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15-JAN-2002 05:52: My Mother
 Excerpts: Fugitive Pieces ~ Anne Michaels
Somewhere in a photo album on a dusty shelf there are snapshots of my mother's childhood... A studio portrait of the family: my mother is perched rosy-cheeked on her father's knee as baby Michael, (the one she defended with the baseball bat), snuggles against his mother's lap. The girls are in delicate crocheted dresses, the boys in suits sewn by hand. My grandmother might have been poor but she'd earned her reputation about town as a glorified seamstress. Her handiwork supplemented the meager income that my grandfather, an insurance salesman, brought into their small home on the small hill.

There are other pictures. My mother astride a pony that once came to her small town as part of a traveling caravan of entertainment. My mother in her catechism finery, her dark curls standing out in stark contrast to the virginal purity of the dress. "There's a bonnie lass," my grandfather, no doubt, said with pride. There must have been happiness in that home amidst the occasions of terror. And there was. In yet another picture my grandfather stands with a fiddle on his shoulder, my grandmother with an accordion, the two older boys with guitars trussed across their knees. Much later, my mother and then baby Michael would learn to play the guitar too. Music was a love of the entire family, they were regular Von Trapps, they were.

Still, every few weeks their peaceful world would be shattered when my grandfather drank too much. He was one of those vicious drunks. He once put baby Michael's hands in the fire until they were scalded and blistered as penance for having been caught playing with matches. Och! The crimes we commit upon our children to temper our own powerlessness.

When the beatings began it was always James who took the brunt; as the eldest boy he was duty bound to adopt the mantle of manhood when it fell in a despairing heap from his father's drunken shoulders. James would take the first round and then, hopeful that his father's rage had been spent, that responsibility might pass to another in the household. All traces of happy chatter chased away, music falls silent in such a space . . .
SINCE THOSE MINUTES INSIDE THE WALL,
I'VE IMAGINED THAT THE DEAD LOSE EVERY SENSE EXCEPT HEARING.
THE BURST DOOR. WOOD RIPPED FROM HINGES.
NOISES NEVER HEARD BEFORE, TORN FROM MY FATHER'S MOUTH.
THEN SILENCE.

MY MOTHER HAD BEEN SEWING A BUTTON ON MY SHIRT.
I HEARD THE RIM OF THE SAUCER, CIRCLES ON THE FLOOR.
I HEARD THE SPRAY OF BUTTONS.
LITTLE WHITE TEETH.

FUGITIVE PIECES ~ ANNE MICHAELS


My mother was thirteen years old the night she threatened to kill her father. She'd been ironing when he came in, using an old cast-iron jobbie that had to be heated in the fire. The door burst open and there was her father, the horsewhip already in his hand. James had been sitting at the table, playing cards with his younger brothers; they'd been laughing. He looked up to see his father and the blood drained from his face. He stood, ready to accept his fate, but this time it was different. This time, my mother stepped between them. She raised the iron up in one fist, the blazing blue eyes of my grandfather's heritage burning back at him with rage. "You touch him and I'll kill you! I swear old man, I'll bash your head in!"

That must have been when my grandmother knew, it couldn't go on anymore. She packed up her family and they moved to the big city. She left her husband behind, even though it was 1955 and no one in that small town on the small hill had ever left a husband behind before.

There are no pictures of that time in my mother's life. I imagine it was a hardship of a different kind. My grandmother, my aunt, the two older boys, they all found jobs. After a while my mother did too. At the age of 14 she quit (Catholic) school to take a position in a dry-cleaning plant down the street where she received 8 cents for each shirt she starched and pressed to pristine perfection. At some point my grandfather followed and the terror continued but the boys were bigger then, big enough to throw him out.

They grew into adulthood and one by one they began to partner. My mother was seventeen when she met her husband. He was a corporal stationed at the nearby base and she was pretty. So, so, so pretty. "You look just like Elizabeth Taylor!" people would say. And she did! She was beautiful, my mother.

They had to get permission from the base captain to marry because he was only seventeen as well, but marry, they did. My mother was pregnant at the time, but no matter, she didn't keep that baby -- the bastard kicked it out of her. (From the frying pan and into the fire.) She kept the next three though, three little girls: Maureen, Colleen, and Tessa. <-- And that was me! That was the author of this story.

And that is surely enough for now.


  Fugitive Pieces

   Anne Michaels



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