This is the coat hanger story told from the mom's perspective. The violence is still there, but not nearly as graphic.
I have three beautiful children. They are all brilliant in their own ways: Hart is a computer wiz, Claire is an accomplished horseman, and Brynn--she’s the smartest. That’s why it absolutely drives me up the wall when acts like such an insolent moron, which occurs just about every day.
Brynn and I have never seen eye-to-eye on things. Even the first day I touched her, when the nurse brought her in to feed, she was this perfect, although incredibly plump, little thing. She had gorgeous lips and the most delicate fingers. I wanted to hold her so badly, my first baby girl; but the moment I touched her, she screamed so loudly that the nurse actually hesitated before placing her in my arms. She literally thought twice about letting a mother hold her child, who was less than a day old. It was then that I knew we were going to have problems, and the Lord assured me that I would need patience with this one.
As she grew, her fearlessness and stubbornness astounded me. While I was pregnant with Claire, Brynn was barely 18 months old, but she wanted to go swimming in our pool. I had to play basketball guard on the top step, just to keep her from drowning herself. One day, the phone rang, and I told her brother to watch her. When I heard a little splash, I reminded him of his task, and he just pointed at the deep end. I suppose a six-year-old, even one as brilliant as my son, doesn’t quite grasp the concept of actively watching a child, which is not at all similar to the way one watches figure skaters on television.
I jumped in immediately, and found my daughter sinking like a rock. I pulled her up and held her head above the surface of the water while I swam to the shallow end. The whole way, her little blue face was coughing—and laughing! It didn’t take her more than five minutes of rest to try to get back into the water.
When she was two, she told me one morning, with her hair wild from a restless night and her hands in fists on her hips, that she was “not a child.” She then stormed out of the room before I could even react. When she was older, though, the stories stopped being cute or funny.
She constantly did things that reminded me of her father, who was aloof at his best. Just when I thought I had finally gotten rid of him, there he would be, staring out of my child's eyes. The most frustrating, and incomprehensible, facet of her personality was how insensitive she was. She could say the most hurtful thing, and then blankly stare out the car window as if nothing had happened. She was fiery and cold at the same time. I called her my pistol, but some days I just couldn’t take it; and when she was a teenager, there were times when I was glad we never kept a gun in the house.
One night, when she was about 15 or 16, it seemed like she was doing everything she could think of to upset me. I came home from a 12-hour day to find the kitchen a disaster, half-empty drink glasses all over the house, the laundry starting to mold in the washing machine, and of course, the homework untouched. Brynn was always a natural leader, and even though Claire was much more careful and conscientious, she couldn’t help but follow her older sister’s lead to the television.
The Lord had told me from early on that I was not allowed to break Brynn’s spirit, but on days like these I wanted nothing better than to do just that. She was too wild and unwilling to bend to authority. When I opened the front door, I found the girls sitting on the sofa staring up at the after-school cartoons. Claire saw me standing there, and jumped up and ran into the kitchen, but Brynn was still staring at the television.
“Brynn,” Claire called, stretching her sister’s name out in a slightly whiny tone. “Brynn, mom’s gonna kill you if you don’t come help me in here.”
“I told you I was gonna wash the pots once you unloaded the dish rack,” She called back, eyes still glued to the tube.
Furious, I stomped over to the thing and punched the power button. I stared my daughter down. I watched her, sluggishly, shuffle into the kitchen. She didn’t have a hurry bone in her body!
Needless to say, it took a few whippings to get all the chores done before I could even start cooking dinner. Claire sulked into the back to clean her room, but Brynn practically breathed smoke as she marched into the same room to hide out with her art supplies. She always wanted to work on projects, which were not part of her homework, at the worst times.
The first day of school was just around the corner and I wanted them to finish their summer reading and get organized for the new school year. It didn’t take long for the yelling to start flowing out of the back of the house. As usual, Brynn was doing everything she could think of to upset everyone in the house.
I couldn’t leave the chicken cooking in the pan to go see what the latest fight was about, so I just yelled threats from the kitchen, thinking that if the punishment sounded harsh enough, then maybe I wouldn’t have to perform it. Maybe, just once, they would finally snap into submission and do what I asked. I was so tired those days.
The threats went unheard. The yelling escalated. I was getting so mad; it seemed like they did things like this just to see how far they could push me. I imagined them scheming in the back about how to best get under my skin. “Let’s see if we can set a new record for how short we can make her fuse,” they said, in my head.
I ended up finishing the chicken, tossing it into a bowl, storming the back bedroom, and whipping them both. The only time I ever had power in my own house was that moment when I would swing my bedroom door so I could choose a belt off the rack. The clatter of the leather and metal on the hollow door always caused a sudden, though brief, quiet. I just wanted the fighting to stop so I could hum the hymnals in peace while I cooked dinner.
Brynn sluggishly started picking up all the junk on top of her dresser, but I knew she would plop back on the futon before long, so she could finish doodling. Her insolence infuriated me, and her stubbornness seemed boundless. Children must have boundaries; without rules and enforcement, they turn into wild animals. No boundary nor punishment ever seemed to tame my middle daughter in the slightest. All it did was ignite the flames burning in her eyes when she looked at me, usually with disdain. She hated me and I knew it; but I just chalked it up to a typical teenager-mother relationship. All 15-year-old girls hated their mothers, and all mothers of teenaged girls were tired and angry. But once the children go off to college, the hormones die down and everything is fine. I was sure of this.
That night, after dinner, things continued to escalate. I would find a half-empty basket of laundry and the girl who had been assigned to unload it, sitting on the floor flipping though an old journal. Whipping. I would find grease still gleaming from the stove, and the girl who had been assigned to clean it off, trouncing through the yard after the cat. Whipping. There were always excuses for why they weren’t focused on the task they had been given, but I wouldn’t hear them.
I knew, as a mother of three brilliant children, that they were just trying to manipulate me. They were just trying to distract me. It was my job to see through this charade, to be consistently firm, unyieldingly authoritative. It was my job to be in charge of these children the Lord had sent me. I had to prepare them for the real world, which would be even more unforgiving then their mother.
Finally, when I didn’t think my bones could support me for one minute longer, Brynn started talking back. No, she was yelling back. I told her to bend over for another well-earned beating and she said, “No.” They never cease to surprise you. Just when I thought I was grinding some submission into them, I get a “No.” This was the last straw. I picked up the closest thing I could use as a tool of enforcement, a wire coat hanger.
Looking back, I see how foolish a choice this was. Usually I had my brown leather belt slung over my neck, but for some reason, this night, had set it down somewhere. I stood up, easily six inches taller than the relentless girl and wielded my hanger over her hot little head. She glared at me, challenging me. I lunged at her, raising my voice, and she turned and ran.
It didn’t take long to corner her in the 1300 square-foot house. There weren’t many places she could go, and she would have had to go through me to get to a door going outside—not that she would have tried getting outside. If she had done that, she wouldn’t have had a bed to sleep in for the night, and I made sure she knew it.
When she turned around in her bedroom, the yelling coming out of her mouth was so loud and scratchy that I wondered if there might be a demon in her. That would certainly explain a lot of things. Mentally, I prayed in between my own screams, as I defended my position of authority. She would have to learn submission if she was going to ever be able to survive out in the world.
To my surprise, she picked up a small wooden chair and pointed the legs out at me. Foolish girl—I could knock it out of her hands easily, but I waited to see what she thought she could do with it. She hesitated. The moment of self-doubt was the perfect time to scare her into respecting me. I had a plan—
But then my son was there. Hart was in the doorway when he was supposed to be at Rice. I was caught completely off-guard, and was slightly embarrassed that he had to see me completely out of control like this. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Brynn start to lunge at me before her brother yelled out. Communication in a civil tongue was nearly impossible those days., no matter how hard I tried to beat the concept into them.
I was a stranger in my own house: My son was reprimanding me and my daughter actually thought she could cause me bodily harm. Where was their mother? How dare she leave them alone, to turn into wild beasts?
Dear, sweet Claire stood behind my son. She was sobbing. Had she seen her sister wield a chair at me? The fact that I was questioning myself infuriated me. How dare my 19-year-old tell me how to raise my demonic 15-year-old? I thought he was mocking me when he called me out into the hall and told me to take deep breaths.
I tried to assert my authority over him, but his eyes were so cool, calm, level-headed. He was not mocking me. He genuinely thought he could help the situation. The first couple of sentences out of his mouth offended me, but after a while, I just stopped listening. It was easier to pretend he was helping than to try to argue with those green-grey eyes.
He sent me back into the room and called out his sister. I was certain he would tell her that she had to respect me; she had to obey me. I was her Mother; I was always right. I was certain he would knock some sense into her, but I never saw him lay a finger on her. Claire’s sobbing against my shoulder made it difficult to make out their conversation, but I was certain I saw her smile. The audacity!
When my son permitted me to reenter my own hallway, I couldn’t even look at her. I was so angry about the “No,” the chair, the smile. I stared just past Hart’s left ear as he basically told us to kiss and make up. It was like a coach telling little boys to shake hands after a baseball game. Ridiculous. I practiced my acting skills as I pressed the words through my teeth. He was having us repeat the same damn catechism I had taught the children!
I hurried him out the door, assuring him he had saved us from eminent disaster, before I wanted to choke him. When I turned around, and saw that peaceful look on my daughter’s face, all I could do was storm past her into my bedroom. I prayed that night, while I lay in my bed, that the Lord give me patience. I prayed that he teach my daughter obedience. I prayed that he keep my son out of the middle of it.
Brynn and I have never seen eye-to-eye on things. Even the first day I touched her, when the nurse brought her in to feed, she was this perfect, although incredibly plump, little thing. She had gorgeous lips and the most delicate fingers. I wanted to hold her so badly, my first baby girl; but the moment I touched her, she screamed so loudly that the nurse actually hesitated before placing her in my arms. She literally thought twice about letting a mother hold her child, who was less than a day old. It was then that I knew we were going to have problems, and the Lord assured me that I would need patience with this one.
As she grew, her fearlessness and stubbornness astounded me. While I was pregnant with Claire, Brynn was barely 18 months old, but she wanted to go swimming in our pool. I had to play basketball guard on the top step, just to keep her from drowning herself. One day, the phone rang, and I told her brother to watch her. When I heard a little splash, I reminded him of his task, and he just pointed at the deep end. I suppose a six-year-old, even one as brilliant as my son, doesn’t quite grasp the concept of actively watching a child, which is not at all similar to the way one watches figure skaters on television.
I jumped in immediately, and found my daughter sinking like a rock. I pulled her up and held her head above the surface of the water while I swam to the shallow end. The whole way, her little blue face was coughing—and laughing! It didn’t take her more than five minutes of rest to try to get back into the water.
When she was two, she told me one morning, with her hair wild from a restless night and her hands in fists on her hips, that she was “not a child.” She then stormed out of the room before I could even react. When she was older, though, the stories stopped being cute or funny.
She constantly did things that reminded me of her father, who was aloof at his best. Just when I thought I had finally gotten rid of him, there he would be, staring out of my child's eyes. The most frustrating, and incomprehensible, facet of her personality was how insensitive she was. She could say the most hurtful thing, and then blankly stare out the car window as if nothing had happened. She was fiery and cold at the same time. I called her my pistol, but some days I just couldn’t take it; and when she was a teenager, there were times when I was glad we never kept a gun in the house.
One night, when she was about 15 or 16, it seemed like she was doing everything she could think of to upset me. I came home from a 12-hour day to find the kitchen a disaster, half-empty drink glasses all over the house, the laundry starting to mold in the washing machine, and of course, the homework untouched. Brynn was always a natural leader, and even though Claire was much more careful and conscientious, she couldn’t help but follow her older sister’s lead to the television.
The Lord had told me from early on that I was not allowed to break Brynn’s spirit, but on days like these I wanted nothing better than to do just that. She was too wild and unwilling to bend to authority. When I opened the front door, I found the girls sitting on the sofa staring up at the after-school cartoons. Claire saw me standing there, and jumped up and ran into the kitchen, but Brynn was still staring at the television.
“Brynn,” Claire called, stretching her sister’s name out in a slightly whiny tone. “Brynn, mom’s gonna kill you if you don’t come help me in here.”
“I told you I was gonna wash the pots once you unloaded the dish rack,” She called back, eyes still glued to the tube.
Furious, I stomped over to the thing and punched the power button. I stared my daughter down. I watched her, sluggishly, shuffle into the kitchen. She didn’t have a hurry bone in her body!
Needless to say, it took a few whippings to get all the chores done before I could even start cooking dinner. Claire sulked into the back to clean her room, but Brynn practically breathed smoke as she marched into the same room to hide out with her art supplies. She always wanted to work on projects, which were not part of her homework, at the worst times.
The first day of school was just around the corner and I wanted them to finish their summer reading and get organized for the new school year. It didn’t take long for the yelling to start flowing out of the back of the house. As usual, Brynn was doing everything she could think of to upset everyone in the house.
I couldn’t leave the chicken cooking in the pan to go see what the latest fight was about, so I just yelled threats from the kitchen, thinking that if the punishment sounded harsh enough, then maybe I wouldn’t have to perform it. Maybe, just once, they would finally snap into submission and do what I asked. I was so tired those days.
The threats went unheard. The yelling escalated. I was getting so mad; it seemed like they did things like this just to see how far they could push me. I imagined them scheming in the back about how to best get under my skin. “Let’s see if we can set a new record for how short we can make her fuse,” they said, in my head.
I ended up finishing the chicken, tossing it into a bowl, storming the back bedroom, and whipping them both. The only time I ever had power in my own house was that moment when I would swing my bedroom door so I could choose a belt off the rack. The clatter of the leather and metal on the hollow door always caused a sudden, though brief, quiet. I just wanted the fighting to stop so I could hum the hymnals in peace while I cooked dinner.
Brynn sluggishly started picking up all the junk on top of her dresser, but I knew she would plop back on the futon before long, so she could finish doodling. Her insolence infuriated me, and her stubbornness seemed boundless. Children must have boundaries; without rules and enforcement, they turn into wild animals. No boundary nor punishment ever seemed to tame my middle daughter in the slightest. All it did was ignite the flames burning in her eyes when she looked at me, usually with disdain. She hated me and I knew it; but I just chalked it up to a typical teenager-mother relationship. All 15-year-old girls hated their mothers, and all mothers of teenaged girls were tired and angry. But once the children go off to college, the hormones die down and everything is fine. I was sure of this.
That night, after dinner, things continued to escalate. I would find a half-empty basket of laundry and the girl who had been assigned to unload it, sitting on the floor flipping though an old journal. Whipping. I would find grease still gleaming from the stove, and the girl who had been assigned to clean it off, trouncing through the yard after the cat. Whipping. There were always excuses for why they weren’t focused on the task they had been given, but I wouldn’t hear them.
I knew, as a mother of three brilliant children, that they were just trying to manipulate me. They were just trying to distract me. It was my job to see through this charade, to be consistently firm, unyieldingly authoritative. It was my job to be in charge of these children the Lord had sent me. I had to prepare them for the real world, which would be even more unforgiving then their mother.
Finally, when I didn’t think my bones could support me for one minute longer, Brynn started talking back. No, she was yelling back. I told her to bend over for another well-earned beating and she said, “No.” They never cease to surprise you. Just when I thought I was grinding some submission into them, I get a “No.” This was the last straw. I picked up the closest thing I could use as a tool of enforcement, a wire coat hanger.
Looking back, I see how foolish a choice this was. Usually I had my brown leather belt slung over my neck, but for some reason, this night, had set it down somewhere. I stood up, easily six inches taller than the relentless girl and wielded my hanger over her hot little head. She glared at me, challenging me. I lunged at her, raising my voice, and she turned and ran.
It didn’t take long to corner her in the 1300 square-foot house. There weren’t many places she could go, and she would have had to go through me to get to a door going outside—not that she would have tried getting outside. If she had done that, she wouldn’t have had a bed to sleep in for the night, and I made sure she knew it.
When she turned around in her bedroom, the yelling coming out of her mouth was so loud and scratchy that I wondered if there might be a demon in her. That would certainly explain a lot of things. Mentally, I prayed in between my own screams, as I defended my position of authority. She would have to learn submission if she was going to ever be able to survive out in the world.
To my surprise, she picked up a small wooden chair and pointed the legs out at me. Foolish girl—I could knock it out of her hands easily, but I waited to see what she thought she could do with it. She hesitated. The moment of self-doubt was the perfect time to scare her into respecting me. I had a plan—
But then my son was there. Hart was in the doorway when he was supposed to be at Rice. I was caught completely off-guard, and was slightly embarrassed that he had to see me completely out of control like this. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Brynn start to lunge at me before her brother yelled out. Communication in a civil tongue was nearly impossible those days., no matter how hard I tried to beat the concept into them.
I was a stranger in my own house: My son was reprimanding me and my daughter actually thought she could cause me bodily harm. Where was their mother? How dare she leave them alone, to turn into wild beasts?
Dear, sweet Claire stood behind my son. She was sobbing. Had she seen her sister wield a chair at me? The fact that I was questioning myself infuriated me. How dare my 19-year-old tell me how to raise my demonic 15-year-old? I thought he was mocking me when he called me out into the hall and told me to take deep breaths.
I tried to assert my authority over him, but his eyes were so cool, calm, level-headed. He was not mocking me. He genuinely thought he could help the situation. The first couple of sentences out of his mouth offended me, but after a while, I just stopped listening. It was easier to pretend he was helping than to try to argue with those green-grey eyes.
He sent me back into the room and called out his sister. I was certain he would tell her that she had to respect me; she had to obey me. I was her Mother; I was always right. I was certain he would knock some sense into her, but I never saw him lay a finger on her. Claire’s sobbing against my shoulder made it difficult to make out their conversation, but I was certain I saw her smile. The audacity!
When my son permitted me to reenter my own hallway, I couldn’t even look at her. I was so angry about the “No,” the chair, the smile. I stared just past Hart’s left ear as he basically told us to kiss and make up. It was like a coach telling little boys to shake hands after a baseball game. Ridiculous. I practiced my acting skills as I pressed the words through my teeth. He was having us repeat the same damn catechism I had taught the children!
I hurried him out the door, assuring him he had saved us from eminent disaster, before I wanted to choke him. When I turned around, and saw that peaceful look on my daughter’s face, all I could do was storm past her into my bedroom. I prayed that night, while I lay in my bed, that the Lord give me patience. I prayed that he teach my daughter obedience. I prayed that he keep my son out of the middle of it.
2 comments:
I can appreciate this story, but really only because I read the other one first. This is well written and I enjoyed it, but I think the original is much better.
I can't fault this in any way, I just liked the other one better.
Having been the teen in the first story and sometimes "feeling" like the mom in the second, I found both powerful reads. I agree with Orianna that it is well written, but what I liked most was that you gave us a glimpse inside this person's head and the process that an emotionally damaged person goes through trying to rationalize very irrational thoughts. I also enjoyed the aspect of you allowing us a sense of empathy but not sympathy for this mother who seems to struggle with personal demons more than just "bad" teenagers.
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