Ruth’s Mystery

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious… begins Gloria Steinem’s composition about her own mother. It is my favorite chapter of Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. Through it, she portrays life with an unfit, ill mother whose life was overshadowed often by the requirements imposed on women in old society. Required to care for children, often without help; to uphold the sanctity of marriage while foregoing true love; to categorize a woman’s career as a selfish act, Ruth went “mad.” And it did no one any good. In fact, it made life for those around her very hard.

I cannot get through the story without crying at least a few times, acknowledging the similarities between Ruth and my own mother.

The last time I spoke to my mother was three years ago, right before my twenty-second birthday. I had been accepted to law schools and had decided to take the University of Richmond up on its offer to cover my tuition. I wanted to leave. I wanted to begin anew with an opportunity that I had hoped would provide me with some compensation for the damages I suffered earlier in life. I would finally have the opportunity to learn to read, write, think, and convince in ways I had dreamed. It also gave me the opportunity to confront my mother and to create boundaries.

For months prior to this confrontation, I had written down every grievance. I spent my spare time at a local cafe, where I’d order an egg sandwich and coffee and sit for hours and type up what I had to say. There was never enough time to vent completely.

I decided it was time to go to my mother the day before the 4th of July. She was sitting in her bed, watching television during the day as usual. I left my partner with my brothers so they would know not to disturb us. I was terrified, shaking probably. I closed the door and stood in front of her bed and told her we needed to talk. The conversation started slow and I struggled to make out any cohesive declaration because I was prioritizing eloquence in a very non-eloquent setting. My mother reached her arms out to me and I cried so much because I knew only I knew that this would be the last of very few hugs I’d ever receive from my mother. For a minute she held me and said, “He stole every possibility of us having a relationship.”

My father certainly stole a lot from us. He raped my mother, even peed on her once. He physically tortured me for a decade and sexually assaulted me over a three-month period. Nevertheless, this was not my grievance. I was not being clear. I backed out of my mother’s arms and began to explain that while he may have kept me away from her for a long time, she regained custody of me when I was twelve. She had time to build a relationship, but she never did anything about it. Finally, I expressed to her explicitly that I was obviously struggling and that she left me completely alone to deal with my trauma. I declared that I had spent most nights crying myself to sleep after learning of my brother’s death. When I admitted that I felt a stronger maternal connection to that brother, she told me, “You’ll never know what it is like to lose a child,” and I lost it. The pain I felt turned quickly to rage, and I began to scream at her about every thing she ever denied me (but mostly for denying me a childhood).

I went on about how unfair it was for her to rely on me as a child to care for her children, how she forgot my eighteenth birthday, how she screamed at me to get a job or move out when I came home from my first day of college (and as the first person in our family to attend college), how she refused to teach me to drive or to drive me to my campus, how (when I did get a job at a finance company soon after) she refused to allow me to borrow her old work pants, how she constantly called me an “ungrateful little bitch,” and allowed my brothers to constantly speak poorly of me. My mother’s reaction was to laugh and call me “emotional,” and to explain that her childhood was far worse. At that point, I screamed, “my father sexually assaulted me,” to which she laughed again and rolled her eyes. I decided internally at that moment that I would never speak to her again. This was goodbye, if there ever was a hello.

But there is more to this story.

Despite all of the hurt my mother caused me, I still feel an overwhelming sense of pity or perhaps sympathy for my mother’s own trauma. My young mother was raped at fourteen and birthed me at fifteen. I often wish she had aborted her pregnancy and wonder if her life might have gone somewhat better. But truthfully, I don’t think I stood much in her way. She left me with her mother and her grandmother, who eventually passed me off to my biological father, the man who raped my mother. My mother went to Atlantic City, where she worked as a sixteen-year-old stripper, became acclimated to a life of people thieving her of her money and possessions. And also her soul. She was gang raped after being drugged by five men she thought of as friends. She was conscious for it, but paralyzed. She used a lot of drugs and drank a lot, and eventually gave them up when an old woman found her crying in the back pew of an empty Catholic church one day.

My mother’s life began to turn around. She found several work opportunities, left the state of New Jersey, and started her own businesses. She was - at one point - a promising survivor. I remember those days faintly where she was constantly moving. I only got to see my mother once or twice a year. Every visit was to a new apartment, to meet a new boyfriend, or a new baby brother. She was absolutely fun to be around. She’d pick me and my brothers up from our separate residences, take us on a long car ride up to the new place in Pennsylvania, make frequent stops at Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wawa, and let us get whatever (and however much) we wanted. She’d play big band, and she’d sing so loud. We loved to listen to Amy Winehouse and Marvin Gaye. I wanted so badly to get to know my mother. But underneath her polished, painted exterior was a cracked foundation, filled only by loneliness.

At the end of every weekend with my mother, I’d get a pit in my stomach for the fear of returning to my abusive father, a feeling that I know well and that has caused me to have PTSD to this day. The weekend was great, probably for both me and my mother. I imagine that after she dropped me off, she might have removed her lipstick, let her hair become disheveled, and begun to cry. It is the only way I can make sense of how a woman so full of life can slowly spiral into a zombie.

As an adult, I look back at this adventurous life I believed my mother to be living, and I can see the signs were there all along. My mother did not have anything together. Every time I saw her, she was so newly into a new apartment that certain utilities would be missing. We stopped at Taco Bell and Burger King because there was no food in the fridge. Where once she may have had alcohol, she now had prescriptions. And prescription after prescription. Her perfect lipstick and rouged hair was only to feign confidence. Her mattress was always on the floor. The “bed-pads” she would make for me and my brothers were not merely fun but sometimes necessary. She changed jobs regularly, and lost money from the sales businesses she entered. She only dated much older men, usually upward of a thirty-year age difference. I’m still unsure how that came about.

I wonder what my mom was doing during all those times she wasn’t with me, the other three-hundred and sixty-ish days a year. Did she have confident moments? Did she have pride? How much did she break down? Did she cry as often as I do now?

After moving in with my mother, I quickly realized life with her would not be of the dream I had - the dream she portrayed to me for so many years. My mother’s house was a mess, to put it kindly. Although she was technically a mother of three, she was not prepared to take care of a child. After I moved in with her, she decided (and probably should not have) that she wanted to regain custody of my brothers too. And so after being physically and sexually abused by my father, I found little space for healing. My mother was ill, in a somewhat indescribable manner. She was often lethargic. She did nearly no chores. If my brothers and I wanted to eat, we would have to beg for takeout or I would have to clean dishes and prepare a meal.

She seemed to quickly realize the asset I was in this manner. I became a sort of mother to everyone when I was twelve. I was trying to take care of them when I was still trying to figure out how to get to sleep at night without locking my door to prevent unwanted intruders, as was present in my previous life. My mother sometimes left on long business trips. I once bled through my pants at school when she wasn’t home, and I had to get dropped off by the school officer in his cop car. We moved several more times, and each time my mother began to fall deeper and deeper into a sort of conscious coma. She was probably at her best when we made one final move back to Pennsylvania, after my youngest brother (my biological father’s son) died. Being away from our family members was healthy for her. She wasn’t worried about them stealing her jewelry or money, and she lived closer to her very old boyfriend. She lived in the mountains, a short car ride away from wawa, a trip she took every morning thereafter with her two large dogs.

But she was still sad all the time. And as her sadness hardened into anger, it churned itself into spite and resentment towards me. Perhaps she resented the idea that I was doing so well. If only she knew how hard I was fighting for my own peace of mind, maybe, just maybe, she would have let me have it.

Like Gloria, I too miss my mother.

And I too feel that I cannot miss her more in death than I have missed her in life.