In a Flash

I see it in a flash. They say you can’t remember your first few years, but that’s not entirely true. I remember crying, my little face wrinkled in pain and frustration. I’m angry because I have colic, though I don’t know what that is. I only know that the cramps in my stomach make me feel like I’m going to be ripped in half.

My mother is holding me, her brown hair a mess of permed curls surrounding a pale, chubby face. She looks down at me, her face tightened in anger and irritation. A pinch of hatred wrinkles her brow. Someone has snapped this photo of us and has tucked it away in my baby book…

I flash to a large silver button. I press it, and it clicks with a satisfying snap. Noise blasts from speakers on either side of me. A woman’s voice sings out in a throaty croon.

“Whatever will be will be...”

A large hand appears and slaps my fingers. I squeal in shock, and budding tears sting my eyes.

“NO! That’s not a toy!” my mother screams. “That stereo is too expensive to play with.” She presses the button, and the beautiful voice disappears. My mother stomps away, the floor shaking. I reach over and press the button again, and the beautiful voice returns.

“The future’s not ours to see…”

“I SAID NO!” my mother screams over the music. She jabs the sliver button, and the stereo rocks with the force of it. My mother snatches my hand and holds it up. She slaps it several times with her other hand. I scream in pain.

“Don’t you dare sass me!” my mother raises her hand and slaps my open mouth. Her fingers strike my upper lip, catching it on my brand-new front tooth. I gasp and scream louder, blood flowing into my mouth and down my chin. My mother’s face goes from rage to fear. She snatches me off the floor and takes me to the bathroom. Setting me on the toilet seat, she grabs a towel off the rack. She presses it to my mouth, but I shrink away. She holds the back of my head and presses the towel to my face. Snot clogs my nostrils, and I can’t breathe. It’s the first time I think I’m going to die. My frail arms wave in fear. My mother removes the towel, and I gasp through the stream of blood.

We rush to the car, my mouth still on fire and still leaking blood. In the doctor’s office, the doctor sews three stitches into my small upper lip. The doctor won’t let us leave. He calls a social worker to talk to my mother. My mother tells a lie about our dog snapping at me. I don’t have the words to tell them the truth, so they let us leave.

Later that day, my dog disappears. I like to look at the Polaroid of him with his furry black nose on my small shoulder. It’s the only picture of him my mother missed when she threw away the others…

Now, I am in front of my mother’s vanity, sitting on a stool while she brushes my hair. She picks up a pair of scissors and comes at me. I flinch away, and she scowls.

“Don’t be dramatic. I’m not going to hurt you,” she says. “You have a big forehead, just like mine. You should always have bangs to cover it up.” With three snips, she cuts the hair across my forehead. I hate them, but now we have something in common. In the class photos, I am the only girl with bangs…

Suddenly I am at a parent-teacher conference a few years later.

“She doesn’t socialize well,” my teacher tells my parents. “She has a hard time making friends.” I am sitting in the hallway, but the door is open, so I hear everything. They say I’m gifted, but I can only think about the criticism. My teacher takes a picture of me with my parents.

On the way home, my mother interrogates me.

“Why don’t you just talk to the other kids?” she snaps as my father drives home. I explain that the kids are mean and make fun of my clothes and hair.

“It’s okay,” she says as she looks out the window. “I was bullied in school, too, and my mother became my best friend.” It sounds like she wants to be my best friend, but I don’t understand because best friends are supposed to be nice to each other.

The following week, my teacher pins our parent pictures to the bulletin board …  

I flash forward to the mall. I beg my mother for a name-brand sweatshirt. I don’t care about name brands, but the other kids do. I still don’t have any friends, but I hope a nice sweatshirt might help.

“Do you know how much that thing is?” my mother hisses. A woman glances up from a rack of dresses. “We can’t afford that! Do you want us to be homeless? Do you want us to live in a cardboard box on the street?”

We go to the bathroom. In the cramped stall, she makes me put on the itchy, frilly dress she bought so we can take pictures with the Easter Bunny. I try to leave the tags on. Maybe we can return it for the sweatshirt after we’re done with the picture.

“You need that for church!” she says as she rips the tag off. “You need something nice for Easter Sunday.” She pulls a new dress over her head. It is the same pink shade as mine. She stands next to the Easter Bunny as I sit on his lap, and they take our picture.

In the pew on Sunday, we listen as the pastor announces the prayers. It’s a laundry list of people whose luck has run out. People who have cancer, Alzheimer's, and, to our surprise, a neighbor who was laid off.  

“I bet they regret buying that fancy boat now,” my mother whispers. My father shrugs. He had hoped to go out on the boat with the neighbor. I imagine the neighbors living in a cardboard box on the street. Maybe they can live in their boat instead.

My mother shows everyone at brunch the picture of us with the Easter bunny. She doesn’t notice the eye rolls behind her back…

A few years later, I am learning my Bible verses in the car on the way to Sunday school. We are late, and my mother is speeding down the street. She holds a slip of paper against the steering wheel. It has a bible verse printed on it.

“Say it again!” she screams.

“Blessed are the meek…” I start.

“Say it with feeling!” she screams as the engine revs away from a stop sign. “You’ll never win if you don’t say it with feeling!”

The picture of me standing in the auditorium with a certificate hangs on our fridge for years…

I flash to our kitchen as my mother rips the picture from the fridge. The little plastic house magnet goes flying across the floor. I have just told her I no longer want to go to church. I’m sixteen and old enough to decide for myself.

“I guess that expensive education was a waste,” she screams. The argument starts when I ask to attend my soccer tournament instead of church. It ends when I tell my mother I don’t believe in god. She flies at me, grabs my shoulders, and shoves me into the wall. She slaps my cheeks with tiny, vicious smacks. I realize I’m taller than her and can fight back, but I don’t dare. If I hit her, she’ll call the police on me. She’s threatened to do it for less. I take the slaps until my father pulls her off me.

Hours later, my cheeks are red for the team picture. When I tell my teammates it’s a sunburn, I can tell they don’t believe me, but they don’t question the lie. This picture stays in the drawer of my nightstand…

My last picture is on my phone. I stand near the edge of the overlook, trying to get a selfie with the mountains in the background. We are on vacation in Iceland. It’s my father’s last-ditch effort to get my mother and I to reconcile. We haven’t spoken in two years.

When I tell her I’m not going to the Christian college she has picked out for me, she refuses to give me the money in my college fund. I don’t care. The money they saved wouldn’t have covered a semester of tuition at the Ivy League I’m attending.

My father sends me cash when he can. He puts the money in Manila envelopes full of junk mail that still gets sent to their house. He could throw the ads and catalogs away, but he uses them to hide the money from my mother. My friends get care packages of homemade cookies and fancy shampoo. I get packets of catalogs and wads of twenties.

“Stay away from the edge!” my mother screams at me. She never says anything when she can shout it. I ignore her and inch back, even though I know I am dangerously close to the cliff's edge. Fuck her.

I hold my phone in front of me, getting just the right angle. I step back again, but my heel hits nothing but air. My body tilts backward, and my feet scramble for balance on the gravel. I see my mother’s back as I go over the edge. Her hands are on her hips as she complains to my father. He looks at her and doesn’t see me fall.

My selfie is the last flash before the darkness.