All Is Forgiven

Could I Walk A Mile In Her Shoes
Mama tells me not to say anything to anybody about what is happening at home. Come morning, I wake up from my restless sleep and I try to get it set in my mind what the day may bring. I feel more at ease when I am prepared. I find one of the two dresses I own and get dressed. I try to be as quiet as I can because it is not good to draw attention to yourself at my house. I brush my teeth and stare at the reflection. The eyes have a desperate look today like most days. The white paste and saliva drip onto my dress front. Panic sets in. This is just the catalyst to set mama off on a tirade. She will remind me, in her physical way, how she toils to clean my clothes and what a chore it is to take care of such an ungrateful child. I am sure this is how I will earn the day’s first slap. I am not a successful kid. I am ugly and immature, mama says so. I am too much trouble, always in the way. I am reminded daily how stupid I am because at six years old, I still cannot tie my own shoes. With trepidation I wait. Wait for her to help. Mama is taking care of my small sister right now. So I wait patiently, trying to gauge her mood. She sighs and places the baby on the bed. She steps towards me and out of learned instinct, I recoil. I don't know how mad I have made her. I am not sure what it's going to be this time. Sometimes she just complains as she ties the laces, in one smooth motion I envy. But, this time she pinches me. And we are both silent as the pale skin on my forearm acquires shades of red, blue and deep purple. She doesn't have to tell me to roll down my sleeves. I just know to do it, this isn‘t my first pinch. The dirty laundry of this family stays at home. Our secrets are ours and no one else's. Sometimes I imagine us like a fortress with walls nobody can breech. Nobody leaves and nobody enters. We must protect each other. Our secrets. Today mama cleans the house. I withdraw to a corner making sure to stay out of the way, trying to be invisible. In the safety of my imagination. I envision a mighty army, coming from the distance, with guns blasting to kill the demons that live at this evil house. And I see my hero coming on a white horse, surrounded by a bright blinding halo of light, wielding a sword that will behead my tormentors. Just for me. To save me.
I am shaken from my daydream just as he is about to cross the threshold. ‘What? What did you say?” Oh no, mama has asked me something but I didn‘t hear. Cooped up in my corner, I cannot escape the slap I receive for not listening to her. Through my silent tears I retrieve the mop she asked for and I watch as she scrubs away the revolting filth I bring into the house. Why am I so repulsive?
After a while, she lays the baby on a tattered blanket spread on the floor and turns on the radio. We sit on the pallet and listen to a sad song of love gone wrong. Mama talks about how different her life could’ve been if she had married for love instead of escape. She tells me how lucky I am to have the life I have and it is all I can do to keep the astounded look from my face. She gets this way sometimes, all sad and teary eyed.
She is shaken from her maudlin mood when Grandpa arrives help put down a new linoleum rug on the living room floor. I like grandpa, he always hugs me and lets me sit on his lap. I want to tell him our secrets but even as stupid as I am I know it would be a mistake.
I stay out of the way as they wrestle our old brown sectional into another room. Grandpa asks mama to get him a glass of sweet tea from the kitchen, the tea I am never allowed to have no matter how hot the day. “Why would we waste sugar on somebody as ungrateful as you,” she says. While mama has left the room, I bravely step up to grandpa and ask if I can help him roll out the new rug, anxious to be included. He tells me he’d love to have my help. He tells me to stand in front of him and bend over. That way when I start to roll the rug it will be straight. I am thrilled to be helping and hoping mama will be pleased to see I am doing something good and not just in the way like I usually am. I so want to help.
As I am bent over, grandpa does the strangest thing. He bends down and whispers in my ear to be very quiet. He tells me he is going to show me how much he loves me and to thank me for being such a good helper. I am so happy. He loves me! He slides his big hand, calloused from years of working at the lumber mill, into the back of my panties and starts to rub and probe. I don’t understand why he thinks this is showing love because it hurts. It doesn’t hurt like when mama whips me with the belt or switch. And it doesn’t hurt like being slapped or pinched. It hurts because his hand is too big, too rough, too scary. Panic starts to set in and I think it is because I know mama will be so mad if she finds out much grandpa loves me. When I hear mama coming in from the kitchen I get so scared I start crying. Just as she walks into the living room grandpa straightens up and tells her I was trying to help. Surely, he sees the fury in her eyes. I run to the safety of the closet I call I call my bedroom. I know she is coming. What was I thinking! Who do I think I am! How many times does she have to tell me to stay out of the way! What will she bring with her to mete out the punishment I know I deserve? This is always the scariest part, not knowing when or what or how.
Even though it seems like hours of waiting I am sure it was only minutes. Grandpa has gone by now. I doubt even he could save me if he were still here, I don’t allow myself to entertain the idea. Mama comes into the room quietly and that really throws me off. I don’t expect calm. Calm scares me more than anything. Calm is too unpredictable. She tells me she wants me to tell her the truth about what grandpa was doing. By now I am hiccupping tears and she slaps me telling me to calm down so she can understand me. I take a deep breath and retreat into the safe place in my mind, the overused niche where I find comfort and safety. The place where my mind disconnects with reality. I tell mama I only wanted to help grandpa, I didn’t mean to get in the way. I tell her I know I wasn’t bothering grandpa because he loves me, he was showing me how much when she walked in. I don’t know what made her the angriest, that I had done something without her permission or that I had the audacity to say somebody loves me. Her whole being morphed into something I had never before witnessed and believe me I had seen her at her monstrous worst. Her eyes, which are a vibrant green, turned black and cold. Her lips peeled back to bare her teeth in a grimace, like a coyote with its prey. And that is what I felt like at that moment…prey. She had a switch, one of those long limber ones that will wrap around you like a whip. She never said a word as she beat me with her fists and switch. I lay fetal, accepting the punishment I knew I deserved. This was the worst beating I had ever had but it didn’t compare to the words she said to me after she had exhausted herself. She told me “don’t you ever tell anybody about this and don’t ever let grandpa touch you again, you brought this on yourself”. I knew it was my fault. She then took me into the bathroom, placed me in the tub and poured alcohol over the open bleeding wounds. I never shed a tear through that whole process. It didn’t matter how much it burned my raw flesh. The pain in my soul from being blamed for being loved hurt more than any whipping I could get. This was different from being blamed for bringing dirt into the house or drooling toothpaste onto my dress. This was proof that I cannot be loved. Will not be loved. I did not deserve to be loved.
I was six and I never shed a tear for her again, no matter how hard she hit me. She could bruise my body but she couldn’t batter my heart. I kept that place locked tight. Over the next six years there were hundreds of beatings and harsh words, many lessons learned. There was more sexual abuse, although not from my grandpa. I stayed away from him just as I was told. I believe a pervert or pedophile can sense when they are in the presence of a child that won’t tell. Over time I developed a keen sense of insight into who I could trust and who I could not. But, mama instilled in me a perception about life it took years to conquer…never tell.
Mama died when I was twelve. She died in a house fire… the second one. In 1967 she was having an affair with her boss at his house when it caught fire, killing him and horribly scarring and crippling her. In 1969 she was drunk and fell asleep in bed while smoking. She lived for two weeks before succumbing to pneumonia. Her body was once again charred and twisted. I heard so many people say she was disfigured beyond recognition. Oh, but I recognized her. I saw that her outside finally matched her monstrous, cruel inside.
Her wake was held at a relative’s house, that is the way it was done in those days. All the family was there and all the kids were out in the yard playing. Tiring of being inside with the adults who were mourning the loss of “such a sweet lost soul,” I went out to play with the kids. My great aunt, who thought I was being disrespectful to a wonderful woman’s memory, whipped me and dragged me into the living room and made me sit by mama’s coffin. She was laid out in front of the big picture window. The ugly green drapes were closed but a sliver of sunlight peeped through, shining on mama’s scarred face. Somebody had dressed her in a lavender dress with lace ruffles on the collar and cuffs. Her hands were folded one over the other on her stomach. The longer I stared, taking inventory, the more I started to question if she were really dead. I watched mama for so long I could see her eyes moving under her lids. I saw her lips quiver and when I saw her hand twitch, I involuntarily flinched, sure she was going to hit me. I drew courage from the pit of my soul and silently dared her to raise a hand to me. In reality, I accepted that she was dead and would never be able to reach out from the grave and hurt me anymore. I made a promise to myself and Mama, that nobody would ever put their hands on me ever again. I was so toughened and jaded by the time I was twelve and sitting beside my mama’s coffin that I knew I would survive this life. I remember looking at her pancaked face, daring her to look at me, and telling her thank you for the lessons I learned at her hard, cruel hand and yes, I’m glad she’s dead!

This was written before I became a Christian and learned the great lesson of forgiveness. Before I bothered to find out anything about my mother’s life. Before I learned to ask myself if I could’ve walked in her shoes. I guess I was lucky after all.
There are no excuses. But, there are reasons. And I have forgiven.