CHAPTER 1

MEAN MOMMY

A JOURNAL ENTRY ON HEALING

I

never knew I had mommy issues. In fact, for the better length of my life, I conflated mommy issues with maternal abandonment, and abandoning her babies, Dorothy Jean would do no such thing. Now, I would be lying if I said I thought my mother enjoyed being a mother; that hardly appeared to be the case from where I was watching. Motherhood, as my mother exhibited it before me, seemed stressful, sleepless, impossible to master. However, I have no doubt she worked hard to succeed.

She gave endlessly of herself, as she believed it to be the obligatory nature of her maternal burden but doing so with a smile proved partially impossible for her. In other words, my mother was mean, morose, the original nasty-nice, if you will. As much as she loved her daughters, and I don't doubt that she loved us very much, mothering us proved more than she bargained for. I told myself that was her issue, not mine.

Like most mothers where I grew up, my mother was a no-nonsense kind of character, reliable, resilient, responsible, hardly the softest hand in the shed. She was a hard-working woman birthed by a woman who worked even harder than her. Twenty-nine years into that life of labor, she found herself in delivery with me, her flower child.

The baby stage was her favorite; she loved to remind all six of us. That was before we could roll our eyes and catch attitudes out of thin air, you know, the way she taught us. Even our childhood photo albums got thin around puberty, as did the other little perks of being liked, not to be confused with the benefits of being loved. It wasn't an apparent upheaval. On the surface, we were all smiles. The only thing more important than how we felt about each other was what other people thought about us.

Appearances were essential to my mother. Being born a Black woman in western Pennsylvania taught her just how important they were to everyone else. Being a Black woman meant putting on a public performance, and hair and makeup weren't nearly enough to sell the script. Society showed up to see satisfaction, strength, poise, purpose, well-behaved kids, and a happy hunk of a husband. And it was your job to sell the story, to make believers out of unbelievers, whether the role was a reach or not.

Luckily, my mother was an exceptional salesperson. Exceptionally skilled at passing hurt for humor. One of her favorite stories centers around when she swears, I tried to run off with a random white lady at our local children's festival. My rebuttal is that I was four, got lost, and naively assumed the random white woman yanking my arm wasn't doing so to steal me. But she doesn't let the seriousness of the actual story somber her account.

She swears it was a prophetic experience far more than a painful one, predicting our future relationship's fractured nature. There I am running around like a fool, and you're busy buddied up with your new family, she reminisces. Even as a baby, you were running off, trying to do your own thing. Just hardheaded for no reason! she halfway hollers. There's no denying that in that regard, we are the same.

And while I disagree with my mother's interpretation of my toddler takeoff attempt, I share in her sentiment that our relationship has been a rocky one, noticeably worsening by the end of my eighth-grade year. I attributed our contention to my mother's old school ways and, often, hard-handed approach. Other girls were getting mommy-daughter manicures while my mother was outlining the overarching connection between polish and prostitution.

As far as she could tell, it was another case of a young girl getting it wrong. I knew nothing about life, and I wasn't trying to hear anything from anyone that did, at least that's what my mother believed. Our disconnect grew as the Pittsburgh winters gave way to spring. Mother and daughter, we would always be, but neither knew the other as a friend. Nor did we want to.

It wasn't until adulthood that I began to experience just how devastating our strained relationship had been. I had my mother in my life, albeit superficially, but I desired something more in-depth with her and her only for whatever reason. I often wondered if she longed for the same. It was a matter of familiarity for me. I was echoing my mother's essence in ways I couldn't alone account for. I was coming to terms with the fact that my mother was more a part of me than I'd perhaps anticipated. Without an understanding of the woman whose legacy I reluctantly carried, I was having a hard time building one of my own.

Damn, I sound just like my mother, I would think silently to myself in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes smiling, other times in tears. Somehow, her influence was still there, even where I longed for it not to be. Life began to reveal the many ways in which I not only mirrored my mother, but did so to my detriment, and an inability to understand why kept me tied to traumas women in my family had inherited a million times over. The cycle was repeating through me. And no matter how far forward I flung myself to escape the mold of my mother, I found my feet planted firmly in her footsteps. My only comfort was knowing I was not the only one.

As I turned to friends for advice and they, in turn, turned to me, we found sameness in our sagas. All of us trapped in the pathologies of our parents, desperately trying to discover how we recreated the very environments we worked tirelessly to escape. Was this just the deal with adulthood? Whatever trauma our mothers failed to maneuver fell on us to fix? It sure seemed that way. Our Mother's Day dedications and throwback Thursday photos weren't doing much to mask the fact that there was something about this mother-daughter thing we hadn't quite figured out. And the impact was becoming harder to hide.

The first time my therapist mentioned my suspected mommy issues, I was highly offended. It's not like she wasn't spot-on in her assessment, but I had spent my whole life playing the part. And if she could crack the code that quickly, perhaps everyone else had been playing a part too, turning a blind eye to the obvious, our mother-daughter dysfunction. The truth felt a lot like an attack. More so, my mother's than mine. And despite our past, I felt compelled to protect her, which often meant silencing myself.

As I reluctantly recounted when a boy inappropriately touched me on a 3rd-grade field trip, I paused when it came time to discuss my parent's responses. Don't get me wrong, I disclaimed. I love my mother. She took good care of us and would do it again today. We were never hungry, always well dressed, well-behaved, hair always nice and neat. She wasn't a bad mother. I know people whose mothers abused them. This isn't that. I professed proudly.

I had a healthy habit of covering every critique of my mother with a compliment. Where I grew up, talking bad about a Black mother was a big no-no, and bad meant anything absent of applause. Apart from murder, there was little a Black mother could be found guilty of, especially as it pertained to the parenting of her children. And even murder was partially permissible because if a Black mother brought you into this world, it was her right at any time to revoke that gift.

I can hear how much you admire your mother.

I do. And I choose to honor her; she's the strongest woman I know.

Is it possible to honor your mother while being honest about your mother?

I paused. A piece of me didn't want to answer Ms. Lynn's question. I was confident the right answer was yes, a hard yes, an obvious yes. But honesty was almost too hurtful to be helpful here, or so I told myself.

Yeah, it is, I replied reluctantly. I just don't want you to think I'm saying my mom was abusive.

Well, was she? Ms. Lynn finally asked flat out.

I didn't respond.

See, I think of womanhood as one big body of knots. She continued. A flexible fusion locked together like human handcuffs, each cuff bound to the other, whether directly or indirectly. And what locks those links in place, fuses them, are their shared spaces, you and I call them experiences. As we open and share our experiences, those connections are made. Those connections fortify us to one another, they offer us the comfort of community, but for that to happen, there has got to be a point of entry on either end, right? In other words, someone's gotta open up."

We nodded in agreement towards each other.

That doesn't mean it's pretty, that doesn't mean it's nice and neat, but life rarely is, and part of the healing process is coming to terms with that fact. Your mother's story is a part of your story too. And you can't hide her story without hiding parts of your own. That doesn't make things easier to be honest about. But I promise you; there's more there than pain if we permit ourselves to look.

I took a deep breath, mentally preparing myself to answer.

Well, she wasn't happy. That's for sure. She started yelling and hitting me, asking me why I would let that happen. I was so young, none of it registered, none of it made sense. I couldn't understand what I was supposed to have done differently in that situation. Or why she was even upset with me about it, to begin with. I was the one who had been hurt.

And what about your father?

To this day, I don't even think he knew. We kept a lot from him. To be honest, we still do. It's as if my mother was tough enough to handle anything, but my dad was too much an empath to handle the honesty. Hearing that someone assaulted one of his daughters would have ruined him. My mother's concern for our safety was secretly a concern for his psyche, or perhaps the preservation of his ego. America was an ugly reality, especially for little Black girls. I think there was a lot she didn't think he could handle. My mother was almost immune to it.

Ms. Lynn looked up.

Immune to sexual assault?

In a way, yes. It was like my dad couldn't see it. His friends would stop by, and my mother would go into full-on fright mode. 'Everybody, go put on pants, make sure they're not too tight, no sitting on anyone's lap, absolutely no dancing, and make sure you hug your uncles from the side.' Meanwhile, my dad would be yelling at us to greet each uncle, adhere to every request, it was the Igbo way, despite whatever paranoia my mother was masking.

Ms. Lynn's rigorous note-taking continued.

They lived on opposite ends of the spectrum. I had one parent who didn't see it at all, and another who, that's almost all she saw. But telling us it was everywhere didn't keep us safe. It only added to the anxiety. We were made to feel responsible for the absence of self-control in others, advised to overcompensate for their ineptness with a hyper-vigilance of our own. And when we failed, it was because of our own negligence. The way my mother saw it, if I didn't want Arthur to touch me, I would've made sure he didn't.

Do you believe that? That, in a way, you invited him to touch you inappropriately.

I did at the time. My third-grade brain made it make sense; I had no other choice. It's a lot easier as an adult to disagree with your Mom, to think her opinion is a little off-brand. But as a kid, it's not so simple. I explained.

I know now that my mother has some pretty misogynistic views about women and their place in the world, but at the time, I saw things as she staged them. I didn't shout, I didn't yell 'No,' perhaps my mother had a point. Did Arthur know that I didn't want to be touched? Subconsciously, had I invited the unwanted attention? I didn't know what to make of the situation. I just knew my mother was mortified, mainly by me.

How did that affect your relationship thereinafter?

Well, my mother was distant for a few weeks. That was a very lonely time. I had no one to talk to, and I couldn't tell my sisters what happened. I was way too ashamed.

Shame and secrecy go hand in hand. Ms. Lynn suggested.

Yeah. I guess you're right.

Then let me ask you again, being that you are a mother yourself now, and perhaps that's given you another perspective. Why do you think your mother responded to hearing of your assault the way that she did?

I think she put a lot of pressure on herself to keep us pure, so to speak. And I guess society does too, so she was really getting it from all sides. For me to be defiled at such a young age made her feel like it was all for nothing. Tainted before the age of ten, why hadn't I fought harder to protect my purity. I think that's how she saw it. I must have wanted it then. And that made her mad. So, she did what she did when she got mad like a lot of moms do.

She decided to abuse you physically?

I paused.

I think I know what you want me to say, I stumbled around my words, I'm just not trying to say it like that.

Humor me. What is it you think I want you to say?

That my mom was abusive.

Why would I want you to say something like that?

I guess because it would be the truth.

And what's wrong with the truth?

Shit… Everything?

We laughed loudly. Everything was wrong with it, I thought to myself. What a horrible thing to say about your mother, and what an awful thing to be true.

I just don't feel like it's fair. My Mom wasn't perfect, but I'm not going to say she mistreated us on purpose; that's abuse. Plus, there was a lot of stuff she didn't think was abusive because it was stuff that happened to her. So, I'm not going to say she didn't try.

"You make some very valid points. Perhaps, I want to introduce you to the possibility that people can be both good and bad. Rarely are people just one or the other. Unless we're talking about Adolf Hitler or somebody polarizing like that, and even Hitler, I believe, could collect a few character witnesses if called to do so. My point is, acknowledging that your mother abused you does not mean she didn't also love and care for you, the whole nine. It's okay to say, 'Yes, my mother