Motherless Child

Motherless Child
January 5, 2009

My mother died again over the holidays. Not physically this time. No death is ever permanent in our ancestor-haunted family. This one, a mental fall over a metaphorical cliff from which she will never recover, has been officially diagnosed by a man she calls “The Judge” as late-onset bipolar disorder and early-stage dementia.

By some folks’ testimony, Mother was normal on Thanksgiving: smoking, gossiping, cutting up, foregoing vegetables for sweet potato pie, and begging rides to the corner store for scratch-off lottery tickets. By Christmas, she was in the geriatric psych ward.

During “good” times, this is a marvelous garden, where she picks imaginary strawberries and tomatoes off vines that grow before her. It’s a circus (well, that much is true), with clowns and funny animals prancing about. It is home, where my grandmother, dead over a decade, tries on fanciful hats.

During “bad” times, she’s in jail, held prisoner against her will, forced to be a prostitute, beaten, and raped. I’m colluding with The Judge to keep her there because I’m a terrible daughter, always have been, she tells me over and over again. She bites and hits the nurses. She bangs against her geri-chair, a metal recliner with locking tray that keeps patients considered “flight risks” confined.

Part of me admires her volatile moments. Who among us – if we believed ourselves unjustly held prisoner – would not similarly rail against The Judge, bite his minions’ hands, and rattle the bars of our cages? “Attica! Attica!” I want to chant along with her. But this is my mother, not a movie.

If her last few years were filmed as montage, she would be shuffling toward that cliff on her walker, her body bent almost double and twisted with scoliosis. Granny and other dead relatives have been socializing with her for years. She supplements her retirement income with scratch-offs and cash advances from whatever credit cards come in the mail. She lives off sugar: diet drinks, cookies, and cereal. (Internet searches taught me that delusions, out-of-control financial judgment, and excessive sweet tooth are hallmarks of her disease.) She has a rock star’s drug resume: including Paxil and Xanax for mental health, and a variety of muscle relaxers and Oxycontin – “hillbilly heroin” – for the back pain. If the drugs didn’t do her in, her past would have caught up with her one day. My mother has already died many times before.

The first time happened when I was about ten. Ovarian cancer. I don’t remember much. People speaking in hushed tones around me. A mommy who went away and came back, much later, with the hair missing from all over her body. Then, a miracle! No one defeated ovarian cancer back then, but my mother was apparently tougher than anyone suspected. She went on to live through breast cancer, colon disease, high blood pressure, scoliosis, and multiple nervous breakdowns. Illness took some of the fight out of her. Still, she survived.

Only to face death disguised as a man. Grendel, high school friends and I called him, after the monster in Beowulf. Grendel did a lot of drinking, name-calling, hitting, and breaking. The worst time was when he busted down our front door, dead-bolt lock and all, and pointed a loaded pistol at my mother’s face. While I stood there, butcher knife twitching in my hand, weighing the pros and cons of stabbing Grendel, he clicked the gun slowly, multiple times before I realized it wasn’t loaded. He just wanted to prove a point. He was angry that my mom had borrowed money from the judge she worked for and accused her of sleeping with him.

Ironic how the people we call crazy often speak a twisted truth. There my mother sits, confined to her geri-chair, imprisoned by her past, searching for what bell hooks calls “homeplace.” Beside her, a helpless, hapless Beo-Woolf stands with pen in hand instead of butcher knife. I take notes furiously as The Judge fires terms at me like “Baker Act” and “state mental hospital” if Mother doesn’t stop biting and hitting. I, too, want to bit and hit, but whom? To what end?