A female child rubbed her fists in twisting circles on her overflowing eyes. She had stuffed toy animals of various sizes surrounding her; her pajamas were yellow with blue cuffs, collar, zipper, and feet.
Her mother stood at the side of the bed. She was tall, pale, and her eyebrows feigned kindness, severely tweezed into teardrops at the center, with drawn-on arches lifted high over large, green eyes. Her shoulder-length hair was fuzzy and dyed black, and her figure was healthy, dressed in felts, flower patterns, blue jean, leather, and feathers. For the second time, her mother stomped her foot on the floor. She demanded, “What?” but the child could not answer; the pain was too deep. Her mother sighed, rolled her eyes, and leaned on her hands, on the bed. She was tired of this shit; she barked at her daughter, “What is it, now?”
Now the child felt like a burden, on top of being heartbroken; she started crying harder. The only words she could get her mouth to create were, “Miss… dad… much!”
Her mother’s jaw bulged, and her eyebrows crowded in the center of her nose. Her nostrils flared and her mouth opened wide as she inhaled. The girl cowered as her mother began to shriek, “What do you want him for? He doesn’t want you, does he? Is he here, now? Does he even care?”
She didn’t know what her mother was talking about. Why was she saying these things? She hurt even more.
Her mother shifted onto her heels, leaning back. She slapped her hands on her round hips and pulled her face back creating several chins beneath her already round one. She pinched her mouth tightly and looked down her nose at her weak, sniveling child. Impatient to get back to her novel, she stuck her neck out like a pelican and blurted, “I’ll tell you who cares: me, that’s who! I care. I spend all day working for you and your brother to get food on the table and put clothes on you, both. You’re an ungrateful, little brat.”
The child slid beneath the blankets, choking on her tears, ashamed for and regretting her display of how she felt.
“I just want… my…” She couldn’t get herself to say it. She knew her mother would get even more intense if she told her. She thought to herself, “I just want my daddy and Newmoon.” That was her dog.
Her mother said, “You just want your what?” She sang in a mock, “Your daddy?” The look on her mother’s face was challenging; it frightened the child and made her feel as if she shouldn’t be feeling this way. The child tried to keep from letting her mother hear any more of her gasps and sobs. She didn’t understand why her mother was angry with her, it must be that her feelings were unacceptable; she must be a bad daughter because she made her mother upset. She tried to swallow her tears and be a big girl, like her mother. She could feel her mom still standing beside the bed, staring down at her.
Was her mother mad that she still loved her daddy? Was that wrong?
“After all I do for you,” her mother spit; she looked up to see her mother sneering down on her. She realized that she wasn’t on her mother’s side anymore; she wasn’t a good child. Was her crying a bad thing? It must be; she had to be a bad kid to have her mother look at her this way.
The carpet made shuffling sounds as her mother turned to leave the room, furious her child was so deserving and demanding.
The child felt bad for ruining her mother’s entire day. She wanted to make it right. Why did she have to be such a brat? Why did she have to bring up her father when everything was going just fine? It was her fault, she was such a terribly demanding, needy child. Her daddy didn’t even want to be with her, she was the worst child, ever.
Less than two years later…
The child ran to her mother for solace and defense from her new stepfather’s torment. The first time her mother dumped soapy dishwater over her head and told her to shut up. The second time, her mother turned to her and said with a snarl, “You told me you wanted a daddy, so badly. Well, I found you one. What more do you want?”
The child simply wanted her own daddy to come and hold her, to smell sawdust, fresh air, and tobacco in the fibers of his wool overcoat, hear his gravelly laugh, and feel the thick strands of his burgundy hair, curling around her fingers. She didn’t approve of the replacement daddy; he smelled like rotting things, his breath was stifling, he farted on command and on her, often, and he never hugged her or comforted her when she felt sad; instead, he mocked and chided her. She felt her body take control; it began shaking with overwhelming sobs. The pain of missing her father was more than she could bear.
“Oh, you want it all, do you? You want to know what you are? You’re ungrateful, that’s what. My husband was willing to become your daddy. How can you be such a brat?” Her mother’s facial expression looked as if her child were the town idiot or a mass murderer. The child felt confused.
The child could not understand what was happening in her body; it was flooding her with so many emotions. If only a calm adult would help… She wished she could explode into enough tiny pieces, then she could reach her father; at least one part of her would be able to be with him. Hopeful for her mother to have a change in heart, she looked upward for help, eyes pleading.
“Stop it right now, Alexis! What is wrong with you?” Her mother was repelled by her; she pushed her child’s grabbing hands away. The child curled into herself, twirling her hair, holding tightly in a ball. The misery wrapped around her, completely; she couldn’t soothe herself with sucking her thumb because her mouth kept needing more air. She wheezed out the last remnants of her lungs in a long jag with panic. The tears were relentless, would she never stop? How was she crying this hard? When would the breath come back? Was she going to die? She pulled in a lungful of air, finally, choking on the spittle that snuck past. She tried to manage her body, but it felt out of her control. She continued to cry, unable to obey her mother’s command to stop, and grew more fearful of what would happen by disobeying.
Her mother stared at her, struck by the audacity of her stubborn, ignorant, little child. She had far more important things to do than this. How could her kid melt down now, of all times? She wanted this blubbering over her ex-husband to be over, her kid had to stop ruminating or she’d… she’d… She lowered her voice into a growl, “Stop this right now, or I’ll give you something to cry about!” She thought maybe that would work, that’s what her parents had said to her.
The child hushed, holding her breath, wincing her eyes tight around the tears, and storing the pain deep in her belly.
“He isn’t even worth it, Alexis. You’re wasting your tears,” her mother’s body was in the hallway; her head stayed in the room, she had one hand on the doorknob. The child didn’t want to believe that. Her mother shook her head slightly and turned her face away, slowly, as her eyes rolled upward. She blinked in slow-motion, as if she were starring on television. She placated her daughter with a wide grimace, “Why don’t you just call my husband “Daddy” again, and everything will get better? Good night. I love you.”
When the door closed, the child released all the pain in her body, relaxing into her bed, crying uncontrollably –but silently. She didn’t want to disturb her mother ever again.
She would never be able to confide in her mother; the outcome was far too terrible. She felt she couldn’t trust her own mother to support her. What was she supposed to do when those huge feelings took over, again? Why didn’t her mother know how to help her with her loss? Why wasn’t she allowed to cry about her daddy?
Without knowing it, the child recognized insincerity in her mother’s language towards her, but didn’t have the mental capacity nor words to understand what it was, precisely, that felt “wrong.” She lost her ability to believe in her mother; the child saw the actions of her mother conflicting with her words.
The child stopped taking her mother’s advice. She witnessed her mother’s denial towards her own body, her toxic relationship with her new husband, and her own child’s emotional needs. She couldn’t put her finger on an error code, so she surmised with her child mind that she had to be faulty, that was all it could be. It couldn’t be her mother; her mother was grown up, she knew everything.
It was confusing, but for her family this was “normal.”
She wound up her brown, music-box Teddy bear and cuddled him, close. “Daddy gave you to me,” she told the bear. “I miss daddy,” she chanted in a whisper between choking cries and a wet thumb and twirling her hair with her pinky finger, until she drifted off to sleep.