To Be of Use
Here’s the story I published on substack…..https://open.substack.com/pub/elisasinnett/p/to-be-of-use?r=272ljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I’m looking for ways to be of use to mother. She’s lying on the couch with a wet washcloth on her head. Tory is in charge of wetting the cloth in the kitchen sink, wringing it out, folding it threes and placing it back on her sweaty forehead. Sometimes she opens her eyes, and that is when I’m ready with one of the purple tin cups to bring her water. “Mommy, here, take a sip.”
When mother lies on the couch, instead of locked in her room, it’s the signal to take care of her, coax mother into being herself, or what we wish was her full-time self. Our mother. The year is 1973, and women are not helped for needing help. If a woman knows better she keeps it in-house. Not like Mrs. Kirby who they took away. Jenny Kirby looks like a pale ghost at school, moist and puffy. She whispered to me in the cloakroom. “I heard Daddy say they gave her electric shocks.”
I promised not to tell. I kept her secret even when people asked Jenny Kirby why her mother never came to the PTA meetings anymore, the bake sale. Mrs. Kirby only left the house on Sunday for Mass. Mr. Kirby stood like a tin man on one side of her, and her big brother on the other, an embarrassed look on his face. Mrs. Kirby looked like a ghost with her pale blue dress with her blue veins showing through her thin white skin. “Look at them,” my sister would hiss at me. “Shhh,” I said, but I didn’t go stand by Jenny.
Mother does not miss Mass, either. She sings with her guitar in the front of the congregation. “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” We don’t tell anyone about Mom’s long naps on the couch, or in the room with the door locked while we jump on the furniture and wait for her to get mad and come out. Sometimes we like it when she’s angry. She can be kind. Out mother bakes 40 loaves of bread every Wednesday, and pizza for the nuns. She sells more cookies than any of the other moms at the bake sale. I sweep the floor and take out the garbage. Bring mother water. Tory washes the pans and wets the cloths. Eileen dusts the furniture and peeks in the keyhole to make sure mother is still sleeping. She has the softest step. Dad comes home from work and makes grilled peanut butter sandwiches and Eileen mixes the milk flakes into the water jug and shakes it.
We don’t tell mother’s secrets. Sometimes we make alot of noise and sometimes we tiptoe around and wait for her to leave the bedroom, lay on the couch with the washcloths, then finally get up for baking, for Mass or just because things are better all of a sudden and it’s fish and chips on a Friday, or Advent candles and holding hands.
I can keep a secret. I can keep house. I can feed the children. I can get them to school. But when I got married, I discovered I was too good at keeping secrets and not good enough at keeping people calm. I thought I was keeping the children safe. The times I left, living in the tent, living in the car, on someone’s couch, on the waitlist for the shelter, I always came back. I told someone once. Pastor and Mrs. They counseled him and I hoped, I stayed. It wasn’t until my husband, my love, pushed me down the stairs when I was pregnant did I know I would leave. I would get away, and we did.
I believe when we tell our stories it gives permission for others to do the same.
The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most transforming force on the planet. -Adrienne Rich
