Vera the Great

Mother hobbled into her bedroom, dragging the heavy axe behind her, and slammed the door hard, leaving a long, jagged line scratched in the linoleum where the axe blade had gouged its weary path. I could hear her swearing in a monotone voice on the other side of the door. I heard my father’s name, as well as my sister’s and mine, spewed out in between strings of expletives. 1

“I swear to God almighty he’s not gonna run off and leave me here, both them girls is no-good bitches … don’t care about nothin’ … I’ll show ‘em, I’ll show ‘em, he’ll come home, that’s for damned sure … thinks I’m lyin’, thinks he knows, I’ll show ‘em…where IS that damned hammer!” I could hear her rummaging around in my father’s old worn out red toolbox that sat just inside the closet door. As her frenzy escalated, she must have found the hammer, because she began to frantically pound nails at an angle into the polished wood of the doorframe, faster and faster, screaming obscenities, pounding hard, splintering the wood in places. 2

“Nobody try to come in here,” she screamed. “I’ll kill myself, I’ll kill myself, I’ll chop my head off, I mean it, goddam’ it!” She had a plan; she was smart that way, in an evil, conniving, wicked, sinking-into-madness kind of way.3

I turned then and ran, as fast as I could. I ran past my older sister as she stood, terrified and frozen, a puddle of urine forming at her feet where she had peed out of sheer terror, her eyes wide in abject fear. Her hands covered her silent, wide-open mouth, her feet riveted to the floor. I grabbed the cordless phone on my way out the front door, and headed toward the side of the house as I quickly dialed 911. I told the police to come and help my mother because she was trying to kill herself. I told them to hurry. I told them I could see her through the bedroom window, sitting on the floor, hitting her head all over with the axe, I told them she was covered with blood, blood everywhere. I told the police to stop my father on the road, he was on his way to work. I begged them to stop him, to make him come home, to make him stop her from killing herself.4

I could see her as I put my face closer, up against the dirty windowpane. I could see her long hair soaked in her own bright red blood. I wondered if she would just go ahead and die, go ahead and finish it, go ahead and go away. Anything. Something. I could hear her moaning with each grotesque thud of the axe. As she flailed away at her own head, mindlessly chopping at her own flesh, she was oblivious to the pain, oblivious to the sounds of her own skull cracking, oblivious to the streams of blood flowing down her face and hair, and onto her body and the floor. She held the heavy axe with both hands, chopping away. Her arms appeared to strain under the heavy weight of the axe, and her movements were becoming slower and slower. She had not stopped screaming. The profanity and insults were spewing out of her mouth as the blood kept flowing, staining the front and back of her pale yellow housecoat that my sister and I had given her for Christmas. 5

Mother hollered again, “Don’t come in here, stay out. Call the police, tell them your father tried to kill me with an axe. Call them NOW,” she screamed. “Be sure to tell the police where your asshole father was going so they can stop him on the highway and arrest him,” she yelled. She looked up at me through the windowpane, with no look of surprise on her face, as if she knew I would be standing there. “And you had better tell them he did this, you little bitch! You little slut, you’ve always been a little whore. This is your fault too, and don’t you ever forget it. Be sure your father knows none of this would have happened if he had stayed home like I told him to.” 6

She had a voice that belched black soot: evil, deep, witching. Her rage continued, and I could hear her grunting as she took more whacks with the axe. I was ten years old and I loved my mother. I was ten, I wanted to save her, and I didn’t know that all mothers weren’t crazy. I put my hands flat against the windowpane and pleaded with her to stop. 7

“Mama, I called them. You’ll have to open the door though, Mama, or else the police will break the door down because of the nails,” I said. “Did you tell them about stopping that shit of a father? Some father and husband, huh? I tell him, ‘I need to talk to you. Stay home. Don’t go to work. I have to talk to you right now,’ but no, he don’t listen to me. He just has to go and leave me here. Well, I’ll show that sorry, no-good son of a bitch. Let them take him to jail. It’s exactly what he deserves,” she yelled. 8

There was no fear in her voice. She wasn’t afraid of anything, not pain, not even death. She was proud of herself, proud that she could manipulate and control so many people. My father had nicknamed her Vera the Great. She was the dictator, the despot of the house, sitting in the harvest-gold crushed velveteen reclining throne, barking orders and insults at my twelve-year-old sister and me. On this day, she had lost the battle but was determined to win the war. 9

When the police arrived, I told them the lies mother had told me to say about my father. When the fire truck, the police, and the ambulance got there, the firemen had to break through the bedroom door to get to her. They found her exhausted, sitting on the floor in a pool of her own blood, the axe lying beside her. The rookie officer spoke in muted tones to his partner as he held his belly with both hands. 10

“Man, look at all that blood. This guy must be crazy,” he mumbled. He was going to vomit, the smell was too much. The second officer whispered in the first officer’s ear. He whispered to him that he had been to our house before. He told him not to believe everything he saw. He told him my mother was crazy. 11

My father got back to the house just in time to watch the ambulance attendants wheel mother out on a stretcher. They had strapped her down from head to toe because she wouldn’t cooperate and lie still. They had wrapped her head in gauze that used to be white, but the blood had seeped through to the outside, turning the gauze varying shades of red, brown and black. She watched my father as he approached the stretcher. “There you are, you mangy, no-good asshole. Look at this mess you made. You good-for-nothin’ piece of dog shit, you tried to kill me,” she screamed. 12

“Now, Vera, you know I didn’t hit you with nothin’. I wasn’t even here, for Christ sake. Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you do this to me? You know I have to go to work. I don’t know what you want from me,” my father said. He sank down on the ground and covered his face with the palms of his hands. 13

~ -- ~14

After the ambulance pulled out of the driveway with my mother strapped securely inside, I asked my father what he wanted my sister and me to do. He sighed, stood up and said that since it was Saturday morning, we should get dressed and he would take us both out to breakfast. For a few days, at least, we would eat regular meals and sleep regular hours. My father knew that Vera the Great would be patched up and committed to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation, but he also knew it would only be temporary. She always talked her way out of the hospital and back home so that she could torture us some more. Torturing us was her job, her purpose for living. 15

My sister was two years older than me, the child of my mother’s first husband, who had drank himself to death in his early forties. My sister was just a baby then. Her father had been an accomplished violinist, first chair in a symphony orchestra in California, according to mother. After he died, my mother married Harold, and I was born nine months later. I used to lie in bed at night and pray to God that my parents would get a divorce and I would leave this house and go with my father. 16

“How long do you think she’ll be gone this time?” my sister asked, her teeth chattering from fear as she tried to get dressed. Her body was still trembling, and I knew she was unable to recover as quickly as me. I had to recover fast; I had to take care of my father and my sister. I had to make sure everyone stayed alive.17

“Who knows? Who cares?” I said, pulling on my shorts. “I wish they would just keep her forever. She’s crazy and I don’t want her back here. Sometimes I think maybe one day she’ll kill us. I’ve been thinkin’. We’ve got to make a pact. We can’t stand still long enough for her to get us anymore! Promise me you’ll run with me the next time she starts up.” I said. 18

“I promise I’ll try. But I just don’t think about running when it happens. I just get so scared of her, and I just keep hoping she’ll figure out what she’s doin’ and she’ll stop. But she don’t. I promise you, though, I sister-swear, if she ever kills you and I get away, I’ll kill her for real,” my sister said. My sister was somber, serious, and I was proud of her. Her courage had peeked through her wall of fear. 19

I ran often – but my sister never did. She got the worst end of everything; she always froze and took unbelievable punishment. But we were both damaged goods by the time our mother was done with us. We both developed nervous habits, or perhaps ‘tics’ is a better word. I pulled on the same strand of hair constantly. I twirled it around my finger over and over, and when I wasn’t doing that, I would scratch my arms or the backs of my hands until they bled. At times, I would take a paring knife or anything sharp for that matter, and make small cuts on my thighs, or on the insides of my arms, going deeper and deeper until the pain was intense enough. It hurt, and it felt good. My sister would clench and unclench her fists, her nails cutting into the palms of her hands from the constant squeezing motion. She developed ulcers at fifteen. We were each other’s best friend, confidante, nurse, and cellmate. 20

~--~21

School was my safe place. I loved to go to school because it got me out of the house. It was the one place where I knew what was expected of me. Our house sat on the top of a steep hill, and my sister and I walked down to the bottom of the hill to get to our school bus stop. But after school, we had to come back home, and as my sister and I walked up the hill, our house would slowly come into view. When I could see the tip of the roof, I would become silent; when I could see the windows, I would feel dread in the pit of my stomach; and when I saw the sidewalk leading up to the front door, I wanted to turn around and run back down the hill. I didn’t want to go in, I didn’t want to face what was behind that faded brown wood door -- but I always went inside because I had nowhere else to go. I knew I had to adapt in order to survive.22

Mother was an addict. She loved her pills and her booze. She loved to get high, to get drunk, to get pissed off, to get violent. She was addicted to all of it. She had prescriptions from several doctors for mind-altering drugs that would keep her in a stupor, especially when she mixed the drugs with vodka. The vodka was her other weakness, and she kept bottles of it hidden all over the house, in the washing machine, behind the sofa, in the magazine rack, or anywhere she happened to be when she was through with it for a while. But nobody would have dared to try to make her stop, and I never figured out why she was hiding the booze. Nobody would have touched it.23

One morning when I was thirteen, my mother took an overdose of pills and alcohol. This wasn’t new; she did this, or something equally stupid, many times throughout my life. I knew it probably wouldn’t kill her, since she always seemed to know exactly how much to take to get the desired effect, but she did take enough to get groggy, and always enough to get mean. She called me into her bedroom with muted, slurred words. 24

“Call the police and tell them to find your father. Tell them the streets he takes to get to work. Tell them he tried to kill me, tell them he needs to come home right away,” she whispered. She gave me the same order every time. I was sick of it. The police were sick of it. But they always came.25

I sat down in a kitchen chair, and the cold vinyl seat sent a chill down to my toes. I thought hard, I bit my nails, I wanted to pull my hair out of my head. How many times would the police keep coming out here, I wondered. They know she’s crazy, and it’s humiliating to have to lie to them every time, I thought, as I twirled the single strand of hair between two fingers. I could hear her moaning in the next room, so I closed my eyes tight. 26

“Stop whining! Just stop it!” I said, but I knew she couldn’t hear me. I went to the phone, but this time I didn’t call the police. It would only be a waste of their time, and I couldn’t see a reason for it. I knew from past experience that she would never take enough pills to actually die. We would never be that lucky. So instead, I called the ambulance service and told them she had taken another overdose of tranquilizers. After I hung up the phone, I packed my school bag like I did every day. I walked out the front door and started down the hill to go to my bus stop. I had done all I was obligated to do. 27

Before I reached the bottom of the hill, the ambulance passed me on its way to my house with its lights flashing and siren blaring. I didn’t look at the ambulance. I didn’t look at the faces of the two attendants inside. They would find her and take care of her, just like they always did.28

I continued down the hill until I reached the bus stop. I finally turned around then, and only then, to see them loading my mother into the ambulance. That one time I decided to save my father the trouble of having to turn around and come home -- and Vera the Great didn’t get her way for once. I paid for it later of course, because, regardless of what happened, I was always punished. According to Vera the Great, my sins were abundant. 29

~--~30

One of her many doctors made house calls back then, and he would come when she was especially violent, if we could find him in time, and give her an injection that would knock her out. Each time he came to the house, he would talk to my sister and me, asking us how we were doing. I wonder what he actually thought when he walked into our house. I don’t see how he could have missed the piles of papers and trash that were stacked everywhere, the stacks of fast-food wrappers and grocery sacks, the remnants of hamburgers and french fries and half-eaten chicken legs and crusted-over remains of frozen dinners of salisbury steak or meat loaf and mashed potatoes. The narrow paths that were cut through the litter and garbage, paths through all the stuff my mother “collected” because she was obsessive-compulsive, so that one could get from one room to another, couldn’t have escaped him. She wouldn’t allow anyone to throw anything away, ever. She insisted on the piles, the filth, and we didn’t dare touch any of it. I wanted to ask that doctor, years later, why he didn’t take my sister and me out of that hellhole, but he had already passed away.31

~--~32

This is the image I carry with me. It is how I will always remember my mother. I don’t recall that my mother ever told me she loved me. I don’t know that she had the capacity to love anyone. But I do remember being worried about her. I remember making jello and spoon-feeding her when she was spaced out on drugs. I remember crawling into the closet in the hallway during arguments, determined to escape the rage and the insults, and I would tell Mother that I was going to stay in the closet and just play with the mice. By the time I got older, I had developed a phobia of mice, and even now I keep cats in my house to guard against the little monsters. Even on my best day when I feel like I can conquer the world, a little scrawny mouse can turn me to mush.33

My sister and I didn’t talk much after that about our deranged mother and the maniacal way that she always behaved. One thing we agreed on -- we hoped our mother died before our father did. I once told my sister that if Vera lived longer than our father, she was going to need another ‘nigger’ -- and it would have to be my sister, because it sure wasn’t going to be me. If I ever got the chance to leave, I would be as crazy as Vera to come back. 34

~--~35

Now today, forty years later, mother has finally passed away. She didn’t die before my father, rest his soul, he died two years ago, but I did keep to my word and I refused to take care of her. She lived too long, she never learned to be nice to one living soul, she went blind, and lived in filth until the day she died. From her wheelchair, she would swing her arms around wildly if she thought someone was near her so she could grab them and squeeze their arm or do something, anything, to hurt them. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them finding their way through the rubble. The sting of that belt buckle will never be forgotten, and the whelps from the axe handle rise from time to time as a reminder of younger years. But now she’s finally gone, the house is sold, and although the memories don’t go away, they do fade a little with time. We are still very close, my sister and I, but our private hell, the awfulness of our lives, have never been told before now. Shame, guilt, and fear forced us to hold it all in and allow it to rule our lives. I wonder now, after penning this, after telling you how it was, if I can now get a good night’s sleep.