sandwich and several were more or less eviscerated around the spot I had last bitten into, but I did not know how many of them I had actually eaten.
I do not know if I made any kind of conscious effort to remain calm, a decision not to run to the bathroom or start to cry. I set the small plate down and remained seated on the edge of my bed, unsure of what I should do next. I knew that if I made a run for the bathroom to throw up again she would be angry. I did not want to appear sick. I did not know why my mother put the flies on the sandwich; it was so obviously a punishment but I could not say for what and I was too afraid to ask her. That was the key to the whole thing I now know. The less I confronted her, the safer I felt. If I simply accepted what was done or what was said I had a better shot at being left alone. I was very young but I knew that the question would be even more dangerous to ask than the answer to it. I already knew that there was no real answer anyway. So I picked up the plate and slowly ate the rest of the sandwich. I held my breath while I chewed and tried hard not to think about the slightly sour bursts that came each time I bit down. I finished the sandwich and took the plate into the kitchen.
My mother was on the phone with someone, a bill collector I think, and she motioned for me to put the plate in the sink. I saw the bottle of ipecac on the counter next to the small, red radio that my mother kept on almost all day when she was home. I did not connect the ipecac to breakfast that morning, to the surprise glass of tomato juice. At that point all I wanted to do was focus on keeping the sandwich down. I went to the bathroom and rinsed out my mouth, drinking some of the water from the blue cup we always kept next to the toothbrushes. Then I went back to my room, crawled under the covers and went to sleep.
I did not see my mother for the rest of the day, not until after my father came home. He came into my room and asked if I felt like eating dinner. I went out to the dining room where everyone was waiting for me. We ate dinner together; pork chops, mashed potatoes, corn and salad. We had iced tea to drink with lemon. We all filled our plates from the same serving dishes. We filled our glasses from the same pitcher. While I can now appreciate the incongruity of the pallid rituals associated with our family dinners against the horrific lunch that my mother served to me that day, at the time I simply melted into the background and appreciated the relative invisibility our dinner table provided. I did not say a word when my father commented that none of us should eat so much at breakfast. Nor did I say anything when my mother agreed. I remained silent and absolutely still when my mother recounted how I slept all afternoon even though she had offered to make a milkshake for me.
Glassman woke me in the chair at about five minutes after three and led me back to his office. He wrote in his notebook for several minutes after we sat down. Without looking up he asked me what I had been thinking about so intensely in the day room.
“Flies,” I said.
“What about them?”
I recounted the story. Glassman raised his eyebrows slightly at one point while I was speaking but did not interrupt. When I was finished he closed his eyes for a minute or so before he spoke.
“Why do you think your mother did that?”
“I have no idea. She was mad about something I suppose. She was always mad about something. I did not realize until today that I remembered the incident.” It was true. I certainly could easily recall the drugstore and the neighbors and all of that. I even remember seeing the ipecac on the counter but the fly and butter sandwich was something of a novelty to me. I knew it was true, once I recalled the memory in its entirety, I knew that it happened. It was vivid enough now.
“Are you sure about the ipecac? I know you said you saw it on the counter but are you sure she gave it to you?” Giving my mother the benefit of the doubt was, I suppose reasonable enough. Glassman did not have anything invested in my memories, or not as much as I did I guess, so he could be more courteous about her than I wanted, or was likely, to be.
“No, not really, but it’s an explanation isn’t it? But no, I did not see her put it in the tomato juice. It was already poured into a glass when we came into the kitchen that morning. I don’t know what ipecac tastes like. Could it have been disguised in tomato juice?”
“Probably, depending on how much was used. Ipecac is sugary and sweet so a relatively small amount would not alter the taste of tomato juice. I can only assume that if your mother did what you think she did then she used enough of it to work but not a large amount. Otherwise you would have been able to taste it.” Glassman seemed to believe me. At least I think he did. I had not lied to him and really did not intend to. I had no reason to. Being honest about my family came easily to me at St. Catherine’s since no one here had anything to offer me. I did not have to impress or try to get anything out of anyone here so there was no need to any elaborate fabrications. It was an interesting path for me, telling the truth. Glassman never seemed particularly surprised by anything I said and that made it easier.
“Once you knew that there were flies on the sandwich why did you finish it? Do you think your mother would have been angry with you?”
“I never knew how she would react to anything that I did. I might just have been trying to please her. If she was mad enough to feed me flies then she was certainly mad enough to take an unfinished lunch personally. I did not want to be punished any further. I pretended not to notice the flies so she would leave me alone. Doing what she wanted, going along with what I had to guess was her plan just seemed easier to me, and safer.”
“And you told no one, not your sister or a friend or anybody, ever?”
“At the time my sister and I may still have been allies but that was changing and I knew it. She had her own methods of self-preservation and I doubt that she would have believed me.” My sister had already, at the age of nine, begun to take the path of least resistance and was gradually participating in my parent’s cruelty if only by reinforcing their beliefs. By agreeing with their actions and even becoming oddly protective of my father as time went on, she became, like my brother, their ally, and remained out of the line of fire. It was very gradual and I did not notice that this course had been chosen for some time. I only knew that she had retreated and was unavailable to me. Both of my siblings, in the interest of self-preservation, had sacrificed me to the cruelty of our parents.
“I really did not have any friends to tell and anyway I could not have said the words out loud. I buried the memory, it never had words. I forced myself to forget about it because I knew that if I gave any indication that I was fully aware of what my mother did to me that day, if I recognized her actions as real, it would somehow legitimize them. The act of naming the cruelty would become an excuse for the cruelty itself. There would be worse to come.”
“I can’t imagine what might be worse than surreptitiously giving you ipecac in order to make you sick enough to keep you home from school so that she could feed you bugs.”
If he could not imagine worse, then Glassman was an amateur. There was much worse in store for me than eating flies.
The Rest Of Me Page 4