Car rides to my grandmother’s house were so … argh… awful. They were worse than being at my grandmother’s house. The entire thirty minute ride there we heard her recall stories of what she’d done to us and what our response was to it. She relived her abuses while driving us to the grandmother’s house.
The mother often mocked the sister’s crying by opening her mouth really wide and whaling. She’d scoot around in her seat and mock her then laugh hysterically. She told her that her crying was an Oscar performance. Sometimes when my sister was really in pain the mother would stand back and clap her hands to applaud her “performance.” She was humiliated for feeling pain. Later I would tear her a new one (with words) for putting herself in a position to be humiliated. I was so angry that the mother hurt her but I took it out not on the mother but on her. I couldn’t see why she’d jump up and down and let it be known she was in pain because that’s exactly what the mother wanted. She wanted her to do that so she could make fun of her, so she could get off on it. Why give her that satisfaction, I thought. So I’d yell at my sister and tell her to stop doing that stupid crying.
I tried to teach her how to leave, how to focus on something else while the mother did her thing. I asked her if she’d been practicing what the mother taught us on how to manage pain but she hadn’t been. We were to see in our minds eye her raping us or torturing us. We were to pay attention to our breathing and keep control of ourselves. This would help us manage whatever was being done. The mother taught us how to do this but my sister wasn’t practicing on her own time. Only in recent years was I able to see just how sick that is.
On those long car rides when my mother went over what she’d done or what she was going to do I knew it was only a matter of time before my sister panicked. When she did it would be fertilizer for home grown terror. At the time it seemed so simple. Filter out what doesn’t apply to the current situation and pay close attention to what does. Who cares what she’s saying now. She’s not going to pull over and do anything so why panic? It seemed so simple to me. Maybe my sister realized it was all foreplay, a build up for when we got home. I always thought in the moment and didn’t really see that far ahead. All I knew was right then and there the only thing we had to fear was the sound of her voice. As long as I filtered it I was fine. As long as it was mixed with passing cars we were both fine.
J of A
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