I haven’t spoken to my mother since about 1986. To this day, my mother is an enigma to me. I understand less about her than I do complete strangers. That isn’t do say I don’t recognize batshit crazy. I do, I really do. No, the thing is I don’t really know why she is the way she is. My aunts (her sisters) were sweet, unassuming women. Her mother (my grandmother) was a saint by all accounts.
Her brother though (my uncle) was among the meanest motherfuckers I ever knew. He was a sadistic drunk that enjoyed nothing more than abusing us without provocation. He had been in and out of jail since he was 9 years old. And while my mother like to beat us, she always did so with at least a pretext of discipline… we were too loud, disobedient, lazy, stupid. My uncle though, enjoyed inflicting pain simply because he was cruel. Though I should say he wasn’t all bad… he taught my older brother and me how to fight by pitting us against each other for his entertainment. Years later he would die, in a mexican prison, the victim of someone who was even more cruel and more sadistic.
My mother would go on physically and verbally abusing us until I was about 8 or so. After one more in a long line of beatings I had enough. I simply told her that eventually she would have to go to sleep and when she did, I would make sure she never touched me or my brothers again. She never hit any of us again. Like all bullies, she just didn’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight.
To be continued…
Have you heard many stories of your mother when she was younger? I wonder if she was more like her sisters once upon a time, or if she was simply born with a dose of the same mean streak as her brother.