Three Times

By Jayce Bayani [First place]

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My mother has only hit me three times in my life. Me, her only daughter.

The first time was when I was 12. I exposed her boyfriend at the time for what he really was: a snake. A vile, good-for-nothing bastard. A shitstain unworthy of the ink I write this on. Back in those days, Nightswood was the biggest town in Paulson County, West Virginia. It was a sleepy town with a decent main street. Old folks would make it their mission to play bingo every Sunday night at the community center and workers from the logging mill shuffled over to Buckson’s, right by the general store, looking for the answer to their hardships down a glass of lager. Nowadays I hear it’s a cozy retreat for the tech bros and financial bankers wanting to retire. The main street has all but evaporated. Transplants file into the shopping center towards the south, fully gentrified and with all the amenities city folk are used to. I hear fiber internet is a thing in Nightswood nowadays too.

Well that’s not that important. You don’t need to know all of that right? Back to brass tacks. So when I was in the seventh grade, I had to walk all the way from school back home. It was always faster to cut through the thicket behind the school, then up the hill and onto the street where our modest ranch-style home sat. Grandma Bess, you remember I told you about her? Before she passed that year, her dementia got so bad she had to go to hospice for care. So for a while, my mom would leave the house key in the potted plant and I was left with some leftover pot pie while she worked at Tate’s Diner in town. It was fine for a while. Mom always stressed about the bills and she would often come home late and totally frazzled. One word from me and she would be irate.

Well it didn’t take long before she hitched herself with a boyfriend. Kevin? Kauffman? I can’t remember. He was a logger and a regular at Buckson’s. The smell of booze and cigarettes clung to every fiber of his being. After a while mom felt comfortable having him come over on his own while she was on her shift. On his days off from the mill, he would come to our house, sit on his favorite recliner, and watch whatever was on. And I would come home from school to see his wasted space sprawled all over the living room. When he got enough drinks in him, well what the hell do you think happens when a sad sack of shit with nothing to lose is left alone with a little girl half his size? He tried once, I screamed and ran into the backwoods by our house. I only came back when I knew it was long enough that he was passed out cold. This happened for a while to varying degrees, until finally I worked up the courage to tell mom. Tell her that the man she’s hooking up with is a deadbeat. Tell her that he tries to touch me when she’s not at home. Make her see this bastard for what he really was. That’s when I got hit the first time. It was an open palm with a ton of nail at the tail end. Left my ears ringing and a scratch mark on the left side of my chin as a reminder. Then mom let loose. She said I was ungrateful. That she spent all her time working herself to the bone. That I was a harlot. A slut. She cried like I had never seen her cry before. She cried about the bills. About her job. About the wasted life she had led up to that point. I can’t remember what I did afterwards. I’m sure I cried myself to sleep that night. But lo behold, it worked. The deadbeat loser stopped coming over altogether. I think it was over between them after that. And when grandma passed away, around the time I graduated from the eighth grade, mom had sold the house and we moved out west to live with Auntie Linda.

  * * *

The second time my mother ever hit me, I was a junior in high school. By then, we had been living in Portland with Auntie Linda for a while. She had gotten my mom back into the habit of going to church every Sunday, so mom became a practicing Catholic once again after many years of being rusty. Mom enrolled me into the Confirmation program at the local parish, which had a school of its own built on church grounds replete with rows of classrooms and a gymnasium. Mom would drop me off at the church every Sunday and I would get together with a bunch of people my age led by a group leader for the program.

Now you’ve probably noticed that I don’t have many friends. That’s just how it’s been all my life. Well I made one at Confirmation. Her name was Anne Marie. It was a cool September Sunday and we sat around in a circle, me and about fifteen other kids. While we were discussing bible verses, I could see from the corner of my eye her scoffs. Her eyerolls. Her feigns of interest when really she was unamused by the whole thing. It was the same look, same expression, same dull gaze I gave every Sunday at these meetings. One day while waiting for our rides home, she struck up a conversation with me in the parking lot. She explained how bored she felt during the class. I told her I felt the same. And then she did something I’ll never forget: she showed me her tattoo. It was a butterfly on the back of her left shoulder. I thought it was the coolest thing back then. She said “we should hang out sometime after.” Of course I said yes. I was dying for  the chance to do something wild. Crazy even. “Maybe I could get a tattoo like that” I thought to myself as mom drove me home that afternoon.

You remember I told you about my first love? Well, it was Anne Marie. And that’s when mom hit me the second time. Anne Marie and I really clicked that autumn. I spent a lot of time at her house in Old Town. We mostly stayed in her room listening to her Cocteau Twins albums. Sometimes she would paint my nails or we would do some sort of rating game. Sometimes her mom would bring us food that we would scarf down in minutes. Sometimes, well a lot of the time, we would practice kissing with each other. I felt so free. So alive at that time. Anne Marie eventually introduced me to her tattoo artist friend that was happy to do a butterfly for me pro bono. I wanted one just like Anne Marie’s, but on my right shoulder. That came back to bite me in the ass. One day I was at home after school while mom was working her shift as a cleaner in a care home.  I must’ve done something to give it away because somehow Aunt Linda saw the tattoo on my shoulder. And of course she told mom. When mom got home from her shift, she marched straight up to my room and landed a hearty one right across my face. She left my ears ringing that time, but nothing else concrete to mark the occasion. She wanted to know where I got it, the tattoo I mean. I told her it was Anne Marie’s friend. She asked if Anne Marie was the girl from our parish. And I nodded. She looked dumbstruck. Never in a million years did it occur to her that this was happening. She wanted to know everything about Anne Marie. How I knew her. Where in Old Town I go every day of the week. Who her family was. What her parents do for a living. What Anne Marie and I do when we’re alone. It was suffocating to be quite honest. I don’t remember how I got through that time, but eventually I graduated high school.  So did Anne Marie. And that brief period of rebellion in my life came and went.

  * * *

Now, the third time my mother hit me was just last year. It was spring. I was working as a risk assessment analyst for Deltapoint Trading, on the 15th floor of the Pruitt building in San Francisco. That’s when I got the call from Aunt Linda. Mom passed away that day. I flew out to Portland the next morning. I remember fixating on the clouds on the flight over. I remember the way the the tag on my luggage was bent awkwardly. I remember the acrid smell of diesel and cigarettes at the airport terminal waiting for a cab. The stain on the floor of my yellow cab as it drove me back to Aunt Linda’s on the South Waterfront. The slight crinkle on the twenty that I handed to the cab driver. Anything but the thought of mom. Aunt Linda had taken care of the funeral arrangements. I stayed a few days at Aunt Linda’s until the funeral. It was short. Uneventful. Aunt Linda understood I was busy. I told her to take care of herself. Then off I went. Back on a flight to California. Back to the comfort of my apartment in midtown.

You probably think I’m a liar. How could my mom do anything at this point? Well, that’s why I pay for therapy right? I pay for you to listen. Hold on, I’m about to tell you. About a month after the funeral, I was at my desk. I was going over reports that needed approval for the next day's team meeting when suddenly, inexplicably, my chest was on fire. I was sweating. I knelt down beside my cubicle. My hands shook uncontrollably. I could feel eyes on me. I had several glasses of water pushed towards my face. I took one and drank it. I caused quite the commotion at the office and I opted to take the rest of the day off. “This was mom,” I thought to myself. I had a feeling this was just like those other times. That’s where you come in. See, I’ve been coming to you for a few months now. Telling you little stories here and there. Telling you about my life. My loves and losses. My hopes and dreams. You said this would be a good exercise. You said therapy was a process. That it would take time to unravel the lynchpin behind all this. You said that maybe writing it out would be good for me. So really I have you to thank for getting this far. You, who now knows so much about my mom. About my life. Maybe when I show this to you next session, you can tell me how to get over it. Maybe you can tell me why I deserved that last hit from mom. God knows I’m still trying to figure it all out.