Mother was arrested today. She was picked up in the middle of her living room wearing a pair of dad's old pajamas. Surrounding her were broken pieces of china, glass-anything that could be smashed against the brick fireplace. She has cuts on her feet from stepping on the remnants of her rage.
Woody, my roommate, took the message. It was from a Sergeant Anderson, asking me to call him. The news didn't exactly surprise me as much as it made me sick to my stomach. I had been through this just a year before and I knew what was involved. There would be no bail that I could pay. Oh no, it wouldn't be that easy. It would involve horrible visits that I would have to make, seeing her among people who were hiding from reality in their own little worlds, occasionally waging a war against ours in desperate "psychotic" fashion. It's hard to see a stranger lost and alone but to see your own mother give up trying is beyond feeling, it confuses your emotions to the point of numbness.
There would be that time-altering walk down the hospital hall to get to my mother's room which they always seemed to place at the very end. Everyone would stare at me without expression knowing that I was not one of them. Looking at them I will see their loneliness but at the same time feel more alone than anyone on the planet. And then I would see her, my mom, peeking around the door of her room at me. And as I stepped closer I would see what I was dreading all along: the unbelievable humiliation in her eyes. Not the mere humiliation of the person who knows that it will be forgotten shortly, but the destruction of a soul, the look of a person who has been destroyed and discarded. The look of a person who is not thought of any more, who knows that they are seen to be unimportant, just a burden to society. Her humiliation must be unbearable; she has undressed her mind and left it sitting naked for all to see-and they have judged it mutated, no good.
Finally, I will come to her and give her a hesitated hug. I'll ask her the ridiculous question "How's it going?" with a planned softness in my voice that just misses the mark of sincerity. She'll look up at me with wounded eyes, those eyes that are worse than death, eyes that are humble without nobility. "Fine, but what am I doing here?"
I'll try to block out the increasing despair, the shocking truth in front of me, so I can offer some kind of comfort. The words will have been in my mind for hours but they will still be almost impossible to utter, for I know that once they are said I am guilty of denying reality too and I will be forced to ride out the next forty-eight hours on the side of the illogical and unreal. But what can I do, this is my mom - the one who stuck up for me against evil high school teachers, the one who went along with pretended illnesses in grade school only to wait on me hand and foot. Yes, there is only one thing I can say and only one course I can follow. "I don't know, mom. It's all a big mistake, you shouldn't be here, they're crazy. I'll talk to them; I'll straighten this out," I'll say without being able to look her in the eyes.
And the next half hour will be filled with casual talk about a movie or my classes or even the weather; as if nothing unusual had transpired on this beautiful fall day. But all the while I will feel that pulsing reality, the horrible assurance that everything will work out-so there can be a next time. Like an impending doom that is never actually realized but always feared. She, I think, feels it too but neither one of us will face what has to be faced. Nothing will get better but nothing will get worse, it will just hover here in this limbo of denial.
I call sergeant Anderson, get in my car, turn towards the hospital and try not to think about the next few hours of my life.
Terence A. Loose is 24 years old and graduated last autumn from the University of California at Irvine with a degree in psychology. He finds this sadly ironic, as he still can't make any sense out of his own behavior. He has been writing for about two years, and has had work published in Surfer magazine. Terence has been on a journey of indefinite duration through Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia since we last heard from him.
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