Jacqueline M. Dierks PH.D
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Excerpt
Chapter One
“What is it now?” I yelled as I walked through the front door—slamming it really hard so everyone knew I was pissed. Absolutely everything is a crisis with my mother! Jesus, can’t anyone just call me and say, ‘How are you? How’s your day going?’ No, it’s always a goddam crisis!
My mother was in the kitchen, sitting in “her” chair at the kitchen table crying. This was her signal to the world that she was in ‘crisis mode.’ She looked pathetic, her head in her hands.
“What happened?” I asked, bringing my volume down an octave. My mother does that to me—the minute I see the sad face and especially the tears—I am 4 years old again trying to take care of her. God, why did I have to be born into this family? What had I done wrong in some other life? Maybe I was the one who assassinated Lincoln or something, and I was supposed to suffer, big time, forever.
“It’s Brian,” she said, her voice quavering.
Gritting my teeth, I said, “Oh God! What now?” Saint Brian can’t have done something wrong, I thought to myself. Brian was my brother, two years younger, the last child and the only boy. He is tall, good looking, and easy going—another way of saying ‘lazy slob.’ All those things gave him the status of a saint in this house.
“He’s met someone,” she said, finally able to control herself enough to talk. She wiped her eyes and nose with her apron.
My mother is probably the only woman in the 21st century who still wears an apron. I’m pretty sure she made it herself, too. The funny thing is that the apron is perfect on her. It ‘fits.’ She still gets her hair done every week at the same salon, by the same woman, using the same pink plastic rollers, as she did when I was a kid. The outcome is a brown, curly ‘helmet’ that sits on her head like plastic from one week to the next
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She says that when she needs new clothes, she just goes to the back of her closet. She has stuff in there from the beginning of time—never throws a thing away. Her belief is that everything comes back in style. Please God, don’t let me turn into her.
As I stood there looking at her with my hands on my hips, all I could muster was, “You called me, hysterical, for this? I left my pizza alone with Sarah because Brian met someone.” I was truly amazed at my mother’s ability to create a crisis out of nothing. “Mom, what is your problem? Why do you do this to me?” She continued to sob but seemed to be trying to get control.
She looked at me for the first time since I’d come in. Her face took on a look of pure disdain. “My God, Samantha, you look awful! Don’t you care about how you look? How could you leave the house like that? I just don’t know where I went wrong with you?” She just sat there, shaking her head.
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I looked down at my ‘uniform,’ sweatshirt, jeans, and flip-flops. I guess it was the catsup and relish I had spilled down the front of me at lunch that was getting to her. “Mom!” I shrieked. “You are the one who called crying, just sobbing on the phone. I thought something terrible had happened! Give me a flipping break!” I stuffed my hands into my jeans pockets so I wouldn’t wring her neck.
