after the
shooting.
She would tell me that the doctors had told
him to use something called reverse psychology with me. She would
say they told him to ignore me when he brought me home, that
perhaps that would spark my willingness to speak again.
The explanation was supposed to make me feel
better, as if Dad’s ignoring me had some component of affection to
it, but it didn’t ease me. I would take it as Dad’s way of telling
me he didn’t give a damn; I couldn’t believe other adults would
tell him to do such a thing, anyway. I would tell Mom that it made
things worse, and then I asked her what psychology was.
"Psychology is a mind game, Mitchell. That’s
all it is, so don’t be mad at your father."
But before my voice returned, before Mom
could answer me or Dad, before any of that ever took place, Mom had
to find her own voice. She came home from the Asylum a different
person. She’d been lobotomized. She didn’t seem to remember
anything, and she wasn’t talking—not about the shooting or anything
else. Like me and like Dad, she wasn’t talking at all. It was as if
the noise in her head had been quenched, like a terrible thirst,
and without noise there was only nothingness and nothing to say. It
was as if her spirit had been flipped inside out, as if her
personality had somehow shifted to an altered version of itself, a
quiet, confused and contemplative version, as if her tape of
knowledge had been suddenly, and inexplicably, erased.
She slept twenty-two hours a day for some
time. I’d look to Dad, he’d look to me, and then we’d each look
away in a sort of stunned silence. But with time and contemplation
comes the nagging sensation of regret and a remote feeling that
something’s wrong, that there’s something on the tape after all,
something barely audible, but there that needs hearing, or needs
repeating. I think it was the shadow of erased memories emerging in
her, much like an alligator surfacing in a quiet pond where all the
alligators were supposedly exterminated.
Such was the hell of wondering that brought
her out of her malaise, and back into the land of the verbal. And
once Mom started talking, she wouldn’t shut up. How? What? Why? How
did things come to be this way? What happened to the neighbor next
door? Where is he? Have I done something to him? Why are the
neighbor kids throwing rocks through our windows? Rocks with words
painted on them like: murderer, bitch, killer , and nuts !
Mom had forgotten what she’d done. She’d
forgotten everything.
And the more Mom talked, the more Dad drank.
It was then when Dad’s drinking lost its secrecy. He wasn’t afraid
Mom would find out anymore, so he brought his stash into the house
and turned our house into his new speakeasy. That’s when he started
talking to me again. That’s when the doctors visited us. That’s
when he and Mom started fighting again, and life was beginning to
feel a little more normal.
I remember Dad holding a bottle out to me
one night as if it were a candy bar, saying something like, Son; I
know you want a little nip. Just say something to me and you can
have some.
The bribe brought about a backlash of
cusswords from Mom, and Dad took his brew to his room and slammed
the door. It was a bribe that turned coercive when the bottle game
turned into our last game of Russian roulette a night later, and
the bribe turned into another game of reverse psychology: Tell
me to put the fucking gun down or I’m going to pull this fucking
trigger! Talk to me son, and I won’t kill you! I’m pointing this
gun at you because I love you, don’t you understand?
Mom used to cry out sometimes in the night,
and I’d hear Dad asking her what was wrong. One time I heard her
say, “I can’t remember my mother’s name.”
Mom’s forgetting moms! It was as sad as moms
forgetting sons—or as deluded. I lay there in bed staring at the
ceiling and then out into the night sky, thinking how crazy it was
for a mom to ever forget her
shooting.
She would tell me that the doctors had told
him to use something called reverse psychology with me. She would
say they told him to ignore me when he brought me home, that
perhaps that would spark my willingness to speak again.
The explanation was supposed to make me feel
better, as if Dad’s ignoring me had some component of affection to
it, but it didn’t ease me. I would take it as Dad’s way of telling
me he didn’t give a damn; I couldn’t believe other adults would
tell him to do such a thing, anyway. I would tell Mom that it made
things worse, and then I asked her what psychology was.
"Psychology is a mind game, Mitchell. That’s
all it is, so don’t be mad at your father."
But before my voice returned, before Mom
could answer me or Dad, before any of that ever took place, Mom had
to find her own voice. She came home from the Asylum a different
person. She’d been lobotomized. She didn’t seem to remember
anything, and she wasn’t talking—not about the shooting or anything
else. Like me and like Dad, she wasn’t talking at all. It was as if
the noise in her head had been quenched, like a terrible thirst,
and without noise there was only nothingness and nothing to say. It
was as if her spirit had been flipped inside out, as if her
personality had somehow shifted to an altered version of itself, a
quiet, confused and contemplative version, as if her tape of
knowledge had been suddenly, and inexplicably, erased.
She slept twenty-two hours a day for some
time. I’d look to Dad, he’d look to me, and then we’d each look
away in a sort of stunned silence. But with time and contemplation
comes the nagging sensation of regret and a remote feeling that
something’s wrong, that there’s something on the tape after all,
something barely audible, but there that needs hearing, or needs
repeating. I think it was the shadow of erased memories emerging in
her, much like an alligator surfacing in a quiet pond where all the
alligators were supposedly exterminated.
Such was the hell of wondering that brought
her out of her malaise, and back into the land of the verbal. And
once Mom started talking, she wouldn’t shut up. How? What? Why? How
did things come to be this way? What happened to the neighbor next
door? Where is he? Have I done something to him? Why are the
neighbor kids throwing rocks through our windows? Rocks with words
painted on them like: murderer, bitch, killer , and nuts !
Mom had forgotten what she’d done. She’d
forgotten everything.
And the more Mom talked, the more Dad drank.
It was then when Dad’s drinking lost its secrecy. He wasn’t afraid
Mom would find out anymore, so he brought his stash into the house
and turned our house into his new speakeasy. That’s when he started
talking to me again. That’s when the doctors visited us. That’s
when he and Mom started fighting again, and life was beginning to
feel a little more normal.
I remember Dad holding a bottle out to me
one night as if it were a candy bar, saying something like, Son; I
know you want a little nip. Just say something to me and you can
have some.
The bribe brought about a backlash of
cusswords from Mom, and Dad took his brew to his room and slammed
the door. It was a bribe that turned coercive when the bottle game
turned into our last game of Russian roulette a night later, and
the bribe turned into another game of reverse psychology: Tell
me to put the fucking gun down or I’m going to pull this fucking
trigger! Talk to me son, and I won’t kill you! I’m pointing this
gun at you because I love you, don’t you understand?
Mom used to cry out sometimes in the night,
and I’d hear Dad asking her what was wrong. One time I heard her
say, “I can’t remember my mother’s name.”
Mom’s forgetting moms! It was as sad as moms
forgetting sons—or as deluded. I lay there in bed staring at the
ceiling and then out into the night sky, thinking how crazy it was
for a mom to ever forget her
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