I Feel Bad

I am six years old.  I want to play outside, but Mommy won’t leave her room.  I begin to tread to the edge of her door, that invisible boundary that signifies crossing into her territory and whisper her name, but all I receive in return is a moan.  I enter anyway, only an inch.  There are navy sheets hung from the windows and the only light that peeks into the room is from the entryway I just came through.  She is in bed as expected, and I don’t dare move again for fear of waking her, for fear that I will cause her pain.  I love my Mommy, but I really want to go outside.  So I drift down the carpeted steps and briefly stop in the kitchen where I grab a juice box.  I open the straw with surprisingly little struggle and take a long pull from the sweet nectar.  I meander out the exit and up the driveway to the gate that seals off my backyard.  I enter alone appreciating the slight silence of the fading day.  I scale the wall up my castle and perch atop the highest tower, where I can see my neighbor’s dogs. They always seem to be out here longing for some attention.

I am seven years old. The woodchips blur as I drift slowly, backward forward, backward forward, hoping that nobody will notice that I exist, let alone that my face is wet.  I glance up slowly and take in the children playing around me.  Laughter carries from the Jungle Gym straight to my lonesome spot on a swing.  I ache for familiar faces, on the playground I used to know, but she took it all away.  We have a new house, new rooms, new schools, but I don’t have any new friends.  Mommy said I will get friends in time, but I don’t understand why I can’t still have my old ones.  They made us sing a song today, “make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver, and the other is gold.”  I am poor. 

I am 10 years old.  My Mom is different from other Moms.  Other peoples Moms do the dishes, and the laundry, cook dinner, go grocery shopping, and vacuum, but my Mom only makes dinner.  It’s okay though she’s not lazy.  You see my Mom is sick.  She got sick when I was six. I didn’t really understand it then, she didn’t look sick.  It started with her eyes, but now her eyes are fine it’s her legs that hurt.  She has to take big shots every night to stop the pain from spreading, at least that’s what I think they do.  My Mom has Multiple Sclerosis, the doctor says it’s when your body gets confused and instead of attacking the germs, it attacks itself.  Sometimes, my Mom asks me if I want to take the shot for her, but I always say no.  Even though I know she is joking I wish I was brave enough to take it, but it agonizes me to even try to watch.

I am 14 years old.  I don’t feel bad anymore, she doesn’t deserve anyone’s pity, is all I can think as we rush out of my Aunt’s home in a flurry of emotion.  I am at fault she says; I put her in the hospital.  I stare at the unresponsive floor as I shuffle my too small sneakers towards the open front door.  Dad is already outside, and you can read on his face that he wants to leave before she makes a bigger scene.  That is impossible I think, and I can feel a small smirk inch onto my face and I immediately regret it.  She sees, and she swings.  I take a whack to the back of my head and crawl inside my shell as I stumble out the doorway.  It didn’t hurt, but that doesn’t stop the tears from making me look like I care what she thinks.  She says I am stupid.  She says I am fat.  She says I am the worst daughter ever.  She says that I am a bitch.  She says that she hates me.  And with each word added on to the running tab of insults she is slinging, I feel my memories of my Mother, my actual Mother, slip away.

I am 15 years old.  I am ravenous after 3 hours of suicides, so when I see dinner already on the table my stomach is elated.  I wait on the rest of my family to sit before I take a serving of rotisserie chicken from the grocery store that I usually refuse to eat, and I inhale the food as if I were a competitive eater.  Here is where I make a mistake, my Mother is still tottering over to the table after retrieving some green beans from the top of the stove when she spots me reaching for seconds.  She sits and glares.  I take a break from shoveling food down my throat to look at her, my second mistake. 
         “How could you possibly take seconds before I can get any, you take everything I do for granted, you are such a bitch, blah blah blah…” I am used to this, but I am also sick of it, so I respond.
         “Fine, I guess I won’t eat anymore then.”  Now that makes her angry, so angry that she takes the roll she has been squeezing in her hand and in a spastic motion decides to throw it at me.  So I do what any respectable teenager would do.
         “Fuck you,” I say with as little sadness as possible and I leave.  My feet carry me two blocks from the house before I realize that it is raining, another block and I see that I forgot shoes, another and I remember that I will have to go back eventually, so I turn back slowly and reenter the kitchen to astonished looks from the rest of my family, minus my Mother, as they are trying to control their laughter for fear that she will hear them.  She threatens to commit suicide for two weeks; I do not feel bad.

I am 16 years old.  War is waging inside the confines of my skull.  Is it her fault?  I cannot say.  I want to say yes, to blame all of the problems I have ever had on her: on her hatred for me, on her hatred for life, on her inability to be a Mother.  But then I walk up the stairs and instinctively glance to the right for a split second before I make my usual dash to my room in order to avoid contact with her, and I see my Mother not as the woman who has harmed me in the past, but as the woman who is so broken that even she no longer looks in the mirror and recognizes herself.  I see the woman whose life is so sad that some days she does not get out of bed.  But then I remember her slapping the back of my head, her screaming at me, and the glare that words cannot come close to describing.  I don’t feel bad.  A war is waging in my head.

I am 17 years old.  I have a needle in my hand, and I am slowly, steadily assembling the IV line.  First, hang the bag of saline from the IV pole. Mix a smaller container of saline with powdered steroids and fill the syringe with this solution.  Inject the steroids into the IV bag filled with saline solution.  Use an alcohol wipe to clean both sides of both pieces of the IV line and connect them.  Attach the IV line to the IV bag and flush the line with the solution until there is no air in the tubing.  Attach the IV line to the port in her arm and start the slow one-hour drip.  She thanks me and I smile and turnaround to leave.  My friend is waiting outside to bring my clothing down the shore.  Prom is tomorrow and we are spending the next week partying in her vacant house there.  I am shaking, and all I can think about is what if I did it wrong, what if she was right and I really am the thing that will kill her.

I am 18 years old.  I am nervous like any college student should be for her first year away from home, but I am not afraid of what will happen to me.  I am afraid of what will happen to her while I am gone.  I am afraid that when I come home she will be even worse, and the worst part about this fear is that I know it will come true.  My Mother is sick, but she is not dying.  My Mother will live until this disease makes her completely unrecognizable.  I am nervous.  One day I get a text:
         “Mom fell taking granola out of the oven and hit her head.”  I am in class and I feel my heart start beating faster, I have never felt more panicked in my life and the time that it takes for my psychology professor to dismiss the class seems as if it stretches an existence.  I race out the door and quickly dial my sister’s number.  Mom is okay, she looks like she was in a bar fight, and she burned her arm, so I ask Emma to put her on the phone.  Mom giggles uncontrollably for a couple minutes, but I am used to this, MS patients lose control of extreme emotions eventually.  Finally she tells me what happened.
         “I was taking the granola out of the oven and I lost my balance, but don’t worry I managed to not spill.”  I explode, but in a joking manner.  I can’t let her know that I am worried.
         “Oh great what did you do?  See that you were falling and use all the power you had to save the granola?  Great idea Mom, sacrificing yourself for the sake of the granola.  Such a martyr.”  She laughs some more, and I say goodbye wishing I could see her, as I know she will be right then.  Sitting in bed with the air-conditioning unit in her window on low fan pointed as far from her bed as possible, and her blanket is draped over her legs.  She is wearing my shorts, even though they are too big for her, and a t-shirt dusted with flour.  The room is filled with artificial light, but all four window shades are drawn.  Our deaf dog is sitting in the broken floral armchair that is held up with a copy of a Tanakh, and my mom is animatedly discussing the events of the day with her, and then responding to herself.  She has a shiner, and she hasn’t showered in four days.  There is a cigarette burning in the ashtray, and the left side of her bed is filled with magazines, catalogs, caramel wrappers, ashes, lighters, scissors, and a half eaten bacon grilled cheese sandwich.  She is fumbling the remote as she decides whether she wants to watch a home renovation show or the Food Network.  The sheets are dirty and have burns all around her, and there are piles of used needles on her bedside table.  Her pills are lined up ready to be taken.  Two glasses of water rest atop a white ceramic dish.  One glass is filled to the brim with ice but has only an inch of liquid; the other has no ice but is only allowed to be filled halfway with water.  They both have straws.  The mattress is permanently indented where she sits, and her pair of old brown sneakers are strewn on the oriental rug due to her kicking them off violently before she rests.  The TV is in the unused fireplace that only a year ago was filled with candles none of which were used.  There is a Lorax stuffed animal atop her dresser that makes her smile when she looks at it.  I imagine all of this and I want to cry, I want to break down and go home and never leave her side.  I want to take care of her like I always refused to do before.  I want to hold her and never let go.  I want to be that little kid again and play with her outside all day, bake cookies, glue sequins on paper, and sneak into bed for a lazy Sunday morning cuddling with my Mom.  But it is too late; my Mother is the child now.  Sometimes she laughs uncontrollably sometimes past the point where she pees her pants.  She needs someone to make sure she doesn’t slip in the shower.  She relies on someone to make her food, put gas in her car, get the groceries, change her sheets, and wash her clothes.  I missed my time, the time I had to be the one who provided for her.  Those eleven years that she was sick and I was home and I did absolutely nothing.  I regret everything, and finally, I feel bad.