The Shattering of Mother

She cracked open one late afternoon. Just like a porcelain doll falling off a shelf. Like the dolls she collected, displayed, and cherished. She shattered in her mind and exploded on to our beings. Shards of her screaming hit our small ears and pierced our hearts. We were her children. She was our mother and then she was not.

I had been reading aloud to my younger siblings in our living room. My voice changing in tone and pitch with the characters. Mother was sitting in the leather chair across from us. She was listening dragging slowly on her cigarette. The house we lived in was small. We children were small. My mother’s dark brown eyes were the same color as mine. Only mother’s eyes looked dull. Her dark black circles under her eye lids looked darker. And in my ten-year-old heart I prayed to not look like her. I did not want to look scary and be teased by my classmates.

She was slowly sipping her hot coffee and her cigarette smoke tickled my nose. I did not like it that mother and father smoked. The smoked always made my tummy churn into tight knots. And usually where there was smoke there was violence. But I enjoyed reading to my younger siblings because mother only read the bible. She only read it only to herself. Reading allowed me to escape into other worlds. Where no under lying tension simmering on a daily basis. Like in our house. Where one had to tread softly, quietly, unnoticed. Under my parents radar.

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory captured our attention and took all of us on a journey. I was trying to be a good girl. My father and mother had little patience for the five of us. Being good was the only way to exist in our household. My mother was deathly quiet. I thought she was listening to my lyrical voice and the storyline. I thought Carlie Bucket, the boy in the story had grabbed her attention. He was buying a chocolate bar so he could find a golden ticket. The ticket would get him a trip to the Chocolate Factory.

I was well into acting out the voices of the characters when mother erupted. Like a volcano spewing lava. Mother screamed at me to stop. “Stop reading! Stop reading! Stop reading!” Her eyes wide, her voice grew louder and louder, high pitch, as she repeated the same words again and again. She moved her head side to side and then covered her ears. But her screaming never ceased. “Stop it! Stop it!” she bellowed. My younger brothers grabbed my arms and huddled tightly against my body. Fear wrapped her arms around each one of us. None of us could understand what was happening. I held Charlie and The Chocolate Factory tightly to my small chest. Tears streaming down my face. We were frozen on the living room floor scared to breathe. My mother was lost somewhere between here and there. Her cigarette fell onto the small dark end table next to her. The flame burning a bright red orange. Exhaling a breath of white smoke. Curling upward like a rattle snake uncoiling itself in preparation to strike.

Mother’s screams pierced my ears. I could not understand how reading out loud had shattered her mind. I squeezed Charlie and The Chocolate Factory hoping the book would deflect her screaming or block her hand if she decide to strike my face. I choked out the words “Sorry mommy. I stopped. Sorry.” But my words just made her angrier. Her dark eyes penetrated my ten-year heart. She was looking at me but did not really seeing me. Her voice was drowning out any safety or love that was already fragile between us. I swallowed my small ten-year voice deep inside my scared being.

My father arrived home at five thirty. He was assaulted by mother’s screaming as he walked through the front door. He removed his hat and walked briskly towards her.  He was calling out her name over and over. He saw us frozen with fear. He bent down, grabbed my screaming mother by both shoulders and shook her. She just kept screaming the words stop it! My father gave her one forceful slap. It did not phase her. He pulled my mother from the chair and walked her to the kitchen. He reached for the phone mounted on the wall and dialed 911. He sent us to the neighbor’s house.

Then we ran out the door. We could hear the sirens of the ambulance and fire truck heading our way. Neighbors came outside to see the big red rig and the ambulance. They put my mother on a gurney and secured her body with straps. Her eyes closed. Her voice now silent. The ambulance pulled away with its red lights flashing and its sirens piercing cries.

The memory of my mother having a nervous breakdown was forever imprinted in my mind. At ten years old I felt responsible for causing her to fall apart. She was gone for more than a week. In a hospital somewhere. All of us were sent to various neighbors. My father worked and visited my mother. When released from the hospital no one explained why she had come undone. No one ever said that it was not my fault.

My father gave her injections every day for a while. My mother sitting at the kitchen table quietly staring and not engaging. She was still far away. No explanations from my father. It just became part of the daily routine. Silence enforced. Our lives returned to a different kind of normalcy. I never read out loud to my siblings again. We all read separately in our bedrooms. Alone and quietly.

Time passed. There were no words about my mother’s emotional break. My father was a military man and we could not ask questions without stepping over the line. The birthing of that memory will always be carried inside of me. I tucked the memory away deep in my mind and I tucked my voice away too. My voice only existed writing in my journals. I wrote with my number two pencil thousands of words over the years and then graduated to writing with a fountain pen. Where my questions about life went unanswered. Where my tears stained the pages. My anger written boldly in capital letters. Happy thoughts written loopy with smiley faces attached at the end of each sentence. My journals were never read out loud by me or anyone else.

My mother’s mental break down came with me when I left home. A reminder for me that I might have a break like her when I turned thirty-two. The thought and memory lay silent in the recesses of my mind. I grew up and made promises to myself over and over I would not be like my mother.

Years would pass by. I would marry and give birth to two daughters. I wanted to turn thirty-two years old without incident. I wanted to be a normal mom like my friends. My mother’s memory was a reminder of just how fragile human beings are and how fragile children are even though they are resilient.

My journals would grew in numbers over the years. My voice speaking silently across the pages. I would carefully bring my voice out to read bedtime stories to my daughters and I would block the memory of my mother out of my mind. The three of us would snuggle on the sofa or in my bed reading aloud. I did not want my daughters to grow up and be afraid to read out loud. I wanted their small voices to be heard by myself and others around them.

When my thirty second birthday arrived. I did not break emotionally or physically. But carrying the memory of mother made me feel responsible for her shattering. At ten years old, I, myself, was still a child. My mother could not protect me against fear. If I had not read aloud that afternoon my mother may have not emotionally died. The years went by and no one ever talked about her break down. What went on in our house was never talked about with friends, neighbors, teachers, or even our priest. We all lived with secrets tucked away in our small bodies and carried them with us.

It would be years later when I finally had to share this memory with my therapist. She was the first person I ever told. The memory that I carried from childhood. She was the first person whom I felt might be able to help me sort out my memory. And how I carried it physically and mentally. She was the first person I felt safe with and trusted.

The memory had surfaced in one of the first writing classes I participated in. I could not read my words out loud without crying, choking on fear, and trying my hardest to swallow them back down into my dry throat. My guilt and shame seem to be written invisibly all over my body. In bold large letters where everyone could read them. The memory seized my voice. It unsettled the core of my being.

It was a struggle for me to address the subject with my therapist. I felt embarrassed. I felt apprehensive and childlike once more. Until one day fear pushed me really hard.  I said to her, “I will never have the capacity to write a book. What kind of writer can’t read her own words in front of a group of strangers? Strangers mind you who do not know me. Reading out loud terrifies me.” My therapist listened to my words and took them all in while thinking how she would help me.

She helped me take the memory out of mind and look at it from a distance. She gave me a different perspective. She explained my mother’s mental break down was not my fault. Each time we looked at the memory I became a child. I could vividly see my mother’s young face, her pain, smell her burning cigarette, hear her screams and feel the fear. I was looking down into our living room watching the scene play out once more.

My therapist sat with me on the journey. She was gentle, patient, listened, and held my hand (metaphorically). She helped me process my emotions and the memory. My therapist gave me insight. She helped me talk it out more than once. She had empathy and understanding and that’s what makes a good therapist. She helped me find my voice.

I cried for all the years my mother and I had never once been intimate like mother and daughter. I cried because I was becoming a writer and did not have my voice. I cried for all the shame and guilt. When I was alone at the beach I cried. And then one day I finally put the memory back into my journals. And then I let go of my mother. For now, she lies quietly in the deep rich dark soil of mother earth. Where everything is quiet.

Now in present time my voice shows up daily with my fountain pen and blank lined notebook paper. It speaks across the pages. My words show up to be read aloud. There are times when I still struggle with my voice and the memory rises within me. But there is usually a kind writer in class who offers to be my voice for a few moments allowing me to tuck my ten-year-old self away and gather my composure once again.

I will never know what actually happened to my mother on that particular afternoon. But I can imagine what might have been percolating in her mind with things we never shared. Secrets imbedded deep in ourselves. Memories.  

The shattering of my mother did not become the shattering of myself.

 -Susan Delgado

Susan Delgado is a San Diego writer and a native Californian. She is Creative Director of Thousand Watt Co Jewelry. Her writing has appeared in Ruby Literary, HerStry, The Kelp Journal, The Sunlight Press, San Diego Decameron Anthology, Journal Publications and work forth coming in 2024. She has been nominated for Best of The Net.