There’s something so unsettling about the way this news was delivered to me tonight. I’m picking at a loose pink thread at the corner of my lumpy chair. I pull, lose my grip, pull, lose my grip, over and over and over. Mother won’t be coming home tonight, they told me. Daddy is looking quite frantic, but that doesn’t mean much, as he loses it every time I do something as silly as fall from my bike. I got a new bike for my birthday exactly 17 days ago, by the way. A new 10-speed purple one (my favorite color, naturally) with a basket in the front like all my friends have. My hands fly to my stomach as I feel a twang there, realizing that, unlike mine, their mothers are all at home, and staying there. I frown in jealousy.
Daddy says Mommy has a black cloud hanging over her head. I find that very funny, because I have never seen a black cloud over my mother’s head and I’m with her almost all day. So Daddy must be mistaken. Besides, I never thought that casting clouds away from people’s heads fell under a doctor’s area of expertise. Oh yea, I’m currently sitting in a waiting room, of a hospital of course. Something terrible has happened to my mother, I saw it myself! Somebody must have broken into the house and attacked my mom and then left really fast, because I walked into my mother’s bedroom to the most frightening scene. Mommy was lying on the bed, so I thought she was sleeping, but when I went to wake her up (it was dinner time and I was very hungry) I saw deep, deep red slices in Mommy’s arms. I jumped on the bed to shake her shoulder but slipped in a slick of warm red liquid, ruining my favorite cotton jumper (cotton is remarkably absorbent.) As I slid to the floor, I screamed. I screamed because my mother could not, or would not. No, she didn’t scream. My mother is so brave. She was attacked by someone bad and she never even cried in pain. Judging my those cuts it must have hurt an awful lot. So I screamed and screamed and cried and someone must have seen the intruder slip out the door because the police arrived. They dragged me away. They took my mother in a very loud ambulance. I was taken to the hospital too.
I sat down with a rather plump nurse with stringy blond hair, but she was nice enough, so I let her talk to me. And I told her the story I just told you. Later a shriveled up man came out of the white double-doors I wasn’t allowed to go through, and he bluntly stated that Mommy has a problem, that there was indeed no intruder, that Mommy had for some reason inflicted those horrible wounds on herself, and that she can’t return home for at least a few weeks. The way he said it made hot tears appear in my eyes the way they come so fast when I’m really angry. Mommy doesn’t have a problem! I screamed in my head. Mothers never have problems! They can’t have problems!
“My mother is an adult, you disgusting old prune, and adults know how to avoid problems, and if you think for ONE SECOND,” I put emphasis on this like Mommy usually does, “that my mother has one then you are insulting her sophistication!” I screamed aloud. I threw a coloring book at him. To my greatest displeasure he couldn’t seem to care less, and slowly stood up (his pathetic knees cracking) and walked back through the forbidden doors. Now the tears were flowing freely but neither Mommy nor Daddy were there, only the fat-but-nice nurse who sat with me before. Pity welled in her greenish eyes, mixed with some level of admiration at the mature vocabulary I had just used to slander the doctor. After all, I’m only 6. And at the tender age of 6, my world collapsed in on its already fragile self, and I realized that Mommies and Daddies are not invincible.
Daddy says Mommy has a black cloud hanging over her head. I find that very funny, because I have never seen a black cloud over my mother’s head and I’m with her almost all day. So Daddy must be mistaken. Besides, I never thought that casting clouds away from people’s heads fell under a doctor’s area of expertise. Oh yea, I’m currently sitting in a waiting room, of a hospital of course. Something terrible has happened to my mother, I saw it myself! Somebody must have broken into the house and attacked my mom and then left really fast, because I walked into my mother’s bedroom to the most frightening scene. Mommy was lying on the bed, so I thought she was sleeping, but when I went to wake her up (it was dinner time and I was very hungry) I saw deep, deep red slices in Mommy’s arms. I jumped on the bed to shake her shoulder but slipped in a slick of warm red liquid, ruining my favorite cotton jumper (cotton is remarkably absorbent.) As I slid to the floor, I screamed. I screamed because my mother could not, or would not. No, she didn’t scream. My mother is so brave. She was attacked by someone bad and she never even cried in pain. Judging my those cuts it must have hurt an awful lot. So I screamed and screamed and cried and someone must have seen the intruder slip out the door because the police arrived. They dragged me away. They took my mother in a very loud ambulance. I was taken to the hospital too.
I sat down with a rather plump nurse with stringy blond hair, but she was nice enough, so I let her talk to me. And I told her the story I just told you. Later a shriveled up man came out of the white double-doors I wasn’t allowed to go through, and he bluntly stated that Mommy has a problem, that there was indeed no intruder, that Mommy had for some reason inflicted those horrible wounds on herself, and that she can’t return home for at least a few weeks. The way he said it made hot tears appear in my eyes the way they come so fast when I’m really angry. Mommy doesn’t have a problem! I screamed in my head. Mothers never have problems! They can’t have problems!
“My mother is an adult, you disgusting old prune, and adults know how to avoid problems, and if you think for ONE SECOND,” I put emphasis on this like Mommy usually does, “that my mother has one then you are insulting her sophistication!” I screamed aloud. I threw a coloring book at him. To my greatest displeasure he couldn’t seem to care less, and slowly stood up (his pathetic knees cracking) and walked back through the forbidden doors. Now the tears were flowing freely but neither Mommy nor Daddy were there, only the fat-but-nice nurse who sat with me before. Pity welled in her greenish eyes, mixed with some level of admiration at the mature vocabulary I had just used to slander the doctor. After all, I’m only 6. And at the tender age of 6, my world collapsed in on its already fragile self, and I realized that Mommies and Daddies are not invincible.
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