No Comfort

No Comfort

“Good night, good night,” she said.
“Pull up the blankets and cover your head. If they don’t see you it can’t be said, “Maybe tomorrow we’ll all wake up dead.”

She would say these things with a blank look and an idle stare. I wasn’t sure if she was looking at me, through me, remembering these sayings from her own tormented childhood, or simply projecting them onto mine. All I could say was I didn’t like it. I would proceed to go off to sleep, my eyes closing out of sheer exhaustion, only to pray I would awaken nightly from my eyes irreversibly glued shut, after having one of the most vivid awful nightmares one could imagine. Then, of course, she would rush to my bedside, wipe my tears, silence my raspy voice, rock me to sleep, and cuddle in next to me. She’d whisper that bad dreams made one strong.

I could never be sure of when she left, but the next morning I would awaken, all alone, and sweating, with the comforter pulled up tightly and wedged beneath my chin. It didn’t matter if it was the middle of winter or a long hot night in summer, I would always awaken smothering in blankets. It was as though the blankets were meant to protect me against something or keep something in. I just didn’t know which.

As I climbed out of bed, I would hear the sounds of pots and pans clanging together in the kitchen outside my room. My mom was busy at work preparing the breakfast of champions. I’d find my uniform all neatly pressed and waiting on edge of my bed. It was a school day, and the only way to miss school around my house was to be a death’s door being fervently beckoned forth. Otherwise, it was truly simpler to just get dressed and drag oneself out the door.

It was common practice to get fully dressed, except for my tie and my jacket. These items were to be worn after; not after eating, but after the short ride to school and subsequent to the removal of the seatbelt. I had just learned the word, “subsequent” and was ecstatic to have finally been able to figure out how to use it. Now I was guaranteed to get it right on the spelling test. There would be no silent tears over another misspelled word or a word used inconveniently or worse yet, in the wrong spot in a sentence. My mom often said, “A well-formed sentence might one day save your life.” I swear her sentences sometimes confused me more than scared me. Other times, they did both.

If not for these odd sentences, I didn’t think my mom extraordinarily strange, at least, no stranger than any of the other kid’s moms. Of course, I didn’t really know my mother, nor as I look back upon it, did any of the other kids know theirs. She was this complicated patchwork quilt of contradictions. Nice, but occasionally vicious, such as the first time I wandered out into traffic without looking both ways. I thought she was going to kill me. She’d never raised her hand to me before, and now she was literally trying to swat me to death. I thought at the time that getting hit by the car would have been easier. Not only did she swat me in public, she raised her voice to such a pitch that I froze in place. If she hadn’t screamed, I probably could have made it to the other side of the street. Of course, her scream stopped the car that was running me down through the red light. Needless to say, he got his after my mom finished me off and deposited me on the corner crying and blubbering to myself. And I thought she didn’t really care, stupid me. I thought the driver would just give up his license on the spot. I never did that again, nor did he, I imagine.

I came home from school this day to find an odd looking woman sitting on the couch deep in conversation with my mom. She was only odd in that she was identical to my mother, except in size. She may have been almost twice Mom’s size. As I walked in, she looked towards my mom’s gaze and transfixed hers upon me. I’d just learned that word, “transfixed.” But she looked upon me in amazement, as though my mere existence was on another plane. I turned to scurry off to my room. My mom scared me, but she was small potatoes compared to this woman. Besides, I had to change out of my uniform; soiled uniforms meant I had to listen to my mom lament the withering of her hands as she had to wash my uniform by hand; not that she ever did, I saw to that.

When I finally got the courage to come out of my room, it was as though nothing had changed. My mom’s visitor sat with the same calm repose, staring in my direction. When she finally spoke, she introduced herself as my aunt, my mom’s younger sister. She had an accent, though at the time I just thought she talked funny. And she sure stared a lot. It was strange sitting there and having the two of them talk about me as if I wasn’t there. I could never be sure what they said, but I knew it was about me. Somehow the language was familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time; maybe I had heard the words in a song. It was “disconcerting,” a word I would learn later.

Late that evening when the strange woman left, she bowed to me with a quick jerk of her head, and then she was gone, out into a large dark car with tinted windows. The car seemed to appear out of nowhere and the door simply opened by itself. I must have been standing there with my mouth open and staring as I felt my mom’s hand gently caress my chin and close my mouth. I was probably drooling. I had seen power and strength, and I knew I wanted it. I turned to my mom to ask her a million and one questions, but then I saw the tears in her eyes and knew to ask later. Somehow I knew the evening would be long and my mom would once again be sad. I just didn’t know why. Maybe when I turned eight I would understand.