Who Moved the Tomato

"Who moved the tomato!" my mother shouted, rummaging through the refrigerator. She had the fridge interior and its contents and placement memorized, just like my favorite card game 'concentration.'

"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.