Mama was a Southern lady with a full repertoire of platitudes and morals for all of life’s events, and, while demure and reserved in public, she wasn’t shy or quiet about sharing her repertoire with her family. After anything happened, at the first private moment together, Mama would unleash a flurry of these wisdoms on Daddy and me. Since Daddy died three years ago from an out-of-the-blue heart attack, I had been the sole recipient of the full brunt of Mama’s wisdom.
Mama and I did not see eye-to-eye on most things; in fact, we usually saw back-to-back. We just didn’t see our places in the the world in any way that was compatible with the other’s views. Around men of all ages, Mama acted subordinate and helpless and spoke in a deferential, high-pitched girly voice, which became stranger and stranger to behold as she aged into an older middle-aged woman. It was a man’s world to Mama, and she accepted her far-lesser place in that. At the same time, she ruled her nest with eagle eyes and a domineering hand, and how she ever coalesced the two in her mind, I could never figure. Daddy would usually grunt and let her have her way at home, but in public, he would have none of it. They were like Jekyll and Hyde to me, and my friends never believed me when I told them how my parents were in the privacy of our home.
I, on the other hand, saw the world as people first, male, female, or other second. While Mama would never overtly argue in public, I liked and instigated debate as often as I could. I always felt free to express my opinion, or, if it benefitted the argument, an opposing opinion. While I always tried to be respectful, I admittedly knew how to hold my own in a heated discussion. And, worse, try as I might not to, I knew how to be the one to turn a discussion heated. Folks said I could create an argument for anything, but in truth, I was just good at imagining a wide variety of perspectives and was happy to debate anything with anyone. When Mama would hear of me arguing with folks, she would always be appalled and apologize like there would be no tomorrow if she didn’t. She seemed to send bushels of apology pie to the community. She’d let me have it for hours on end later at home; for an outwardly polite and demure woman, she could be hellfire in her home. And I burned in hell pretty often, especially as a teen, when I weirdly got perverse enjoyment from it.
After my teens, things between Mama and me got better for a little while, but that changed after Daddy died. Mama became obsessed with trying to mold me into her view of what I should be, which specifically was Southern demure marriage material. Before, she had kind of acknowledged that we were on separate paths—I guess that was somehow Daddy’s influence. But Daddy’s sudden, unexpected death seemed to change her in a bad way, and she became convinced there wasn’t much time for her to fix me. It was Armageddon from that point on between Mama and me, even in public, to Mama’s great shame. Folks would steer clear of us as they would any nuclear bomb about to go off. Mama and I walked around in a constant state of fury at each other. Little things became gargantuan things, and big things, well, the nuclear bomb would go off.
I didn’t move out of Mama’s house during this time because I couldn’t. No one wanted to chance Mama’s now-famous and widely feared wrath by offering me a place to stay, and I had no money. I worked at the diner to try to save money for college. Mama was indignant that I wasn’t saving up for marriage and kids, but I couldn’t think of a worse prison than that. Even this hell with Mama seemed less of a hell trap. I thought I might want to study law—I could argue nearly anyone down, and that seemed like a good enough prerequisite that folks weren’t surprised by my choice. We had only one lawyer in town, and his job didn’t seem so hard—most of his job didn’t even involve arguing. Sometimes he got paid in cash, sometimes in goods and services, but folks respected him, and I felt like I would like that too, in another town so Mama couldn’t know to send apology pies. Unfortunately, working at the diner was a hellaciously slow way to build up a college fund. It felt like my choices were to either wait out Mama’s horribly misguided and doomed attempts to mold me or to give up my dream of going to college and getting the hell out of this town. So I tried to wait things out.
It didn’t work. While I was putting up some boxes in the attic, a rickety ladder step broke, and I suddenly slid through the ladder onto my knees, and badly so. Mama saw me land in a prayer position, surrounded by Christmas ornaments, and knew God had smote me down so she could fix me. I was immobile since both of my knees were practically in casts. The diner had to let me go. Since folks were leery of Mama after Daddy’s death changed her, I was alone and dependent on Mama, which allowed Mama to do her perceived duty without interference. Day and night, she implored me to understand that a woman needs to know her place, that woman was created for man’s sake; repeated that I needed a man to take care of me, and I wasn’t getting any younger; explained that even if I felt fate had given me lemons, I needed to make lemonade—in short, she worked to constantly drill her crazy crap into my cranium. What I thought was pure hell earlier was nothing compared to this, and my mind nearly snapped. Eventually, just to breathe, I pretended to start to agree with Mama, just to have a small break from her endless supply of brainwashing and constant verbal propaganda. My knees healed frustratingly slowly, and, far worse, I found it got easier and easier to pretend to agree with Mama on things. Sometimes I’d experience sheer terror because I couldn’t tell if I was just pretending to agree with her. By the time I was mobile enough to go into town, Mama sensed her victory was nearly complete.
But nearly isn’t done. As soon as I could, I went to the diner and incessantly instigated discussions with anyone and everyone, at first gently, but soon, the more heated, the better to disprove the gnawing in my gut that said Mama had won. Folks seemed to understand I had to fight my way out of Mama’s hold on my mind, and no one seemed to hold a grudge against me after these discussions. I was an ornery, ornery ass—they had good reason to avoid me, and yet folks seemed to want to help me, to let me start arguments and to go out of their way to be a little ornery too, recognizing that I needed to reclaim myself. Sometimes at a particularly heated moment, I would suddenly feel the need to hug the other person, and involuntary tears would well in my eyes. Folks were kind enough to look away, to suddenly need to get something “over there.” Then we’d all cough and sputter away the moment and go right back to arguing and yelling at each other. I never felt more loved than during those discussions.
Not long after, when my knees were more healed, I was sitting alone at the table on the porch about to have tea and breakfast with Mama when I decided to leave town. I had practically no money, didn’t have any good plans, didn’t even have a way to get out of town. But my mind was suddenly and irrevocably made up. I knew I had to leave right then, but I wanted to leave Mama a message. Mama’s bowl of quartered lemons for iced tea caught my eye. I grabbed the lemons and dumped them into the water pitcher that was still waiting for tea bags. Then I reached inside, grabbed my purse, and started walking down the road to my unknown, unplanned, un-Mama future.
About two minutes later, I heard Mama yelling. “Wha-Who put my lemons in the water pitcher? Izzy, where are you going? Did you do this? You know I wasn’t making…” Even from that distance, I could hear the light bulb go off in Mama’s head. Then she stopped yelling and let me go—I guess that light bulb finally showed her the path to truth.
Becoming Writer 2016 Anniversary Contest 