Call me by my name

I am an angry woman. Or so I have been told.
Angry.
Bitter. Butch. Feminist. Unfeminine. Argumentative. Detached.

Your epithets don’t cut like before.

Maybe I am detached. Or dissociative. Or borderline. I can’t know.
Or care.
I am just trying to survive.

Some of my coworkers say I am too friendly. But, that’s just part of my disguise. My persona. A mask I put on everymorning while I sit staring into my makeup mirror, putting on my eyebrows, eyeliner, mascara, lip liner, lip stain.

She is my armour.
A character in my play. A drama written and starring me. A script which keeps my memory work down to almost nil.
I have recited the same lines for so long.
“How are you?”
I am excellent/ great/ fabulous/ fill in whatever hyperbole you want. I am not going to tell you how I really am.

How am I?

Lonely. Unreal. Slipping sideways, sometimes. But, I am not going to tell you that. It is too honest. And I have been accused of being blunt. By the same people who ask my opinion. When I tell them, they lash out at me.
Too much of this. Not enough that.

Strangers seem to like me.
But, those who say they know me best, my family, are united by their distaste. By my appearance, by my aberrant behaviour. The admiration and kindness of an outsider, an offhand compliment brings acerbic comments from my mother. She said, “You have good bone structure, so you will look better when you get older.”

I am alone.

How did I get here? What was so wrong with me that I attracted the hands of men and the hatred of my mother?

I created an alternate reality.

When I was a little child, at night, in bed terrified, I would escape into the hole in the wall. A small pin prick left by a nail. A nail meant to hold my latest framed school photograph.
Me.
In a mass of other little girls. Uniformed. Ankles crossed. Perfect. I was the only one not looking in the camera.

You will know what I’m thinking if you see my eyes.
In the darkness, I would take down the photo. Pull out the nail and place it in my palm. And squeeze hard as I disappeared into that small fissure.

I imagined I was walking through a tall, verdant hedge. The kind that surrounded the grounds of my green tunic-ed private school. Groomed by their gardeners. With their sharp trimmers.

On the other side of the hedge was a path to an open lawn. Stretching like ripe leafy fur. Lush and smooth. Off in the distance, across the meadow, a large oak tree. Sturdy and grand. Casting a deliciously cool shaded area. It whispered to me.
“Come. Come to me and I will protect you… come.”

I never managed to cross that field.

Impertinent. Opinionated. Deserving of reprimand.
“Get her under control.”
They got me under control.

I learned not to scream out. Not to ask for help.
At 12, on Easter Sunday, my uncle put his fingers under my shirt and touched me. I told my mother.
“What do you want me to do?” she demanded.
Something. Anything.
She did nothing.

It didn’t start with him. He was sandwiched in. Or maybe I was. Just like the pleasant party sandwiches we used to make.
We referred to them as, “polite” sandwiches, the irony lost on us. Standing in the kitchen. Buttering the bread.
Applied evenly.
Like shiny saran wrap. A thin, uniform glaze, out to the crust.
“Do it again.”
Our knuckles rapped with the knife. Do it until you get it right.
Mashing the freshly boiled eggs. Still warm.
Salt.
Pepper.
Not black pepper. Use white so you can’t see it.
Start again.
“You stupid child. You will never graduate at this rate.”
The red, yellow and blue balloons on the wrapper of our Wonder Bread.
Spread the eggs.
Out to the corners. 4 pressings with a large fork to hold it in place.
Carefully place a second slice on top. Cut off the crusts with a large bread knife.
There is some brown crust still showing.
“You worthless girl.”
Crustless virginal sandwiches. Served up on a white Limoges platter.
Like cookies.
Deferential. Delicate. Small. With a layer of sugar.
Like we… the girls in our family were meant to be.
I never was.

My sister stabbed me through my right index finger one day as we worked the sandwich assembly line. The competition and hatred we all felt for one another at a ferocious vibration that day.
Like the high pitched screech of tinnitus, a migraine or on coming train.
She grabbed the paring knife and stabbed me.
Blood on the wooden cutting board and the Wonder Bread balloons.
In the egg salad.
Yellow with red makes orange.
We never talked about it. We suppressed it. But, it oozed out as passive aggression. Unkind comments and cruelty. The
very definition of family.

My father singled me out as his weekend buddy. His pseudo-son. Hardware stores, blacksmith shops, plane hangars.
Doing what boys do.
He would rub my legs at night.
My sister on the upper bunk, me on the lower.
I do remember crying as he rubbed my legs. Was it to help with my growing pains or lumbar radiculopathy?
I don’t know.
My mother screamed at him as he left the room. Angry slurs echoing down the hallway.
The next day, dawdling over my chicken noodle soup, my mother chastised me, “You are slower than molasses in January.”
I did not know the reference. It made no sense. But, I knew it was bad. I knew her anger was my fault.
I should speed up. Get faster. Eat up. Don’t taste. Don’t enjoy. Get it done.
I got it done.

I started early. I was a rubbing post by age 11. Convenient prey. A baby seal in a tank of sharks.
Their electroreceptors homing in. It was easy for them.
And so was I.
You can’t kiss me or know me. But, if you want to molest me I will not protest.
I was frozen.
What is the hertz of ice shattering?
It must be inaudible.
They didn’t hear when they drilled into me.
They never asked.
I didn’t tell.

I am through the hedge. Down the path. Out into the field.
Come. I will protect you. I will soothe you. Let me wrap my branches around you.

I am an onion.
That’s what he said.
“You peel away a layer and underneath is just more onion.”
I suppose that was his way of saying, I don’t know you.
No surprise.
I don’t know me.
When I study myself in the mirror, staring into my eyes, I wonder is that me?
Long ago, I thought I might be pretty. Not stunning. Not Ginger-from-Gilligan’s-Island looks. More like a dissociated Maryann.
Now, I look older. Plumper.

There’s a word I hate.
Plump. Like an overripe tomato. Like Bess, Nancy Drew’s best friend.
George was athletic.
Bess was plump.
Nancy was good looking. She was capable and independent. She had a red sports coupe.
And an adoring workaholic father.
Maybe I was Nancy.
God knows I tried to be.
Always inserting myself into dangerous positions. Hanging out with criminal elements.

Popsicle toes.
Frigid bitch.

I might deserve to be tarred with your adjectives and nouns. My cold heart is the only way I know how to be me.

I don’t want to.

I don’t want to hug you.
I don’t want to dress up for you.
I don’t want to call you uncle.
I don’t want to behave.
I don’t want to make nice.
I don’t want to make a meal for you. Or be your meal.
I’m not a CT.
I just don’t want to.

Wonder Bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways.

The orange goo trailing across the kitchen counter, seeping into the wooden board.
No bleach can sanitize that day. Try as our family might.
We don’t want to examine the stains and scars.
Neither the time nor desire.
Luminol and a true detective’s skills are not required.

Only an interest in another human being, a strong heart and a staunch stomach.
And an appetite for egg salad.

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