Sister Frances told me to always start in this position. I concentrated on the music in front of me, and I began to play. I’m not sure why I was so careful not to make noise with the page turning, given that I was about to play this monster upright that echoed through our apartment. Maybe I thought my mother wouldn’t stop me after I’d started playing. She’d enjoy hearing the music so much that it would calm and soothe her, and she wouldn’t want to interfere with the beautiful flow of notes.
“Anne,” I heard her call. My heart sank.
“What?” I asked.
“Come out here. I need you to help me.”
“But I’m playing piano,” I said. “Sister said I have to practice every day.”
“Come out here now.”
With cheeks burning, I slid off the bench and walked out through the dining room and stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“Wipe that sullen look off your face,” my mother demanded.
There was nothing I could do to stop the anger flashing out of my eyes. Before I knew it my mother crossed the kitchen to where I stood. The sting jolted me as the palm of her hand hit my left cheek. Slimy potato water dripped down my face. The back of her hand connected with the right side of my head as her arm swung back. I felt a scratch from her diamond cocktail ring, the one she’d had made from her engagement ring and that of her mother-in-law. I held my breath. I knew if I stood very still and didn’t look at her, she might only hit my face a couple of times. Stepping back would anger her more. Then the hitting would get harder and faster, and she’d start screaming. I think I hated the screaming almost as much as the hitting. Then, she did something worse.
“I wish I’d put you up for adoption when I had the chance,” she blurted.
Oh, I really wish she had, I thought. She must have read my mind, or maybe she wanted me to say that I was happy she kept me. But she seemed to get angrier at my lack of reaction.
“Well, maybe I should just send you away right now. I’m sick of the sight of you.”
This had her desired effect and made me cry. My greatest fear continued to be my mother sending me away again.
It was almost six o’clock, and Margie would be home from work soon. She’d step off her bus at the end of Brooks Street at 5:51 P.M. and slowly walk home, feet sore from being squeezed into black high-heeled pumps all day. At 5:59 P.M., her keys would jingle in the back door lock; I’d be safe if I could just hold out for a few more minutes. When my mother hit me while Margie was at home, she rarely gave me more than one quick slap to the cheek. Maybe Margie could talk my mother out of sending me away. After all, I’d been allowed to live with them for the past two years, so Margie must have been having some influence on my mother.
When Margie was away, my face became a target, my cheeks like dual bull’s-eyes as my mother’s hand aimed and struck. Injuries to the middle of my face were collateral damage as my mother slapped my face from side to side—palm to one cheek, back of hand to the other. The physical injuries—cuts and scratches and small bruises—came from her nails or her jewelry. The logic skills I used to solve tricky math word problems at school failed me with my mother. I usually couldn’t figure out what I’d done to precipitate a beating. So I sought refuge. Margie was my best shelter; she shielded me from my mother like a seawall protecting against storm damage. She couldn’t hold back the worst tempest, but she could lessen the impact. Maybe the weight of single motherhood felt a little lighter to my mother with her sister to share the load. Or maybe my mother was ashamed of her actions.
Perhaps by hitting me, my mother purged some deep anger that simmered all day like an active volcano, the heat getting more unbearable as her day went along, until she erupted at home more from the pressure building within than from any external forces, such as her child. She might have interrupted my piano play so that she could have some help in the tedious supper preparations. Maybe she was lonely and wanted some company or needed to feel that her child loved her.
While in medical school, I learned about a pediatric disease called slapped cheek syndrome, so-called because a hallmark sign is a bright red rash on the cheeks that looks as if the child had just been slapped. I learned that it is usually a benign, self-limited illness, caused by a virus. In contrast, my mother’s slaps felt malignant, and their effects were lasting. Hitting a child is like a virus that spreads insidiously. Parents strike children, who smack their children, and the behavior passes down through the generations. My grandmother hit my mother, and my mother hit me. I made it stop there. My husband and I never struck our children, and we hope that our legacy of peaceful, loving childrearing will endure.
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