Bad beat

-"Good morning, Libby! Sit down."

-"Sorry I am a little late. I was visiting my brother." she sighed.

-"I hope it was a nice visit. You look a little depressed if you ask me."

-"That's why I'm here, isn't it?" she sighs again as she dropped herself into the chair opposite me.

-"Well, you do not always have to be depressed to come over here. I love it when people come and tell me they're feeling good."

She gave me a sour smile and shrugged.

-"What's on your heart?" I asked.

-"I lost a bet." she replied.

-"Oh, I hope you haven't lost too much money." 

-"Two dollars fifty." she smiles weakly.

-"Oh," I said with relief, "the damage is manageable then."

She took a deep breath: "It just brought up a lot of trouble in my head."

-"Tell me about that." I asked.

-"My childhood was miserable, and my adolescence was sullen." she started. I nodded understandingly.

-"My father was an observant Jew. My mother was not." she explained.

-"Sounds complicated." I interrupted her. She shrugged indifferently and continued:

-"When I was six years old, I once heard my mother say to someone, an acquaintance of hers, I don't remember who it was, but I remember all too well what she said because it sounded like a reproach to me."

-"What did she say?" I asked.

-"She does not know what suffering is." She probably expected me to ask what her mother meant by that, but I kept silent and let her go on:

--" I asked her later, in my childish naivety, what she meant by that. She shook me off with the answer that it meant I was born here, not "there". The look on her face silenced me. I knew better than to insist."

She ran her gaze over the walls of the therapy room as if looking for an impetus to continue.

-"She once bought me a pink quilted robe. God, I loved that thing. I always looked like a movie star when I wore it." she smiled shyly.

-"I wanted to be enchanting. Then my parents and their friends might forget to gamble." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath:

-"My father was constantly staring at the clock on Saturday night. He was counting down the end of the Sabbath. My mother would whine all the time that this was all just nonsense. In response, my father liked to lament that she had promised him to become observant if he married her and that once they tied the knot, she had bluntly stated that she had absolutely no intention to observe all those irritating rules."

-"Fertile ground for arguments." I fell in. She rolled her eyes and continued:

-"A folding table was set up, plastic chairs were fished out of a storage room, and it was not long before "the guests" arrived, and the whole house would be filled with cigarette smoke. When the doorbell rang, I ran to the front door. I had to open that door at all costs and enchant those guys, then maybe they would not play cards. I must have looked cute in that pretty pink robe, right?" She paused and fished a handkerchief from her purse to wipe her tears.

-"Uncle Herby was usually the first to arrive. He stroked my head, then went on to the living room. It was the same with the other guests. Those practically ran straight into the living room, and that green table that was visible from the hallway.

And then the routine started. They took their wallets from their pockets, or envelopes with money. My mother ordered my brother to pour the guest's drinks. I went to do pirouettes to attract attention. But no one saw me except my mother who would bite at me to go watch TV. Then I would just go sit in a corner and think about what I could do to impress all those people who were not aware I existed. My mother kept telling me to watch TV from time to time. There was never anything on TV that interested me.

It made me sad, but I was not allowed to show that, because it always made my mother angry, and sometimes, she would hit me in the face as well. So, I would lower my eyes, hoping that I could hold back my tears." She paused and imitated her mother:

"Here, I'll give you a reason to cry.” Another tear ran down her cheek.

-"I understood that I had to be invisible, so I withdrew. I had trouble sleeping, but those poker nights were the worst. I could hear money clanging on the table. I kept hearing the same words and arguing. Cigarette smoke made me sick. I always waited as long as possible, until I could not take it anymore, and then I sheepishly walked to the living room. There I would stand in a corner, hoping someone would notice me. I would fantasize that I was starring in one of those old Hollywood film noirs, you know, the genre with secret agents and spies. I convinced myself that the people around that table were exchanging super-secret information in the fog of the dense smoke.”

-"Where was your brother on those evenings?" I asked.

-"My brother was always in his room. We never really talked about it. We never talked about important things. That was taboo. Every man for himself was the golden rule at our house.”

In my mind's eye, I could see the little girl who was lost in that house that was supposed to be her home.

"I counted the butts in the bulging ashtrays. I always fished out my mother's. It was easy, hers were the ones with the red lipstick. They looked like bloody lip marks. A third of that mountain of butts was from her. My mother caught me doing that once. She was furious, and dragged me by my hair, to my room. She bit her nails while she was doing that. She yelled that it was my own fault that I could not sleep and that I had to close the door of my room. I cried that I was afraid."

-"What did she say to that?" I wanted to know.

-"She threw me on my bed and snapped that she would give me a reason to be afraid. Scared, afraid she stomped as if you have reasons to be afraid." She let her tears freely now. I got up to get her a glass of water. She thanked me and drank it in one gulp

-"I wanted to tell her so badly what scared me."

-"What exactly scared you?" I informed.

She shrugged: “ That it was all my fault. And  that´s why something strangled me, and ghostly intruders broke in through the kitchen window. She shut the door of my bedroom and I counted her footsteps back to the living room. Then I imagined a sweet fairy sitting at the foot of my bed, comforting me I learned to suppress the words to express my fears.

 When I woke up the next morning, I walked into the living room, which was littered with glasses, cups, and mountains of cigarette butts.

My mother usually slept until late in the afternoon, so I went to wake my father to take me to Sunday school. When he dropped me off at school, he went to my uncle Maurice; the only one in the family who did not gamble. He had a furniture store and was always busy with curtains and covers.

I remember one time I woke up, and they were still playing. No one had noticed I was in the room. They just continued to deal and fold. I went to the kitchen to get myself a plate of cornflakes. Then I would walk back to the living room and pull on my father's arm, crying that I had to go to Sunday school. Finally, he excused himself and silently took me to Sunday school, where he forgot to pick me up. a classmate's mother took me home, where they were still playing. My father sat at that green table with his coat on and his cap on his head.

My brother had found out that my father also gambled during the week. We decided to run away together. We did not get far, of course. We strolled around the neighborhood for a few hours. Then my mother found us: she dragged us into the car and took us home. My father hurried out the door, leaving the punishment to our mother.

I was terrified of the aftermath of this story, so I hid under my bed. I heard my brother scream: don't hit me, mama. Mama, please do not hit me. I knew all too well how it felt to be spanked. It was never the spanking that hurt. The betrayal was the most painful.

After the beatings, my mother would always justify herself, telling us that her mother beat her much worse. Sometimes even with sticks. She always showed her arm, from when her mother did not realize there was a nail in the stick. I never knew my grandparents. I have only seen black and white pictures of them. At least my grandmother must have been fierce enough to get her whole family through the holocaust.

Yes, I am a bad mother, she would pout with crocodile tears. She was just fishing for me to say she was a good mother, and that I forgave her. I could not do it.

Then came a period where we were regularly without power for days. The phone was disconnected too. My brother and I thought that was cool at first. We played we were camping. We were not allowed to talk to anyone about that, of course.

Neither my mother nor my father took responsibility. When he mentioned her gambling problem, she would spit back that he gambled too, and that she was entitled to a hobby of her own."

She paused and let out a long sad sigh.

-"Dad went to work six days a week. He kept a roof over our heads and kept asking where all the money was. My mother was usually yelling and ranting that she could not do what she wanted. Once, she gambled away the money, my uncle Maurice gave her to buy me a piano." She strummed her fingers over her knees.

- “My father started demanding changes and promised that he would stop gambling. My mother asked him who was holding him back, and said she was only playing to win back the money he lost.

They just yelled at each other, and I just cried.”

-"Are they divorced?" I asked. She shook her head.

-"Dad took her name off the bank accounts, and she just started forging checks. It didn't take long for my father to find that out. From then on, she had to ask him for money, and she collapsed."

"Your childhood seemed very dark indeed," I said.

-"I asked my father if he was proud of me." she mused.

-"What was his answer?" I asked.

-"He said he was glad I wasn't a drug addict. Poker nights at our house had ended, but my mother was relentlessly looking for substitutes to gamble. She was playing bingo numbers where she could win money. Or the betted-on horses.

My father only gambled once a week. At least that is what he claimed. They're just little games, he would apologize. The electricity and the telephone were never cut off again, so I believed him. My mother kept lying. She lied constantly about everything. She was a tough nut to crack. When I left home, things just got worse. Gambling nights became gambling days. When I called home, they never picked up the phone." She let out another deep sigh, got up, and went to stand by the window.

"May I ask you something, Doctor?" she asked. I nodded.

_"Do you think it's possible that maybe there isn't enough room in my heart to see their suffering?"

-"What makes you think that?" I asked her.

-"All things considered; my childhood was less catastrophic than my parents. What I remember when I think of them is the look of despair in my mother's eyes when she had no more people to get money from, and my father's willful self-deception every time he went to play. They managed to lose everything." she said more to herself than to me.

-"Gambling is a disease." I explained, "An addiction. An impulse control disorder."

-"Sorry Doc." she laughed sadly, "But if you ask me, a lot is lost in that description."

I shrugged.

-"The only bet I ever made was this afternoon, just before I came here, with my brother's toddler son. It cost me an ice cream." We laughed together.

-"I hope that my own children will have a better childhood than mine." she said.

-"Do you have plans?" I asked.

- "Maybe. First I want to learn to counsel children of addicted parents." She answered.

-"That is a very noble prospect!" I said. She gave me a hug and walked out. I watched her through the window of my office. When she came out of the building she looked up and waved at me, then bought herself an ice cream from the ice cream truck in the square.