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"I did," I confessed. Another demerit on my permanent record. I could feel her seething with rage, hating that I existed, breathed and took up space in her house. I tried to stay hidden but she always barged into my bedroom without knocking and found me.
"I made you an artist" she once shouted. "All those terrible things I did to you caused you to be an artist," she screamed, standing in the doorway.
She had taken me to many specialists: school psychologist, dentist, family doctor, orthodontist, hair stylist, radiologist, therapist, psychiatrist, chiropractor, skin doctor, gastroenterologist. And she wasn't finished - she planned more.
Another time: "You eat too much yogurt, I can't afford to feed you!" This in spite of loving to throw lavish parties for my step-father's prospective advertising clients.
I stopped eating, and wouldn't join the family at mealtime. I was terrified of her. I was rapidly shrinking. I would make my own home-incubated yogurt and sit in the dark kitchen and eat it late at night. My mother went to bed early, so I thought I would be safe. Somehow she could feel that I was eating and she would swoop downstairs into the kitchen wearing her long sheer nightie, scaring me half to death.
I scrambled to find a place to be safe, sleeping on the floors of friends' living rooms, hiding, hoping nobody would mind. "She can't stay here" my friends' parents would finally say. I realized they were terrified that their children might do the same thing. So off I'd go to the next house.
Someday I would have my own kitchen in my own apartment in my own state. I had already collected a few cast iron frying pans at yard sales and flea markets and stashed them in my closet. I was ready. I imagined having hanging plants and a cat and a dog and a record player.
I loved the comfort of rainy days. I wanted to live where it always rained.
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