Coat Hanger Wire Versus Wooden Chair: Nobody Wins.

*** warning*** more mother-daughter violence. the title pretty much gets the point across.***

It’s dark outside and there are little tornado warning red exclamation marks popping up in the corner of my screen as I write. My windows look like somebody pissed India ink all over them and the trees are flailing about like whiny little babies getting shaken up real good. That’s what you do with babies, right? –You shake them up till they quit wailing? Babies. Who needs them.

My mother had a baby once when she was nineteen. Well she didn’t have it, not like most women do—but the thing lived in side her for a while—that is until she got it taken out. Taken out, like a fucking swollen tonsil. On the one hand, if she’d kept the thing, I wouldn’t be here, the fabulous painter that I am; but on the other, maybe she wouldn’t have turned out to be such a bitch.

“Bitch” was one of my favorite words when I was in second grade. I muttered it under my breath probably 30 times a day, mostly while walking away from my stupid mother. Sometimes, I’d hide in the hall closet, (which was a reach-in) by standing on the bottom shelf, feet about two or three feet apart, back arched so my ass could tuck into the space between two shelves, and my head turned to the side so I could breathe with the door closed. Apparently the claustrophobia hadn’t set in yet. So anyways, I’d hide up the damn linen closet in the hall and pretend to be a sort of fly on the wall, wishing I could stay invisible forever.

Later, after the divorce, I taught myself to slither under the futon in the new house. The family computer was parked in my room, and even though we had very little privacy with the whole no-locking-doors rule, I had about as much privacy as a drug addict in rehab. So when “dragon lady,” (as I liked to call her when she was wound up real tight), when she started waltzing around the damn house screaming and hollering about my latest fuck-up, I’d just go play invisible for a bit till something else distracted her for long enough to turn her Bitch knob down a few notches.

She always had this stupid hang-up about knocking us kids down a rung or two so we would think she was better than us. How lame can a person get that she has to feel better than her fucking kids? She was always taller than either of us; a better dancer, more flexible, more smooth; had a better vocabulary; could type faster, write better, speak more languages, draw better, make better grades in school, score better on the SATs… You name it, she had a score six points higher than you, legs six inches longer… I don’t know, mind about six kilometers narrower.

Since she and I could never seem to communicate effectively in words, I used to leave art around the house trying to tell her what a bad mother she was. Well maybe not that she was a bad mom, but more that her daughters were fucking sad and lonely as hell. I mean, if she’s supposed to be so clever, certainly she could look at my latest brilliant collage (lying in the middle of the hall with a bottle of glue tipped over next to it) and see how screwed up I was… Maybe she’d even feel guilty and apologize for sucking at life. But that last one’s a Big Maybe. I still can’t find that little green journal. Maybe it’s in the stash with the clothes of mine she didn’t like so she stole them out of my closet when I wasn’t home. If I want to look like a whore, I should be able to dress myself however I damn well please. Especially at art school, where you don’t have friends if you don’t look like some asymmetrical whore. No, not an off-center pussy; silly home-made clothes, or masks, really.

So this one night, a dark one with shaken-baby trees outside, Dragon Lady’s ass is so tight you could have shoved a lump of coal up there and she’d pop a little diamond out for you. She starts screaming and hollering like usual, probably about something stupid like laundry that still hasn’t been put away. One thing leads to another, I start screaming back, stooping to her level, and the next thing I know she’s got a wire hanger in her hand. So now she’s screaming loud, and she’s waving the hanger around like the big flag in that painting, Liberty Leading the People, except she certainly isn’t leading, or saving, anybody.

My sister can’t stand to see us fight like this, of course. She’s been brain washed to side with dear ol’ Mommy for years. Me and Dad versus Mommy and Sissy. “Sissy” is right: Anyways, my sister is crying and crying and wandering around the house with her big huge eyes all puffed up. She does the only thing she knows how, and calls in for back up.

My brother is off at a fancy college across town. He deserves a good education, a way out. The only way we could pay for it, of course, was that my mom worked at the school—but her hell-jobs in academia are an entirely different story. So Sissy calls the Peacemaker, or Peacekeeper. Nope. He has to make peace, can’t keep something you don’t have.

So Dragon Lady is chasing me with the wire hanger, telling me to “come here,”

Like anybody in their right mind would stop running from a woman who is nearly six feet tall and running at you with a loud mouth and pointy object. How stupid does she think I am?

I’ve been having nightmares about fighting back and accidentally killing her for months now. It’s getting to the point where I can’t even have a normal fucking conversation in the middle of the day without axe blades swinging in my peripheral vision. So the Dragon Lady is licking her lips, and I’m looking around the room for a weapon, while still running and screaming, of course.

Just as she thinks she’s got me cornered, herded actually, into my room, I see a little wooden chair I’ve had for ages. We used to read picture books and replicate the princesses from them while sitting in those little chairs. So I see the chair and I remember the dream I had about it.

In the dream, we’re in my room, on my turf. She’s screaming and she has her back to my closet door. She’s waving her hands around, because we are very expressive people, and I pick up the chair by its back. I grab it with two hands, one on each side of the curved wood, and I swing that mother-fucker up at her throat. I pin her damn Michelin Man neck up against the closet door with the cross bar that supports two of the legs.

She’s still running her mouth, and she’s real mad now, but I’m madder, younger, stronger. I’ve been holding it in a lot longer than she’s been dishing it out, so I press that fucking chair into her stupid little turkey neck. Her arms are pinned, too, like she’s getting crucified. I’m in my knee-high combat boots with the four-inch platforms, so I’m almost at eye-level and my feet don’t slide back a bit while I lean my entire weight into that damn chair. I push, and she gets a little scared, and I push harder, and she goes kinda quiet. Then the legs of the chair break through the paper-thin door, which is hollow, and she chokes. She coughs and gags for a couple minutes, and then her head just pops right off, like in the cartoons.

That’s what I see when I look down at the chair when Dragon Lady thinks she’s got me cornered. I run over to that perfect little chair, and I step to the side so she has to turn her back to the closet door. I pick up that chair and hold it out in front of me, while I decide if I want to smash her skull with an overhead blow, or give her a nice puncture wound in the spleen. She’s so damn loud, she’s clueless. She doesn’t even acknowledge that I now am holding a weapon more dangerous than her puny little wire hanger.

In walks my brother, to the rescue. He stands in the door, with my sniffling little sister hiding behind him. He yells only as much as he has to, to get our attention. We, I’m sure, look like fucking apes, all hunched over and drooling over an impending kill. But my big brother is the family golden boy, and Dragon Lady has to listen to what he has to say. She also wouldn’t be caught dead brandishing a weapon over one of his little sisters. Well, besides the leather belt we were beaten with on a regular basis. Besides that.

So he commands her out into the hall first. He is stern and tough, but amazingly calm. He gets her to shut up and listen, a little, and then he sends her, scowling, back into the room and calls me out. I have to slide past her fat ass to get into the hall, and she glares hard at me like she’s trying to burn a hole in my head. Stupid bitch thinks she’s one of the X-Men.

I step into the hall, barefooted, puffy-eyed, and tired. But I’m sure as hell thankful he’s there, even though I feel bad that he couldn’t just stay in his little utopian ivy-league world. He’s smart; he doesn’t deserve this. So he talks to me. He tells me that Dragon Lady is, in fact, my mother, and I have to act respectful and obedient, even if I don’t respect her. I roll my eyes. He gets his stern mediator voice on, and tells me to listen up. I listen. I love him. He has done nothing, his whole life, but try to protect his baby sisters, and occasionally take us for joy rides in his car, which is older than me. He is a fabulous guy.

So he gives me a little pep talk about breathing and talking rationally with the beast that is my mother, and then he tells me that in this case, I was right. I was right! Someone, finally, recognizes that not everything is my fault! That’s all the affirmation I need, so I nod and smile through the rest of the speech.

He summons the hell-bitch out into the hall again and she’s kinda argumentative, and interrupts a lot; but he finally gets her to shut up and make nice. We apologize to each other, even though our acting skills are well-polished by this point, and we put on a little show for my brother, because we love him.

He leaves, my sister stops sniffling, and Mommy Dear and Rebel Moron part, and go our separate ways. For the rest of the night, we pretty much only communicate in grunts, or through my peace-loving sister, but at least nobody died—that night.