Icing
My younger son Zack decided he hated middle school. C’s, D’s, and F’s were making regular appearances on his class progress reports. His pediatrician and I suspected he was having difficulty dealing with the stress of two vastly different households. I knew from my own pre-teen years how hard it was to catch up when I’d fallen behind on my schoolwork, and I didn’t want Zack to face the same struggles. To motivate him, I’d tried the reward tactic, the loss-of-privileges tactic, and the lecturing-till-his-blue-eyes-glazed-over tactic. My walking buddy, Lynne, suggested on one of our Thursday morning laps around the reservoir that I try getting up earlier on school days to spend extra time with Zack.
Though I’m not an early riser, I managed for a week to get out of bed at six and hang out with Zack after his shower. Together, we’d pack his lunch. He’d ask about my dreams and shake his head when I asked if he remembered his. We’d flip through his skateboard magazines and admire the young kids and their amazing aerial stunts.
One morning, I popped his favorite Pillsbury Orange Rolls into the oven and said, “I’m going take a quick bath. Frost the rolls when the timer goes off and remind your brother to take his vitamin.”
About the time I’d lathered my hair, Zack cried out. My heart clinched into a knot when he said, “Stop. Let go. Ow!” Even from my side of the house, I could hear him wailing. There was a scuffle going on. I heard one of my sons being shoved against the utensil drawer by the other. Immediately I pictured all the sharp edges in the kitchen. The knives. The glass. I jumped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around myself, and nearly slipped on the tile floor in my race to the door. With my hair full of suds, I ran down the hallway screaming, “Stop . . . stop . . . God damn it stop hurting your brother.”
I rounded the corner just as Austin slammed Zack against the edge of the sink.
“What in the fuck are you doing? Get away from him.”
Austin stepped back. Zack’s shoulders heaved as he sobbed. He wasn’t the kind of child who turned on the tears to get attention. Rather, he’d do anything not to look weak.
I turned to Austin, and said, “What did you do?”
His arms fell to his side. The wounded look on his face said, Why’s it always my fault? “He ate all the icing.” He pointed at the pan of rolls, and to be honest, they were only minimally frosted, and the frosting was the best part. Zack’s chin quivered as he blinked away tears. In his hands were a knife licked clean and the small plastic cup with only a smear of orange. “You’re fighting over frosting. Holy shit . . . you’re going to risk hurting your brother because he ate more than his fair share of some stupid icing.”
I tried not to cuss in front of my children and was usually successful. But right now I wanted Austin to know how angry and scared I was. The next words out of my mouth were cut short by a coughing fit. Anytime I screamed, it irritated my throat. I managed to croak, “I’m going to finish my bath but there’d better be no more fighting.”
All day while they were at school I thought about my behavior. How I’d screamed and cussed like a crazy woman. Like my mother. Then it hit me.
Before the boys began their homework that afternoon, I called a family meeting. We sat in the living room and I held a copy of Storkbites. I read them a scene from my childhood. I was eight. It was the year before my brother Chess was murdered. My mother and older sister were in the bedroom two doors down from mine. They were fighting. Or rather, my mother was beating up my sister and my sister was crying for someone to help her, to get Momma off of her. But not one door opened. Not one footstep rushed up the stairs, not even from my father’s study. Everyone was too afraid to come to her rescue. Instead, we shivered in our beds and listened to Momma’s fists hitting my sister and my sister’s body hitting the wall.
When I’d finished reading the passage, I was trembling. The terror I’d felt in not knowing if and when my mother would let up was as real now as it had been back then.
Zack immediately said, “Why didn’t you beat your mom up? I would have taken a bat—”
“Yeah,” Austin interrupted, “I would’ve whacked her in the head.”
They went on for a couple of minutes describing how they would have incapacitated my mother. I laughed at their enthusiasm.
“I was scared
shitless. Even as an adult, I didn’t have the guts to confront her.”
“But she was old. You could
have taken her down,” Austin
said.
“Perhaps,” I said. “I think from an early age she taught me I was better off to keep my mouth shut and take the beating. But my point is . . . when I hear you guys fighting, when I hear one of you crying for help, I’m eight years old again and I’m scared, I’m angry, but I’m not helpless anymore. I love you so much that I don’t want to see either of you get hurt.”
“I still think you should have taken her down,” Zack said. “Gotten a gun and shot her.” Austin nodded.
“Perhaps you’re right. In the future, however, no more hoarding the icing.”
