.
As I walked in the door, Megan comes out of her bedroom, still in her pajamas, and asks, “How are you? Are you all right?”
“I wish I was dead. I’m probably going to lose my job over this.” The legislative session just ended, and I’m off work until the new session starts in January. I’ll deal with work then.
She looks at me. I can tell she’s hesitant to speak. “Um…you’re mom called last night…”
“Fuck her. I have nothing to say to that bitch.” My mother is the last thing I want to deal with. I tried to reach out to her a couple months ago, when everything was starting to spiral out of control. I called to ask her to meet me for coffee, but she was too busy with work. I still don’t know how she couldn’t hear the quivering and panic in my voice when I spoke. She remained light and giddy when she asked me what I wanted to talk about. She trivialized my feelings. She trivialized me. I didn’t want her to do anything she didn’t want to do. “Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal” I told her just before I hung up the phone. I haven’t talked to my mother since.
“She wants you to call her. She said she got your letter.” Yeah, the letter that I wrote the last day I spoke to her. Every bit of my fear, anger, madness and hatred came out in that letter. The penmanship looked as if someone with an 800-pound hand wrote it. My tears left warped spots on the paper, stinging salt signatures. That letter contained all the pain, rejection, and revulsion that she had given me for so many years, and I decided to return to its rightful owner.
“Why does she suddenly want to talk to me now? Did you tell her where I was last night?” Now she wants to talk to me? What about when I sent the letter—almost two months ago? What about before that when I tried to talk to her?
Megan responds with a nervous, “yes.” Her eyes try desperately to understand the bitter, angry, disheveled woman standing in front of her.
“Thanks for the message. I’m going to bed.” As I walk into my room, I lock the door. Dropping onto the bed as if my legs were kicked out from under me, I curl into a tight ball and pull the covers over my head. I don’t cry. I pray that I never wake up. I’m already dead. Long ago I died emotionally and spiritually. What remains is only the casing of a human.
Just as I began to drift to sleep, I hear them laughing. They know they’re defeating me. The demons are having a celebratory party.
Part Seven
It’s early in the evening when I wake up. I drag my damaged, cumbersome body into the kitchen, look for something to saturate Al’s residue—the reminders of our time together last night. Megan, bless her heart, tries to be sympathetic. She tries to talk to me, but I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m pissed that I’m still alive.
I sit at the table eating when I hear a knock at the door. Megan gets up from the big living room chair and answers the call. It’s my mother. As she walks in, Megan disappears into another room.
“I got your letter,” she says, towering over me as I sit at the kitchen table.
“Oh.” I continue to eat without looking at her.
“What the hell is going on?”
“What do you think?” I respond aggravated. That’s a stupid question. I already know she talked to Megan. “I fucking got arrested. I spent the night in jail, and I’m probably going to lose my job. That’s what’s going on. Fuck.” I won’t look at her. I don’t want her here.
“Look at me please.”
“No. Say what you have to say so you can leave.”
“I want to talk to you about your letter.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Just forget I ever sent it.”
“I’m not going to forget it. Will you talk to me?” My mother is different. I’ve never seen her like this, so calm.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I said all I had to say in that letter.”
“Let’s go have coffee.”
“I don’t want to. I’m going to finish eating, and then I’m going to go back to bed.”
“If I come back in a few hours, will you go have coffee with me?” Is this really my mother? She actually seems like she’s trying. My mother? She isn’t yelling at me. She isn’t screaming at me like she did all those times I did something she didn’t like.
She won’t leave until I either talk to her or agree to meet with her. I do what I need to so I can go back to the safety of my room. “Fine. I don’t care. Whatever.” I say without ever taking my eyes off my plate.
Part Eight
In the nearly vacant pancake diner, my mother sits on one side of the booth, I on the other. The lack of customers makes it feel like they closed the place just for us. We linger, awkward, silently debating what to order, both knowing that it is only a matter of time before we address the real reason for our meeting. Either it’s all gonna come out, or we’re gonna fight. Either way, I don’t care. I stare at the etched glass dividing the booths. I look at the hanging silk ferns. One, two, three. One, two, three. I turn so I can see them all. One, two, three…one, two. Three, six, nine, plus two equals eleven. Eleven hanging plants. I read the signs for special, limited-time-only pancakes. I stare at the empty tables. I look at everything except my mother. I notice the stark contrast of the dark night sky outside the window, and the bright lights inside. I look at the decanters of syrup: pecan, blueberry, boysenberry, and strawberry—the color of blood, thick and sticky. My fingers run over the shapes of the smooth glass containers, the sporadic rough edges on the plastic handles. One, two, three…plus one. Three plus one equals four. Four jars of syrup. Suddenly, without looking up, I said in a low, angry, confrontational tone, “You never comforted me. You never hugged me. You never made me feel safe.”
As she starts to speak, I raise my head to look at her. My eyes shoot darts into the centers of her eyes. “You wouldn’t let me. I tried, but you wouldn’t let anyone near you. You never let anyone touch you.” She looks scared, nervous. Is she hiding something, or is she afraid? Ear, eye, nostril. Nostril, eye, ear. Mouth. One, two, three. One, two, three. One. Three plus three plus one equals seven. Seven holes in a person’s head.
“Did you ever wonder why?” My voice becomes tense. I’m ready to brawl. “I’ll tell you why. Because someone hurt me. That’s why. Someone did things to me that he only should have done with his wife.” I begin to cry. All those tears that for so long were unable to escape have finally found their way out, and they begin to flee in hoards. And, I notice that my mother begins to weep.
“Who? Who hurt you?”
With no hesitation, I blurt out “Your father.” I’m now sobbing. My tears have finally found the voice that has been lost for so long.
My mother’s gaze shifts from me to somewhere unknown. Her head shakes faintly from side to side as she exhales a quick disgusted puff before her eyes return back to mine. “My god. I’m so sorry. I am so sorry.” She begins to cry harder. “I thought you were safe. I really did. Her hands shake as they nervously squeeze her napkin into what looks like a piece of chewed gum. “My earliest memory of him doing it to me was when I was ten.” She looks down at her hands, then she looks back at me. “I thought that I got you out of that house in time.” Suddenly, we are allies. “I thought that by getting you out at three you would be safe.” For the first time, I notice that my mother had beautiful brown eyes that hold their own stories. We are both fighting the same demon. “It all makes sense now,” she says, as if she has just been blessed with an epiphany, “all the behaviors. At times I wondered, but when I tried to hint around about it, you avoided the subject.”
“I blocked a lot of it out.” I say. I find myself surprisingly more comfortable than I was only moments ago. “This summer it started to come back to me. His black hair was oily. He smelled of stale beer and cigars and cheap after shave. I remember the wiry, coarse, curly black hair on his belly, below his navel, and on his legs near his groin. He had scars on his abdomen.”
“Yes.” She looks like she wants to vomit. “Yes…he did...” She can see him too.
“I remember. I remember his body vividly.” We both sit silently, possessed by the memories that haunt us. I break the silence. “I always thought you hated me, that I was a burden, and I hated you for that. I hated that you ever had me. I wondered why you kept me, because I always felt that you didn’t want me.”
My mother looks shocked, but her face becomes confident as she looks into my eyes. “I love you. I have always loved you. I kept you because I wanted you. I tried to get you to let me in, but you were so guarded.” Her hand reaches across the table and rests on my hand. I remember. I remember seeing pictures of my mother and me when I was an infant and a small child. She was holding me and playing with me. She looked proud, so doting, so…happy.
We continue to talk, and I cry, for that little girl who is finally telling her secret. For the girl who has spent so many years alone in her private hell. I cry because I finally have the mother I never felt I had. All my hatred for my mother begins to fade.
I cry for my mother. She has been a pincushion too. Only I learn that he was more violent with her. He raped her until she was eighteen, when she left the house. I learn that in an effort to escape him, she moved away from her parents’ home immediately after high school graduation. She was on her own only a few months when the man she was dating raped her. My father. He is my father—not my dad—my biological father. I have never known him. My mother never knew him either. She found out that everything he presented to her was a façade—his name, address—everything. Finding herself with child and with no means to feed another mouth, she moved back to the only place she could, her parents’ house. We lived there until I was three.
My mother cries with me. We cry because the pain is no longer alone. It has found a way out. We finally understand each other.
“Have you told your grandmother?”
“No. I’ve only told you. I can’t tell her. It’ll kill her. He was her husband. What woman wants to hear that about her husband? Especially when he has been dead for fourteen years.”
“I think she would want to know. I also think that it will make her understand what you’ve been through and why you’ve done the things you have. She loves you very much.”
It’s true that my grandmother loves me. Of her nine grandchildren, I am her favorite. She has been my maternal figure all the years that I have felt no maternal bond with my own mother. She is always there for me. She always let me know that no matter what I do, she loves me. “Would you feel better if I told her? If you want me to, I will.” As painful as the conversation is, it’s also cleansing. My scabs are slowly being picked away allowing the puss to ooze out. Although removing the scabs is painful, the pressure is diminishing with the release of the poison. The pain is dissipating. I am receiving what I have longed for all those years—a mother—my mother—who is nurturing me and caring for me, her scared and hurt baby girl.
Part Nine
Come here little girl. I won’t let him hurt you anymore. I’ll protect you. I love you.
The following day, my mother comes to my house again. Unlike the last time she visited, I am happy to see her. She came to check on me and to just be with me. She also tells me that she called my grandmother.
“What did she say? How did she handle it?”
“She cried. She’s angry at him. She said she’ll never take flowers to his grave again. She also thinks you don’t want to ever talk to her again.”
“Why?”
“Because she was married to him. She blames herself. She thinks she should have known. You really should call her when you get the chance.”
I love you, Mommy.
My mother and I spend the rest of the afternoon together talking and watching television. While I nap, she stays near me. I feel better having her there. I feel safe. Protected. I felt more at peace than I have ever felt in my life.
Part Ten
The Boogey man isn’t real. Besides, if you see him, just tell your mom. He’ll say he’s gonna hurt you if you tell, but really, if you tell, it takes all his power away.
After my mother leaves, I call my grandmother. I am emotionally drained and physically exhausted, more than I ever felt before, but it is a good feeling. I feel that I just engaged in an extensive battle, but that I had walked away victorious. I realize that demons live where snails live—in the dark, in the cold, and in the dirty. They are secretive, and they feed off flowers in bloom. And like snails, you rarely see one’s demons; you only see the trails of devastation they cause.
“Hi, Nana.”
I can tell she’s trying not to cry. “Hi, sweetie.”
“I know my mom talked to you and told you everything. How are you?”
Don’t worry about me. How are you? I hear her fear, her sympathy, and her anger.
“I’m great.”
“How can you be great? She sounds irritated, as if she doesn’t believe what I am saying.
“I’m great because of this. This is good news.”
“How the hell can it be good news? That son of a bitch hurt you. He hurt an innocent child.”
“Exactly. That is the good part. All these years, all my life, I felt crazy. Insane. I thought my madness would kill me, and I wanted to die. Now, I realize that I wasn’t crazy, but rather I was reacting to something someone did to me when I was too small to fight, to afraid to tell. I thought I had a terminal diagnosis. Now I know I don’t. It’s the difference between a malignant tumor and a benign tumor. My tumor is benign. It’s going to take a lot of work to remove it, and there will probably be some scarring, but I can still lead a normal, healthy life.”
“I guess I never looked at it that way, but okay. I’m still pissed at him, and I swear I will never take flowers to his grave again. That bastard!” She cannot conceal the disgust she is feeling. She has no concern for proper language when she is upset. Not only did he betray her, but he hurt me. She asked me, “What are you doing tomorrow?
“Nothing really. Why?”
“I’m going to make pork chops for dinner. Why don’t you come over tomorrow and we’ll have dinner.” I can tell that as much as I need to know she believes me and still loves me, she needs to know I don’t blame her and that I still love her.
Eating isn’t particularly interesting to me at this point, but I know it’s important for her to see me. “Nana, you know I can’t resist your pork chops. What time do you want me to come over?”
“How about five or six?”
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
“Do you need anything?” She asks affectionately. “Are you going to be okay? Do you need me to bring you something, or do you want me to come over?” She asks.
“Thank you, Nana, but I just want to go to bed. All of this has exhausted me. I’m drained, and I want to go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay. Goodnight.”
“Good night, Nana.”
Later, as I lay awake, drifting off to sleep, I think about everything that is going on. I am throwing away all the pins as I removed them from my cushion. I am also letting the stuffing out so that it no longer holds pins. Yet, I realize you never really get rid of pins. Sometimes they aren’t visible to the naked eye, and you don’t know they are there until you or someone you know is pricked, but they always find a pincushion somewhere to poke themselves into.
Part Eleven
Demons, be gone! You are ordered to leave. You will not haunt this child any longer!
The next day, I go to my grandmother’s house for dinner. As always her pork chops are delectable. After dinner, we watch television. Neither of us mentions her husband. We don’t need to. If I need to talk about it, she will listen, but I also know that with this new knowledge, she is experiencing her own emotional turmoil toward him. We find peace simply being with each other.
As it grows later in the night, I tell my grandmother that I am going to go home. I am tired. We say good-bye, and I walk to my car. I stop, hardly conscious I have done so. I survey the dark and deserted street. I smell an all too familiar odor. Someone is smoking a cigar.
I stand motionless for an instant, before I draw the cool, moist night air into my lungs.