My mother favored my brothers Mike
and Wayne and some of her friends over me.
One night when Mike and I were young,
before Wayne was born, mother and Don, her second husband were visiting some
friends. They decided to visit late into the evening, past our bedtime. The couple
they were visiting let her put Mike and I to sleep in their bed until they were
ready to leave. Shortly after we were put in their bed, Mike started putting
his legs over mine and refused to move them at my request. So, I hollered for
mother. Of course by the time she got into the room, Mike had moved his legs;
he did this several times. Each time mother would come into the room, I would
tell her what had happened, and she would say, “Well, his legs aren’t on yours
now. Go to sleep.”
Looking back on this, I realize that
even then Mike was the “favorite.” I don’t remember her saying one word to him
about keeping his legs off me, if she had; I suspect he wouldn’t have done it
so many times. In essence, this kind of thing set me up to be the victim for
men who wanted to use me. My own mother was teaching me that men were allowed
to do as they pleased, while I was not.
She gave both Mike and Wayne private
music lessons, but never asked if I might like to have the same when I was
learning the clarinet, the guitar, or the piano. Not only that, she always told
me they couldn’t afford to have the broken crown on my front tooth fixed
because it would cost the equivalent of one of Bill’s whole paychecks. I find
it rather ironic that she could find money for my brothers to have the luxury
of music lessons.
When we started doing our own laundry, mother
assigned each of us two days a week in which to do it. Originally one of my
days was Saturday. I loved having that day because it meant I had all day to do
my laundry, in addition to having one afternoon after school. Then one day Mike
claimed I had traded him Saturday for another day in the week. I said I hadn’t.
There was no way I would have given up having Saturday for a laundry day. He
made a big fuss and she made me trade, even though I said I hadn’t promised to
trade him. That there was no way I would have said such a thing.
She promised Michael a car for his 16th
birthday, but I was always told I’d have to buy my own car. I’ll admit
she didn’t buy the car for him, but the fact that she promised him one in the
first place really hurt.
When the other kids in school teased
me, she told me to ignore them. Then when Wayne was teased, she made
arrangements for him to be transferred to another school. To make matters
worse, when the school district quit providing transportation for me to the
school I was attending, I decided I may as well transfer. After all I could
catch the bus for the school I should have been attending right down the street
rather than walking five blocks to get public transportation. Michael attended
the school I wanted to transfer to, so she made me ask him if it was okay with
him. She was afraid he’d be teased because of my association with him.
I once moved a box from the big
freezer out in the garage, which had Michael’s portable tape player on it. When
the tape player fell off the box and hit me on the head, she acted like I was
in the wrong for not taking better care of his tape player. She yelled
at me for dropping it.
Then there was the time Mike decided
to bake some banana bread using a recipe he’d gotten at school. As it happened,
I had baked something that day just before he did. Several minutes after I
finished using the oven, I walked past it and noticed that it was still on. I
reached over and turned it off because I thought I had forgotten to turn it off
when I finished. I had no idea that Mike was baking something at that time.
He called mother at work and cried over
the phone. She had him give me the phone and proceeded to chew me out for
turning the oven off. When I told her that I thought I had forgotten to turn it
off after I’d finished baking and had no idea that Mike was baking anything,
she simply told me that I should have looked in the oven. Mike never
baked anything and this recipe was special to him. I told her again
that I had baked something and thought I’d forgotten to turn the oven off. I
still don’t understand why I should have been expected to check the oven when I
knew Mike had never baked anything before that day and I didn’t know he was
baking something then.
Then there was the time I opened the
dishwasher for something and found a bowl full of water in the rack. I pointed
it to out to Mike whose turn it was to do dishes. He dumped it over the
dishwasher door and made a mess. Bill, mother’s third husband, who was standing
there at the time, yelled at me and made me clean up the resulting mess. When I
talked to mother about it, she took his side, despite the fact that I did not force
Mike to dump the water over the dishwasher door. All I had done was
point out to him that the bowl had turned over and filled with water.
Another time Mike put a toy down on a
chair in the living room. I walked out to the living room and sat in the chair.
When I did, Mike’s toy got smashed. He called mother at work and cried to her
about it. She got me on the phone and told me I should have looked at the chair
before I sat down. Since chairs are for people to sit on, why should I look to
see if there was a toy on the chair? Not to mention that mother was always
telling us to not leave our things where they didn’t belong.
Mike and Wayne were allowed to make
their own choices about what to do with their life. I was always told what I
should do with mine. No one asked me what I wanted to do. The few times I gave
any indication of some of my choices such as being an actress or a singer, I
was told point blank that I should pursue something else; such as typing. No
one, not even my mother ever gave even a hint of encouragement for any
potential dreams I might have. I never truly felt free to explore the world and
all the possibilities it had to offer me and therefore find my own path.
I remember wanting to learn to dance
on roller-skates and possibly become good enough to compete. I never told
anyone that for fear of having my dream put down again. Looking back on all
this, I realize now that there are talents I have that were suppressed because
of the way mother treated me. I didn’t have the freedom or the energy to
explore my talents beyond anything useful to her, such as cooking, baking, and
sewing.
Even now she favors Mike and his
wife, Danice over me.
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