Two-Minute Memoir: My Mother's Madness

The year I turned 15, my mother bought a gun. I had been sifting through her drawers for disturbing letters to that doctor in California, or some other rambling missives to strangers. I'd look for these things and destroy them, as if by ripping them up I could delete them forever from my mother's brain. I found the gun in her underwear drawer.

Our mother said she needed the gun for protection. Protection from whom? I asked. Kidnappers, of course. How could I be so naive? Patty Hearst, the newspaper baron's daughter, was kidnapped. What's to stop the Symbionese Liberation Army from coming here?

I demanded that my mother tell me where she got the gun and why. She finally confessed that she needed it to kill my sister Rachel's best friend, John. He's a Nazi. You can tell by his name. John Heilman. Heil Mann, my mother said. See? A man who salutes Hitler. It's right in front of your eyes. My mother could break the secret code for just about anything. We have to arm ourselves against him, she said. Against them all. If I don't protect you girls, who else is going to?

"Have you shot the gun at anything?" I asked, trying to remain calm.

"Just for target practice."

"What target?" I said. "Where?"

"Outside in back. I shot at a garbage can but missed."

"You could have killed someone—a child, the neighbors, a dog!"

"I know what's what," she said. "You're so naive. We're Jews. There are those who wish us dead."

My sister became frantic when she found out my mother's plans. What was to stop her from killing her friends? What was to stop her from killing us? We took the revolver away from our mother and gave it to our grandma, who took it back to the store. She yelled at the owner: "My daughter is a sick person. Anyone can see that. You should be ashamed."

After the incident, my mother is hospitalized once again. When we are forced to commit her, each stay in the psych ward seems to be shorter than the last. But the doctors still pump her with drugs that make her mute, incontinent, and unable to move. They strap her down in restraints and zap her with what she thinks is radiation. She imagines Nazis torturing her. I will fight until the end, she thinks. I will save my girls. There's a reason for everything. A reason poltergeists set fire to my chair. Everything is a sign.

Which is worse? To lock her up in a place where she is left to sit all day in pajamas for two or three weeks, or for us to be locked up in our basement hell, the phone torn from the wall, our mother trying to break into our bedroom late into the night?

When I begin my senior year the fall of '75, my sister leaves for Northwestern University. The year before, our mother had ripped up all of Rachel's college accep-tance letters, but my sister is fiercely determined to succeed. I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears—gets tired of all this trouble at home? How heavy is a dresser when you're the only one pushing it against the door? If there is an emergency, it will be up to me to figure things out. My grandmother doesn't want the job anymore. "I'm too tired to deal with this crap," she informs me. "She's your responsibility now."

There is a picture from that time in my brain: my mother grabbing my arm and squeezing hard, trying to pull me away from the front door. I push her back; she falls against the red plaid couch littered with ashtrays and plates of old food. Everything falls to the dirty shag-carpeted floor. She comes at me, fists flying; I push her back again.

I remember the catalyst: me wanting to go out that night with a boy named Jerry from school. Jerry wants to be a minister or a gospel singer or an artist. He comes from hardship too. Something sad from when he and his parents lived down South, before they all found Jesus.

My mother is enraged that I want to date a boy, especially a born-again Christian. She says I am only 16 and calls me jailbait. "You aren't going anywhere with that Jesus freak. You're staying right here. We have a lot to discuss."

For the last couple weeks I have been staying with her every evening after school and on weekends because she doesn't want to be alone. I've had to take off work from Higbee's Department Store and call in sick at the Cleveland Play House dinner theater where I work weekend nights. If I don't get out of our apartment I will explode.

I walk to the door but my mother beats me to it. She locks the dead bolt and stands, arms crossed, blocking my way. There is no moving her. "All right," I say, pretending to comply. "Let's sit down and talk."

She starts in again: Did a man ever touch you down there, is your sister a whore, are you menstruating, has someone stolen your womb? I rise from my chair and pull out the small carving knife I had slipped in my pocket. I would never harm her; I just want to scare her off until I can back out the door. She throws herself on me. She is pure adrenaline and fire; so am I. Her lit cigarette drops onto the carpet; we could both go up in smoke, this place, the street, too, but I don't care anymore, I just want a little bit of peace. I grab her wrist that reaches for the knife. "Stop, you're hurting me," she pleads.

I tell her that I will kill myself if she doesn't let me leave. I'm not serious, but I want to scare her into stopping. Her response startles me. She picks up the phone and dials the hospital, while I run to the bedroom. She tells the intake nurse at the psych ward to prepare a bed for her daughter, who is mentally ill and wants to take her own life. I use the old dresser trick once again, blocking the door. In this moment, it seems fortuitous that we live in a basement, with a window opening right onto the street.

My mother is still on the phone when I open the window and climb out. I don't have time to bring a thing—a jacket, a purse, my books for school. I run down the road in the chill autumn air till I come to a gas station and call Jerry with a dime I always keep in the pocket of my pants.

The next day, Roy, Jerry's father, is talking to my mother on the phone. "No, Norma, we won't let her come back until you get help. Your daughter is fine. She can stay here as long as she likes." I don't want to go home. Milly, Jerry's mom, is making me a new set of clothes. She helps me make French braids; puts fancy clips in my hair. She cooks sit-down meals of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas. At Jerry's house there is always milk, and cereal in the cupboard, and in the bathroom there are fresh clean towels. The three of them pray before supper.

I won't go back until my mother checks herself into the hospital. It's the only deal I'll cut with her. She tells me on the phone that I am like Patty Hearst, who fell in love with her captors.

While she is gone, I live in the apartment by myself. I pay the rent with money I make at Higbee's and the theater, and my grandmother helps out too. I cook for myself, clean the place up, even have friends over a few times. My friends from school think it's cool that I have my own apartment. "I wish we didn't have to live in a stupid old house," one says. "Some people have all the luck."

Since my mother is gone I get busy. I work on my portfolio and fill out college applications for the next year. I work extra hours at Higbee's so I can save as much money as I can. Rachel reminds me on the phone that when the time comes, I will get out.

One spring weekend while my mother is still at CPI, Jerry picks me up and tells me he has a surprise. He says we are going on a picnic. After we head out of the city, he ties a red bandanna around my eyes. "You can't look until we get there."

Jerry takes me down winding roads; opens up all the windows. We are laughing, exuberant, and free. Suddenly the road gets bumpy. "Okay," he says, "we are almost there. Hold on." He slows down; the tires roll onto grass, then stop. "You can look now."

We are in the biggest meadow I have ever seen. Surrounding us are wildflowers and hills, houses in the distance, a herd of grazing cows. Above is a vast azure sky. "Where are we?" I ask. "Amish country," says Jerry. No, I think. This isn't any country; this is heaven. Heaven is a sea of grass, the longest day in the world, and no one to answer to; it is guilt lifted for an afternoon, it is a boy singing, and a girl closing her eyes to listen for a while, to breathe and to rest.

Later, my grandma calls to tell me that my mother is coming home. When she arrives she is shaken to her bones—slurred speech, trembling hands, eyes full of sleep and fear. I know it is only a matter of time before the cycle begins again. This time, something feels different. The system is changing; I am changing, and in a year I will be leaving home for good. I feel in my bones that my mother will always be sick. She might have a week or two of some semblance of normalcy. But she will forever be spinning in some dangerous orbit, knife in hand, and if I'm not careful, I will always be that small child frozen behind the wall. At 16, I vow to hold on to beauty—to sitting in a rich carpet of grass, a concert hall, a museum full of art—in a place that has nothing to do with the unbearable glare of grief.

Copyright © 2011 by Mira Bartók. From the forthcoming book The Memory Palace by Mira Bartók, to be published by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.