BebeSnout:
                Where Thinking Happens

       

 

 

Notes to an Abusive Mother
When a woman mistreats her daughter in public, will I intervene?

 

Yes, I’m staring at you.

You mutter, "It’s none of your business," or something to that effect.

But this is a public place. And while I may not have the right to judge, I very well have the right to care.

At first, my glances were furtive. Then, you hissed at her, yanked her arm hard, and I stopped being polite. Now, I watch unabashedly.

I watch your adorable child with her cracked dry lips and the old-lady circles under her eyes. She crans her neck in my direction, sees a hopeful face, and smiles her tentative, sweet smile.

I watch your child as she patiently waits, for long minutes, while you mumble and curse at the computer catalog, looking for something. She plays with the Happy Meal toy in her hands, but she is a child, too young to be know quite how to wait. She is so well-behaved, trying so hard, quieter even than the reference librarian across the room. When she lets out the tiniest peep, you scold her bitterly through clenched jaw. She tries again—to be good, to be quieter, to not move a certain way, even though her pre-school brain and body can barely pull it off. She looks over at me, I smile, but am frightened of you, too.

Then your child, perched on the library stool just beneath you, reaches over to a nearby shelf and pulls down a book, Lead a Rich Life. She begins to quietly leaf through its pages, to pass the time in this impossible task of being nearly invisible while you do what you are doing. And when you catch sight of this—of your child trying this hard to be good—you snatch that book away. "Don’t ever do that again!" you warn. And even the child knows that there is no hope here. She can do no right. Her glance in my direction tells me this.

You pull her up by the arm, and just before you pass by my table, I debate internally: Should I look away now? Stay in my own little world here, already full of its own controversies? But I can’t. I continue to stare, thinking that maybe shame will do something. You glance down at me, and away. I think for a moment that I glean something in those eyes: A plea? An understanding? A sorrow? But maybe I am imagining. Because what replaces that fleeting expression is, again, one of resentment for your child and what she represents to you: lost youth, a bad date, a rape, the last resort, unending responsibility.

I think of me with your child. Yes, I imagine your child is mine. I think of what I would do, how sweet I might think it that she tries to find something to occupy herself—the big grown-up book that doesn’t even have pictures. How, if she were mine, I would be snake my arms around her, so sorry I’ve expected too much!

But it’s not my business, of course. Never is. Feels as though it never will be. I spent my whole life doing what I thought was right. Always putting it off—for the first husband who did not want children, for a career that has never meant that much, for the perfect man to come along at just the right time because God forbid I should do it alone. All of this only to hear the doctor saying to me, when it is finally time to try,  You have the one problem we cannot fix. So my husband and I begin the process of adoption, the dance of longing and uncertainty and not daring to dream. 

And then I see you, and this child, and don’t think the irony isn’t lost on me! She is yours, this little lovely child I cannot touch, cannot even defend without you cursing me out. And I long to run over and say, "Can’t I take this child just for today? Can’t I take her to the movies and to eat a sundae? Can’t I take some of the burden from you?" I want to point out the absurdity of this situation—me longing for motherhood, you longing for release from it.

I take the child’s smile with me through the rest of my day, slowly realizing that perhaps it was not about hope so much as recognition, as if she was saying, Yes, I see you there, and I am glad you are kind, but it means nothing.

And next time I will say something. I will walk up to you and tell you all this. I will tell you that my heart is breaking, too, and maybe we should trade places for a day.

And I will save all this up for that day when my much-wanted child is being his little dependent self, and I feel my jaw clenching, and I am about to forget that once he was just a dream.

 

Copyright 2001 Suzanne Moyers