Broken

I remember when I reached my limit with my mom. I was in my first year of marriage. I was on the phone with her, standing by the kitchen table I inherited from my grandmother. I remembered thinking, here we go again. My mother would be in output mode. There was no pausing in her conversations. It was like a fire hose of all the mistakes my dad was making with my brothers who looked like they were on the path to delinquency. This was just the latest version of what he was doing wrong, recently having taken center stage.

I began making dinner, waiting for my husband to come home, occasionally interjecting when I could, knowing my words had little impact against the assault of what always came back.

I imagined my mother sitting on a chair in the kitchen, cradling the phone in the crook of her neck, lighting a cigarette. I could hear her inhale and then slightly exhale.

“Oh – you don’t understand. You don’t know your father.”

From the time I was old enough to comprehend adult relationships, this phrase was spoken countless times. I knew my mother had friends at work to confide in and yet she insisted on including me in the drama of her life. The intensity peaked when the job she had gotten to supplement the family income had in some way threatened my father. At least that was the perception that could be read between the lines. The subtleties came out in her side comments and in a low voice, not always meant to be heard: “I was only meant to help with the mortgage.”

Or, “Your father does not really like me working.”

Or even more stinging. “You know it’s very important to find someone who wants you to grow.”

All of this over time felt like whiplash and my body and brain were sore from the repeated injury of her words.

I did not want to be this sounding board anymore. I was beginning my own life, with my own husband. I wanted my mother to produce her own solution to her unhappiness.

I moved around in the small kitchen. My husband was finishing his last semester in college. I had graduated from nursing school and was working. It was our time. My patience had reached a boiling point. I yelled with the frustration of the years of listening to this battle cry of what my father always did wrong or was not doing. My voice tight, the octave rising to ensure my message was received. “Why did you ever marry him?”

The words were ones I thought of but had never spoken, like a child that did not want to break the spell of some romantic fantasy she had of her parents. But it was always there to ask, begging for the answer. Why would my mother have constantly demonized my father, blame him for most of her unhappiness and made him at fault for all that went wrong?

And what she said next sent a shock to my system that even now makes me rage.

“I was raped.”

In an instant, I was still. I could not move from the spot where I was standing. The phone in my hand felt damp.

“What are you saying Mom? What are you talking about?”

I violently shook my head back and forth, as if to erase what she just said and thought—no, no, this just cannot be. Not to my mother.

I found a chair to sit on.

The story was brief. I could hear her hesitation, as if she did not want to retell it. As if the pain or embarrassment or shame of it would ignite the trauma. I got angrier as I listen.

There was the slight inhale of breath as I heard her light another cigarette and suck in.

Another pause.

“A few of us were going out. Your aunt was with me. We met some men at a bar. We were having fun. Enjoying ourselves. Yes, your mother had fun too. Wanted to.”

Another deep drag. I could hear her inhale again and blow out. I imagined the smoke swirling, encasing her, a filmy white ghost as it rose above her.

“And there was this man I met there who I started to see. He really seemed nice.”

She did not say anything else. There was quiet and stillness. Her words, “I was raped,” were trapped in my throat. It was as if she had held on to the story for so long and then in a moment of exhaustion, with my simple question why did you marry him. Then and only then did she reveal her secret to me.

Only in the agony of her story, in moments of pure frustration, could she release it.

“And then he raped me.”

Her statement hit me like icy water, like I was drowning in a sea of questions but had no air to ask them.

I could not reveal the rage I had for a man I had no face for, the anger I felt at that moment at what he had done to my mother.  My voice was softer, gentler if only to temper my outrage and disbelief of this discovery.

 I asked, “Did dad know?”

She answered. I imagined her finishing her cigarette, smashing its end in the orange ashtray my dad and her always used at the kitchen table.

“Yes, of course he did. Once we decided to marry, I had to tell him. I don’t know if anyone else would have married me.”

And there it was. There were the years of I am no good, I am not worthy, I do not deserve his love. I am damaged goods. He only married me because he had to, not because he really loved me. I imagined how much that built through the years. Layers and layers of unresolved healing lay beneath the surface, covered up with children, jobs, bills, and life.

My emotions were pure rage. There was an undertow that pulled my mother further and further from the love she deserved. The more she swam against the tide, the more the sea took her out. There was silence for a while. I could not ask questions, the rawness of the conversation felt just too much for both of us.

“Okay, mom. But I do think dad loves you and that is not why he married you.” I wanted to leave her pointing back to shore.

She responded.

“Yes, I guess so.”

Another pause.

“Say hello to Mike and I love you.”

“Love you, too”

I was alone in the apartment. We had a hodgepodge of used furniture and had started to collect some antiques. In particular I was drawn to what was old, what was so unique, what could give us insight. My mother often teased me that I would be the one to keep all the treasures from the past, so she started to give me her jewelry, and pictures.

I pulled a box from the bedroom shelf and sat at the table. I spread some of those pictures out. My mother is shockingly beautiful. Lean, always dressed smartly. Thick chestnut hair, waved and full, sometimes neatly coiffed, sometimes perfectly wrapped beneath a flowered scarf. But it is the ones with my dad that I spy judiciously. I look for signs. Wouldn’t I see them? Wouldn’t I see signs of that schism? Wouldn’t her unhappiness or his be apparent? In the way they look at each other. In the way they hold hands and laugh.

Before I was born, they went on a trip to Lake George and there were equal photos of them both, happy and smiling. What I see, what I can only see, is love. Because that was what was there. Would she see that if she looked? I knew now why the fights, why the constant battles, why there never seemed to be that outward expression of love from her to him that seemed so obvious in the pictures.

My mother often said, “Your father is a good man.”

She never doubted his love for his family. She never doubted his ability to provide. She praised him for rising above the brutality of his father and never raising a hand to his children. But she never could embrace the fullness of his love. A man willing to honor his wife regardless of the vileness that someone else chose to inflict on her.

I looked at the pictures again and then slowly slid them back into the box. I placed the lid on top and pushed it to the side. It was dark now. Our apartment never drew much light anyhow, but the feeling of blackness cast in the room felt suffocating. Dinner was left undone on the stove. The stale odor of uncooked meat hung in the air and sat like something unwanted, dormant against my stomach. I heard the creak of the door open as Mike walked in. I was silent. He came over, knowing something was not right. He walked to where I sat and pulled the only other chair we had to face me.

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?” He inched the chair closer, so that our knees were touching. His skin felt cool against mine. And I loved him more than my heart could hold at that moment.

I looked at him and the words inched out of my mouth, barely a whisper, so hard to say. “My mom was raped.” And the story spilled out like vomit, like something so vile and purulent that I could not wait to get it out of my body, I finished, exhausted.

And with that I fell into his arms and wept, the kind of weeping that leaves your bones dry and your heart hollow and raw.

It was the kind of hurt I knew would never be fixed for my mom and dad.

And it never was.

-Geri Spina

Geri Spina has found no better way to express the truth then sharing her truth. Writing has always been the avenue of her self-expression and in sharing her journeys she hopes to inspire others to see themselves and find a path to their own voice.