A Magazine of Many Arts

The woman snapped upright from her bent over position.  The hot pie she had just taken out of the oven slipped from the mitts covering her suddenly limp hands.  Slowly she turned…

“Ms. Herron…Ms. Herron…Alexandra, are you all right?”

Alexandra Herron blinked rapidly to erase the nightmarish memory.  Looking up from her desk, she smiled weakly at her secretary. “Yes, I’m fine, Cindy.  Just lost in thought.”

Why can’t I ever forget, she wondered. Why can’t that bitch just die and leave me to my own life?

Alex noticed her secretary still waiting. “You can go, Cindy. In fact, why don’t you take a break?”

Cindy didn’t move, she just stared at Alex with that cow-eyed look.  Chuckling bitterly, Alex responded, “Don’t worry, I’m fine.  No breakdowns this week.  Mom doesn’t need the company.”

Alex struggled to shake off the dark mood and went back to work.  The face of a small, curly-haired cherub, a sweet baby born into a family of emotionally crippled mothers, kept blocking out the computer screen.  By lunchtime she decided to call it a day.

Inside her cool, gray, living room she kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the couch.  Why did she have a flashback at the office this morning, she wondered.  What had triggered an attack again?  It seemed that she had finally conquered all her demons two years ago.  All it took was twenty-seven months of extensive therapy and a truckload of money.

Turning on the television to the news, she watched the world disintegrate a little more.  The date-line flashed through her mind and she suddenly knew what had triggered her flashback.  Even if she ignored the date, her subconscious never forgot.

The news was as depressing as usual and she hit the remote to turn off the world.  She relaxed; breathing slow and deep as her eyes unfocused then drifted shut.  Alex slept.

The woman snapped upright from her bent over position.  The hot pie she had just taken out of the oven slipped from the mitts covering her suddenly limp hands.  Slowly she turned, ignoring the steaming apples and crust on the floor to stare at the little girl with short blond curls.  She seemed to study the laughing child who sat at the wooden kitchen table swinging her thin legs back and forth, back and forth.  The woman’s eyes widened until the iris was completely surrounded by white and her mouth slowly opened to form a large, red-ringed O…

She woke screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!”  Looking around wildly, Alex quickly realized she was an adult in the safety of her own home.  The phone was ringing, she automatically picked it up.

“Alex?” a male voice inquired.

“Yes, Steve.  Why are you calling me here?” Alex asked.

“Cindy told me you went home early.  Are you sick?”

“No, I’m fine.  I’m just tired.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed you aren’t sleeping well lately.”

“Look Steve, I’m fine!”  she snapped wishing he’d leave her alone.  Funny how she wanted to be left alone most of the time now, she thought, except that she really didn’t like being alone with herself.

She found self-loathing easy, especially after what she did four years before.  She knew it was all her mother’s fault.  How could she have normal emotions, she wondered, when her own mother had wished her dead?  At least she didn’t leave behind tainted memories like that.  Nickie would grow up knowing she was unwanted, but at least she’d never feel hated.  Alex had saved her from that pain.  If her little girl were lucky, she’d learn to hate Alex, not herself.

She remembered those last words her mother ever spoke.  Alex could still hear that shrill, hysterical voice shrieking, “No, no! Not this!  Please don’t do this to me! I wanted to die!”  Then her mother stopped grabbing uselessly at her hair long enough to scream at little Alexandra, “Kill yourself right!”

“…Alex…Alex are you there?”

“Huh, oh sure, Steve.  Sorry I just got lost in thought. Look, why don’t you come over for a late dinner,” Alex said absently as she studied the scars on her wrists.  “I’ll be back after eight, I’ve got to visit Mom tonight.”

She could sense Steve hesitate before he asked, “Do you think that’s wise?”

“It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks is wise!” she said tensely.  “I do what I have to do.”

“God, I’m so tired of it all,” she mumbled after she hung up. “Mom, John, Nickie, I certainly made a mess of their lives.”

Changing into casual clothes, she drove over to the nursing home where her mother sat vegetating for the last twenty-five years. She quietly tiptoed into the semi-private room and stared at the shriveled old woman.  Her mother wasn’t even sixty yet, but looked as if she’d suffered through several lifetimes.

“Why’d you do it, Mom?” Alex asked sitting next to the older woman. “If you had held on, life would have improved.  Times have changed, it’s the 80’s and you could have run away, like I did.  Women don’t have to be household drudges anymore.”

Alex stopped and chuckled bitterly.  “Why, we are almost treated better than second-class citizens now.  Just look at me, I got out and only had to work twice as hard as a man to get where I am and at half the pay.”

Stroking the old woman’s head, Alex continued, hoping some of it would get through.  “I remember how being a wife and mother was too stifling, how you always told your friends it was drowning your entire identity.  All you ever wanted was to be free.  Did you lose you that day, or did you finally just get your freedom?”

Alex felt she had to keep talking, she had to tell Mom why she stopped coming to visit.  Suddenly, on this anniversary of it all, she had to get through to her.  She knelt in front of the old woman and gently turned her face and looked into her eyes.  “Nickie was so cute, I really can’t remember when I started to hate her so much, and John, John was a demanding sex hog.  Sometimes, I have dreams of finding him in the night and castrating him while he sleeps.  But then they come and force me to raise Nickie.  I’d rather die than be trapped like that again!”
Beginning to cry, Alex took a shaky breath and whispered, “I understand why you tried to kill yourself all those times.”

She stood, stepped back and stared at the immobile woman with the wild eyes that begged to convey a message that no one understood.  “I’m really sorry, Mom, I stopped coming to see you under Doctor’s orders.  After I tried to kill myself they made me get help.  I didn’t want it at first, like you, I only wanted to end this farce.  But it helped. At least for a while…I think.”

Wiping the tears from her cheeks, Alex took another deep breath.  “I’ve missed you, Mommy.  Why did you go away like that? Why did you go insane and leave me all alone?  Daddy never forgave you, and he never had the time or inclination to really care about me.  He’s remarried now and has a whole new family.  He’s happy.”

“Tomorrow’s the anniversary of when you lost it.  Why don’t you surprise us all and come back.  Right now.  That would be really nice.  Come back for my birthday.  I’ll be thirty-one in just two days.  Remember how you were going to make me a birthday cake right after you took that pie out of the oven?  Why don’t you do it now?”

Alex held her breath and waited.  She waited for some sign that her mother had heard her, would come out of her state of mad inertia.  After what felt like hours, her mother tilted her head, opened her mouth and…drooled.
Sobbing, Alex wiped the spittle from the chin of the blank that had once been her mother.  She got up to leave, but at the door turned back and said, “Thanks for nothing, Mom.  See you in Hell because being crazy doesn’t make you holy.”

Driving home, Alex thought about everything bad in her life. How Mom went insane right before her eyes and even worse, let her know she was the cause.

With an ironic half-smirk, Alex thought about the turning point in her miserable life.  How she got pregnant, married the father and settled into the life she’d always dreamed of.  She was finally loved.  Only, she learned the hard way that love meant giving until there was nothing left and then giving some more.

Nickie turned out to be an unbearable burden.  And John, oh God, that man wanted her to be the perfect wife, cooking, cleaning and servicing his needs.  Why didn’t her needs count at all, she’d asked herself a million times.  And he kept trying to get her pregnant again.  He said he loved her, yet he wanted to destroy her completely.
By the time she pulled into her parking place, Alex was hysterical.  She sat at the wheel, weeping over all the mistakes she had made in her life.   “Life stinks!” she wailed and beat on the steering wheel.

Slowly, she got her emotions under control.  She went inside to prepare dinner for Steve.  She really didn’t want to see him.  She didn’t want to see anyone but if she cancelled, he’d get upset and come over anyway.

It was time to end the relationship, Alex decided washing the lettuce.  “I don’t need anybody!” she cried throwing the half made salad at the wall.  “I don’t want anyone!”

The doorbell rang reminding Alex of the telephone they’d had when she was a child.  Mom used to talk for hours.  Alex remembered sitting under the table listening to her mother complain.  Every single conversation went the same way. Mom wondered why she’d ever been born and wished herself dead.  Then she’d cry that she’d never wanted children and that a daughter had been the worst mistake of her life.

“No wonder I’m so screwed up,” Alex sobbed ignoring the door and Steve.  “I just can’t take anymore.
She yanked the door open and yelled, “Go away!”

Before he had a chance to respond, she slammed the door and bolted it.  Alex ran to her bedroom and took the phone off the hook and collapsed on the bed, too tired to care about anything.

She woke fourteen hours later, stiff, chilled and late for work.  Putting the phone back in place, she called in sick then lay back down.  “I can’t take anymore,” she said as her tears slid out the corners of her eyes and ran into her ears.

Tomorrow’s my birthday and I’ve missed the last four of Nickie’s?  Does she hate me?  Did I ruin her life like Mom ruined mine?  “I’m sorry Nickie, I’m so very, very sorry.  It’s just that I was never meant to be a mother.”

Getting out of bed, she went into the bathroom and started to fill the tub with steaming water.  When it was half full, she climbed in and settled back, letting the water scald her skin.  As the level rose higher, burning her, she grinned at the pain.

Still grinning, she slashed at her wrists with a shiny new razor blade she’d been saving for just this special occasion. The searing, burning cuts merged with her burning flesh.  She jerked erect, screaming as her blood turned the water pink, then red as it overflowed the porcelain boundaries and soaked the expensive carpeting. Slowly, she slumped back and whimpered. “I don’t remember it hurting this much.  Why does everything in life have to hurt so much?”

The phone rang, and dimly through a thickening fog, she heard the answering machine pick up.  It was someone from the nursing home telling her to call them immediately.  She had left instructions only to contact her in case of death.  “Guess Mom decided to buy it along with me,” she sighed and closed her eyes.

The last thing to occupy her thoughts was a memory, a memory twenty-five years old today.

The woman snapped upright from her bent over position.  The hot pie she had just taken out of the oven slipped from the mitts covering her suddenly limp hands.  Slowly she turned, ignoring the steaming apples and crust on the floor to stare at the little girl with short blond curls.  She seemed to study the laughing child who sat at the wooden kitchen table swinging her thin legs back and forth, back and forth.  The woman’s eyes widened until the iris was completely surrounded by white and her mouth slowly opened to form a large, red-ringed O.  Her hands came up to grab at her hair but the oven mitts interfered.  She kept on trying to pull her hair as she screamed and screamed…

The world faded away completely and Alex knew peace for the first time.  Then with a searing, blinding flash she was alive again.  She could feel stockings hug her legs as the viselike grip of a girdle sheathed her middle.  A pearl necklace rubbed at her throat and she could see the full cotton skirt topped by a frilly apron clothing her from the waist down as she knelt before the hot dark pit before her.

Is this Hell, she wondered gazing at the yawning doorway. Suddenly, she realized she was peering into an old electric oven as a familiar voice rushing away from the inside of her head shouted, “I’m free, I’m free, thank you, I’m free.”

Recognizing the voice belonged to her mother, Alex was slammed with the awful realization that it wasn’t Mom who went insane all those years ago, that it wasn’t Mom who rotted in an institution for a quarter of a century.  Mom had been freed when Alex took over her body.

Alex snapped upright from her bent over position.  The hot pie she had just taken out of the oven slipped from the mitts covering her suddenly limp hands.  Slowly she turned, ignoring the steaming apples and crust on the floor to stare at the little girl with short blond curls. She studied the laughing child who sat at the wooden kitchen table swinging her thin legs back and forth, back and forth. She felt her eyes grow wide and knew her mouth was slowly opening to form a large, red-ringed O….Her hands came up to grab at her hair but the oven mitts interfered. Alex felt helpless as she kept on trying to pull at her hair as she screamed and screamed…

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