Tag: domestic-violence

The Trouble with Rita- Chapter 6

Posted on by mccarthymichelle in The Trouble with Rita

Mothers

She remembers when she was little, around five years old, playing in the front room early every morning. The radio was her teacher, with songs and commercials at her fingertips. She was acting them out…especially the ones with catchy phrases like, “You wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pep-so-dent!”

Her mother comes out into the front room, bleary-eyed and yawning from her bedroom, wrapping her robe about all four feet eleven of her. Annie reaches for a knob deftly to turn the radio off, but it was never on. Her copper-red hair is in rollers, she stands there scratching her head. A puzzled look comes across her face as she leans in with her glasses hanging on the edge of her nose like a hawk, turning the radio on, then off, on, then off.

Rita was always singing, always making little voices, and remembering the nuances of voice actors like Bae Benaderet from “Fibber McGee and Molly.” She acted them all out by herself, singing and humming the music parts, too.

She loved to perform and entertain anyone who would listen. All her sisters and their boyfriends were instructed to sit in the parlor on Friday evenings. She led them to their seats, in the chairs, on the arms of the sofa, or on cushions on the floor. They were instructed to sit and listen when she sang a new song. While hooking them in with the first one, she threw at least four to five more songs in one sitting. When the applause began, she immediately went right into the next song.

Once, a teenage boyfriend of her oldest sister commented on Rita’s large, beautiful, brown eyes. Without skipping a beat, young Rita opened those big, beautiful, brown eyes wide and blinked over and over, sending him into hysterics at her flirtatious glances. “What a doll,” he said. “She is such a doll.”

The Trouble with Rita- Chapter 5

Posted on by mccarthymichelle in The Trouble with Rita

Kisses and Hugs

 “I hear hurricanes a-blowin,’

I know the end is comin’ soon,                                                    

I fear rivers overflowin’,

I hear the voice of rage and ruin.”                                                                                                               

Bad Moon Risin’/Creedence Clearwater Revival

I remember it wasn’t always this way, my tortured relationship with Rita…when I was a child, my mother would kiss me goodbye at the bus stop every morning as the bus arrived for kindergarten. The kiss was planted firmly on my cheek before getting on the bus. The full, feathered plum imprint smeared on my face by her rushed attempts to clean it off before I reached its doors was a ritual. The smell of Cover Girl makeup in my nostrils and the excitement of going to school in the cool mornings of September were forever tethered together, along with her hand puppet waves and blown kisses at the window. With a metal, red, and black plaid lunch box in my lap, I waved bashfully from my seat. She was beautiful. A petite, Audrey Hepburnesque young woman with long chestnut hair pouring down her back like melted frosting, large brown eyes shining as if they were painted by Margaret Keane herself, and her lips, her lips were much larger than the other moms. They had thin pursing lines of color, but my mom had a classic Hollywood pout just like Marilyn Monroe. She stood off to one side on the sidewalk, not by choice. It was the thin-lipped women who drifted away from her, she was standing still in a spotlight she could not see. I watched the awkward social dance from the window of the yellow bus every morning.

Those lips had magical powers to cure any ailment; they kissed away nightmares, boo-boos, and high fevers. In photos, they drew the eye directly to them. Cupid’s bow was shaped perfectly on top of the full upper lip, the lower lip was as full as the upper, and the vermillion borders crisply separated the boundary of face to lips. Everyone knew Rita by her full lips and her smile. However, she never opened her mouth to smile for photos. She had a significant space between her two front teeth. She was very self-conscious about this.

The words that came from her lips were magical, too. Mostly because her naivete was on full display. She was gullible enough to fall into the trap of believing everything at first hearing. “Really?” she would widen her eyes, mouth agape. Men found her sweet, lovely, and desirable. She innocently charmed them with such grace. At the local I.G.A., she would walk right into a group of them and ask where the manager was, and they would all say they were him. Quite fascinating watching all these grown men jockeying for her attention. She had five children under ten, and she looked like a teenager. These men would adjust their neckties, looking silly, staring at her mouth while she spoke.

She would sing me to sleep at night at my request. She would scooch next to me, pull me close, and then ask what I wanted to hear. She sang silly songs, old songs she grew up singing, and popular songs of the day, like the Beatles. She sang mostly old torch songs. “Someone to Watch Over Me” was a favorite of mine. Her perfect alto resonated against my head as I curled up against her,

“I’d like to write his initials to my monogram,

Tell me where is the shepherd for thiiiis looooost laaaamb…”

Her vibrato stretched and connected to the next word so effortlessly. A natural, she could sing very low in her chest voice and switch to her head voice, then slip into her falsetto without showing any strain in her facial muscles or neck. It was lush and moving, just like her lips. She would smile and sing and snuggle me to sleep, and I would wake in the morning to a perfect lipstick kiss on my forehead. The wonder of it all, the magic of her kiss. I often wonder if she knew how much I loved her, how I idolized her.

The entire family was connected to music, all my brothers were musicians. It was an escape from the reality they lived in. I started to memorize all the music they would play. I did not have much choice. Danny played the bass and listened to the likes of Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa, and Yes. Patrick listened to Zeppelin, the Stones, CCR, and Bowie. But Chris became obsessed with Rush since he played drums. Rush blew them away. With Neil Peart’s drum skills and lyricism, Alex Lifeson’s wicked guitar, and Geddy Lee’s bass playing and vocals. A progressive rock band that consisted of three musicians, but when you heard them, they sounded like at least five or six people.

I would sing every song as they practiced. I would harmonize against it. I would feel the bassline of every song. I became attuned to the lyrics, to the story of the songs that I was hearing. There were many weekends when our house was the house everyone congregated in. I attributed this to the fact that my brothers were starting to play together, and they were sounding better and better. It was 1979, and I was listening to The Pretenders, The Cars, Blondie, The Police, and Cheap Trick. I loved the makeup, the clothes, and the vibe. It was new enough for me to claim it as my own. I was steeped in seventies music, but I loved this new sound. The punk influences and the catchy hooks.

All the older girls would sit on the basement steps to listen, holding their drinks, smoking their cigarettes, and checking out the band. I rolled my eyes at them. All they did was giggle like hyenas, talk loudly, drone on about who they thought was cute, and spray their hair with Aquanet. They all had a favorite, some of them were wearing the gypsy blouses, others in concert t-shirts with the neckline cut to show cleavage, tight jeans, and perfectly feathered hair like Farrah Fawcett. I was fifteen. My job was to make sure no one was screwing in the bedrooms upstairs and my baby brother and sister were not being bothered. I also held the hair of a few girls and even the guys when they were puking in the bathroom.

Long hair was the thing, I think it was because of the music. Like Robert Plant, the lead singer of Zepplin, he had hair “like a God,” as I heard some of the girls say. I didn’t get it; I thought he was gross. As soon as one of the girls dashed to the bathroom, I would guide them to the toilet and hold their stupid hair.I was the cleaner. I was the adult in the room, though they never let me down in the basement, and they never let me sing. We were separated by our age and gender. I was a girl who could not be around their friends, I was too young. I was annoying. I was their sister.

Someday, I told myself, someday I’m gonna grab that microphone and sing. The dudes who sang and practiced with them never remembered the lyrics. They were terrible. They were always too wasted and off-key. One guy was so nasal, and he was a short, long-haired, creepy guy who thought he was every girl’s dream. Another guy was tall, skinny, and refused to play anything but crappy cover songs. I could only take so much of “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. God, I hated that song.

Often, Rita would come home early from bartending, sit at the bottom of the stairs, and listen to them play. She loved live music; she did not mind the teenagers drinking. She sat on the bottom step of the basement with a tumbler glass of Southern Comfort, or the Peach Peril as my brother Pat called it, along with the girls on the stairs, chatting about nothing interesting and bumming cigarettes off each other. Rita still had her uniform on. A white blouse, black pants, a black vest, with a stupid floppy bow tie that she misplaced every morning. I would scour the house for it before she left for work every single afternoon. She kicked her shoes off, her feet covered by nylon stockings. She wiggled her toes and tapped her foot along to the music. She clapped and shouted with enthusiasm for my brothers. They would smile and ask what she wanted to hear.

“Oh! Hey! Play ‘There’s a Bathroom,’ that song with the bathroom on the right,” she shouts.

“Ma, that is not how the song goes. It goes, “There’s a bad moon on the rise…” Danny says into the microphone. His voice reverberated against the concrete, unfinished walls.

Everyone pans around and looks at each other. Chris plays a rim shot and taps the symbol lightly for effect, then freezes, looking wide-eyed. They all howl with laughter and then take a drink, erupt again, take another drink, and then begin the song for Rita. They love Rita. She always mistook the lyrics, and we enjoyed her take on certain songs. That one was going in the books.

The Trouble with Rita- Chapter 4

Posted on by mccarthymichelle in The Trouble with Rita

Fathers

She remembers when she was just a toddler, her father got a real kick out of her temper tantrums. A bus driver for the city of Chicago, Willie Mannion was a good man, a hard-working Irishman who loved his family and loved his drink. Willie was self-taught, read encyclopedias, and had a voracious appetite for history. A distinguished man with a widow’s peak, he had a full head of dark, unruly hair. The widow’s peak, a strong genetic trait, was handed down to the grandsons and great-grandsons.

One day, Willie bought his youngest child, Rita, a tea set with tiny pink flowers on it. He enjoyed watching her play. He began teasing her and laughing lightheartedly. Rita was sensitive with a quick temper and soon became enraged at his laughter. She took a small teacup from the coffee table and threw it on the ground, shattering the cup into pieces. Willie laughed loud and long at this, his belly shaking so that he had to catch his breath. Rita covered her face with her little hands and ran crying to her mother.

Eventually, all the pieces of this ceramic tea set were broken. Willie had his fun, and Rita had no more afternoon teas with her doll. Then Willie felt a bit sad for her and bought a new set for his youngest daughter. Even though they were pinching pennies with six children, even though his wife Annie worked part-time as a nurse, he sprang to buy a new tea set.

Rita was overjoyed and began playing with the new set. Even though it looked different, and it did not have the tiny pink flowers on it, she loved it. Then, her father began to tease her again. She flashed a warning with her big brown eyes, which made him bubble up with laughter. She reached for a saucer and held it high in protest. His eyebrows went up, and holding his breath, he waited. She flung the plate to the ground, and it bounced but did not break. “What was this sorcery?” she thought. Willie lost his composure, belly laughing and winking at her. She tried again, and her father put his hands to his head and bellowed, “Do it again!” She did, and the plate bounced around, then lay still. It was intact, it was not broken. She squats down to inspect it, looking at the saucer on the ground, in complete confusion.

She slowly stood up, looking at her father laughing and slapping his knee, running his hands through his thick, dark, unruly hair. He bought her a plastic set, so it would last for his youngest daughter. He did not realize the entertainment value of this purchase. He was having the time of his life. She was not. At the age of three and a half, Rita stopped entertaining her father. She did not run and cry to her mother. She learned a great lesson that day. When people are having fun at your expense, it is not worth it. That was the last time Rita threw anything, ever again.

The Trouble with Rita-Chapter 3

Posted on by mccarthymichelle in The Trouble with Rita

Soldiers and Warriors

“This one is not for the folks at home, sorry to leave, Mom, I had to go,

Who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun?”                                                                                           

Some Nights/fun

            As a young adult going away to school and leaving the poison of my toxic childhood, I tried to reinvent myself. I pushed away everything that happened to me, but it was complete bullshit because I was still living in constant survival mode. I did not have the skills to cope yet. I was winging everything and oh, so angry.

No one knew me, and it was a relief. I was the first in my family to go to college. I attended Illinois State University. It was a fresh start, and I immediately began to self-implode. I drank until I passed out, skipped classes, and partied every night. I would stagger back to the Stevenson dorm, then try to find my room after day drinking and try to get past my RA, who would hurl herself at me to get me to “share my feelings.” I pushed past her and shut the door to my room in her face. I will ruin my own life if I want to. I will destroy myself from the inside out because I can. I did not care why I allowed myself to be sabotaged every step of the way. I would have short-term relationships, short-term jobs, short-term friendships, short-term success, and short-term happiness. But why?

The first therapist I reluctantly went to in college asked, “What are you afraid of?”

I said, “I don’t know, being happy finally and having it taken away from me?”

He nodded at me and opened his hands slowly, serving me an annoying “Ta-dah!” 

“What? Life is suffering…that is all I know.” I quipped.

Life is shit. Life is peppered with enormous amounts of shit, then there are moments of bliss, snuffed out by random shit. I expected nothing. It was safe. Fear of failure, I did not have. Fear of happiness, I did, and it was stifling. It was comfortable failing, and I knew how to be in it. I loathed the uncertainty of a good party, an exhilarating roller coaster ride, a beautiful sunset, a good man, and a sweet child sleeping in my arms. There were too many things that could go wrong. How can I trust the rest of the world when it changes so often? How do I let go of the cursed reality that change is constant and cruel?

When a soldier comes back from war, they have difficulty assimilating back into society. It is the same with coming out of a violent childhood. We cannot assimilate in a healthy way. We are stilted and awkward, full of inappropriate reactions, laughing at the wrong times. We scare away any normal interactions, and we are more comfortable being alone in our self-loathing.

I was so alone in my head and oblivious to others who tried to help me. Feeling safe was a miracle that I could not achieve, not without the risk of being honest with myself.

I missed my mother. I felt like I had abandoned her by leaving. My oldest brother, Danny, told me that she was drinking more than usual. I felt sick with guilt and grief. I grieved the death of my family and the guilt of not being there for my mother to pick up the pieces and help her get through it. She was drinking and not coming home from the bar that she tended.

“Mom is missing; I can’t find her,” Dan said over the phone one winter evening. “You gotta come back here and help, she only listens to you when she’s wasted.”

I went home. The roads were icy and slick with a quiet and soft snowfall. I found her at a bar that closed at 2 am in town. I walked her carefully to the car, looking at the confusion on her face about me being there, telling me that I looked like her daughter, Michelle.

“Mom, I am Michelle, it’s me, it’s me, Mom,” I said with constant reassurance. I eased her into the car and very methodically started driving home.

“Stop, I’m gonna throw up,” she mumbled. I pressed the button to roll down her window, the frigid air killing the smell of alcohol and bile. Rita projectile vomited out the window into the dark the moment I lurched and slid around a corner. Then she began to sob uncontrollably and scream in a drunken whirl. It was the same lullaby, the same sad, haunting song. I tried to keep her focused while I drove, along with her garbled incoherence and her regurgitation of Southern Comfort straight up with a twist and a side of water, times ten.

“I just wanted to marry someone like Saint Joseph.” Sounds of vomiting…

“Rita, get it outside the car. Get it outside the car!”I shouted.

“I’m just saying…I’m just saying…” Dry heaving in-between…

“Goddammit, Rita, you got to stop this shit!”I muttered.

“No, I just wanted a happy family.” Coughing and pulling herself up to puke some more…

“Jesus Christ, Mom! You have to stop this! Danny could not find you; did you know that? Did you know he thought you crashed?”I yelled.

“He was a bad man, just a bad man.” Waving her hands about…

“Are you even listening? What were you thinking?”I demanded.

“I just wanted to be happy!” Pulling away strands of her hair, caked in vomit on the right side of her face.

“Don’t get that in the car, use your scarf, don’t flick your hand in the car, awe Jeeesus! Outside the window! Outside the window!”I shouted, looking at the road, then her, the road, then her.

Wait. What did she say? That last one. What was that? The fireworks went off in my head with the icy sting from the winter air in my throat, snow whipping in the open window over Rita’s head, propped up over the side. That last one, that last one was me.

“I just wanted to be happy!”

Jesus, I was imitating Rita. I was just imitating her the whole time because that was all I ever heard.

What happened to Rita was not just; it was unjust. She was living in the past. She was afraid of happiness; she was afraid of life, and I was her best pupil. The only difference is that I not only drank like her, but I also tried to kill myself in unusual ways with other drugs, promiscuity, and prolific self-sabotage. I let fate take its course, I did not deserve to be happy. Happiness was for those who were good, those who were upstanding and did the right thing. It was for “good girls” who were polite and self-assured. I was none of these. I did not want to assume that I had the right to be happy; if I pretended, maybe I would get some residual happiness by mistake. Honestly, that was not a bad deal, I was very good at pretending. I was so good that I even convinced myself.