My Mother's Mosaic

I’ve written about her before. My mother, that is. But those were different. Those were my stories, not hers. I want to paint her picture for you, though her life is less of a painting and more of a mosaic. Small shards of experiences, some with edges so sharp they are dangerous and some so thick they seem nearly impossible to cut and shape. All different shapes, sizes, and colors and they all join together to create a beautiful portrait of my mother with her long, sandy-blonde hair, including the roots that are deep brown and even the sprouts of gray here and there. Her hazel green eyes and her thin eyebrows. The pink peaks of her upper lip. Even the thin wrinkles beside her eyes are visible within the detail of the glass pieces.

I can show you some of these pieces. Maybe if I look close enough, I can watch the scenes unfold. Maybe, if I listen hard enough, I can hear her voice, perfectly preserved in the glass. I can try. 

I find a little white shard of glass from her eye. It’s only about half an inch wide, but it’s big enough for me to look closely at it. And the closer I look, the more I see.

A room bustling with blue scrubs and white coats. Numbers and codes are being shouted out, side conversations, the beeping of machines, and then the groaning and grunting of a woman. A woman who is in the middle of all the chaos. She lays propped up on the medical table in stirrups. Sweat collects on her forehead as a doctor instructs her to push. The woman scrunches her face and lets out a noise that doesn’t sound human and–

Woah. I did not want to see that. I put the glass back in its place. 

Don’t get me wrong, the miracle of childbirth is, well, a miracle. But it is also terrifying and a little bit traumatizing to witness. I didn’t recognize the woman giving birth at first because of her pained, and slightly horrifying, condition. She looked a lot younger than I remember, but I realize now that it was my grandmother. It must have been when she gave birth to my mother. I would like to get that image out of my mind.

Though thinking about it, the amount of time between the birth of my mother and two of her brothers is so small. It makes me wonder if there was a reason for this. The first three children my grandmother gave birth to were all born a year apart. One after another as if there were a sense of urgency there. It just makes me think.

I choose a piece from her hand. It’s a thin, pale rectangle no longer than my fingernail. Hopefully, this one isn’t so graphic. I hold it up to my eye and peer through it. I see something. It starts to become clearer. Then like a movie scene, I am watching a memory of something that happened years before I was born.

A family is gathered around a Christmas tree. The kids are opening gifts, excitedly. Eager to see if they will receive what they wished for. The thick scent of cigarette smoke clings to the walls and carpet. I recognize the room. I know it as my great-grandmother’s bedroom, but here it is being used as a living room. 

A little girl, the age of five, sits in her pajamas next to her brothers. The lights on the tree shine on the golden strands of her dirty blonde hair. 

My mother.

There is one thing she really wants this Christmas: a Kermit the Frog puppet. She has been wishing hard for that toy for months. And today she is holding out hope that inside one of those colorfully wrapped boxes, is a new little green friend for her to play with.

She is handed a gift and so is her little brother beside her. He is just a baby, only two years old. He sits on the ground in a diaper, rolls of baby fat on his little arms and legs. It’s my Uncle Tim.

The tag on my mother’s gift reads, “To Stacy, From Uncle Donald and Aunt Linda.” My mom and uncle start in on the unwrapping. She is older and much faster. She quickly tears the paper off of the box to see colorful container tops and the words “Play-Doh.” Disappointed, she looks to her little brother who is still unwrapping his gift. 

Little baby fistfuls of crumpled wrapping paper sit on the floor around him as he rips the present open piece by piece. Then he pulls a big piece off and a little green hand pokes out. My mother’s face fills with shock and horror as her brother peels the paper away to reveal Kermit, complete with his green, pointed collar. The horror turns to rage as Timmy holds the fleece frog close to him in excitement. Heat radiates off of her face as her anger starts to boil over.

“What!?” she shouts. “That’s what I wanted! That should be mine! Why does he get it?”

Her parents’ brows furrow and her dad opens his mouth to say something.

I pull the glass away from my eye before he can scold her. The image disappears. It is interesting to see this memory of hers and to feel her rising anger as if it were my own. When she talks about this memory now, she laughs. I think she looks back on it with humor, but maybe a little embarrassment too. I know I have some very similar memories that elicit that same response. It’s funny how memories can change like that with time and maturity. I put the piece of glass back in its place in her hand. 

I look again across the picture of my mother. There are so many pieces to pick from. I choose another one, this time from her forehead. It's about the same color as the last, but this one is rectangular and roughly the size of my thumb. I place my fingertips on the edges of the glass and start to look through it—ah. I quickly let go and suck in air through my teeth. 

It cut me. Blood starts to pool at the top of my index finger. I put it to my mouth to stop the bleeding and venture into the bathroom for a band-aid. I take my time rinsing my finger and wrapping it before returning to the mosaic.

I realize that I had dropped the piece of glass and for a second, I panic at the thought of damaging a piece of my mother. But upon careful examination, the shard remains intact. I didn’t realize how sharp it was before, but the edges are a lot thinner than most of the other pieces. They appear to be sharpened, similar to the blade of a knife.

I hold the glass up to my eye again, this time with plenty of caution.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” a girl’s voice rings out. 

I see the young face of my mother, five years older than before. Her expression is laced with both fear and frustration as her father’s hand is clamped tightly around her arm. She tries to squirm away, but his grip is too strong. He pulls her over his lap at the dining table and yanks the seat of her pants down.

She holds her head up high and looks around the table at her mother and grandmother, her eyes pleading for them to do something. But they simply look the other way. Hopeless and helpless, she gives in to gravity and faces the floor. As her father repeatedly brings his hand down on her exposed backside, she stares down at the brown carpet, tears streaming down her face. 

When he’s finished she quickly pulls up her pants and runs upstairs. She runs into her parents’ room and crawls under the bed. It’s a tight squeeze. She has to crawl through the crack between the bed and the floor and inch forward on the scratchy carpet until she is underneath. In this confined space she is so close to the carpet that she can smell the dirt and dust. She sniffles and wipes her tears away.

I watch her for a while, wondering what she is waiting for. But somehow I know. She’s waiting for her mom to come looking for her. And I also know that she’s not coming. But I don’t want to find out how long it takes for her to realize it.

I carefully put the sharp shard back on her forehead. A part of me wishes that I did break that piece before I looked closer at it. I had a pit in my stomach the entire time I was watching. And I know that this memory is just scratching the surface of what he did to her. But I try to understand that I can’t change the past. And while she didn’t deserve this continued abuse from her father, it is a part of who she is today.

I move slightly to the left and pick out a small piece from beside her eye. It’s thick and square. I focus and look closer. Looking through the glass I can see my mother. 

She’s fifteen. She’s thin and her eyebrows are thicker. She’s in a heated argument with her brother, Carl who is only a year younger than her. They're standing in the driveway, getting in each other’s faces when his fist connects with my mom’s face.

Time slows for a moment and there is a faint ringing sound. My mom tries to swing back, but Carl grabs a handful of her hair and uses it to throw her to the ground. Her body slams onto the pavement and the air is gone from her lungs. She tries to find her breath as she crawls and pushes herself up from the driveway, head throbbing and hands stinging.

I lower the glass before I can see what happens next. That is not normal. Sure, my brother and I had our rivalries growing up, but even when things got a little violent, it was never like that. I don’t want to see my mom like that. 

But maybe that’s the point. Did she have the choice to avoid this violence when it was happening to her? Not exactly. The violence always tended to find her somehow. And she always fought back the best she could, but that’s all she could do. And sometimes she won, sometimes she lost. Either way, she’s still alive. That has to mean something. Right?

Maybe I need to start picking from a different part of the mosaic. I move to her stomach and pick a sapphire blue piece, the color of the shirt she’s wearing. It is roughly three inches in size, wavy, and a little jagged. I hold it up to my eye and look through the opaque glass.

Twelve West Brule Street, Lewiston Maine. Five hundred and twelve square feet. A small house with one bedroom and one bathroom. My mother and father step through the door and into the living room of their tiny home together. It smells of clean laundry. My dad places a baby car seat on the carpet. There is a red-faced newborn inside. It’s me.

My parents look young. They are. My mom is nineteen and my dad is seventeen. My mom is thin, even after just giving birth, and my dad juxtaposes her with his round form. There isn’t a wrinkle or gray hair to be seen. My face is all scrunched up as I wail. I squirm under a thick blanket and the little hat on my head, retaining my baby body heat. 

My mom slowly rocks the car seat back and forth. Her mind is obviously preoccupied. She studies my little face and watching her from afar, I can sense her nervousness. She didn’t plan for this to happen. It just happened. I can see the exhaustion on her face, but I know she’s glad to be out of the hospital. Still, I can tell she is thinking about what her future will look like now that I am part of the picture.

I put the thin blue glass back in place on her stomach. Its rough, jagged shape reminds me of the stretch marks that I left on her stomach when I was growing inside of her. I often wonder how different her life would be if she had chosen to have an abortion. Would it have been better? Worse? Much different at all? What’s done is done. I can’t change the past. But I still wonder how many opportunities and normal young adult experiences she missed because of me. I feel as though I’ve left more marks on her life than stretch marks.

I move back down to her hand again, this time choosing from the crescent sliver of her off-white fingernail. 

“Who was here?” He says it with a straight face while he sits at the computer in the corner of the living room. The stubble on his head is a little duller than that of his fiery red beard. It is a few years since my birth. My mother is in her early twenties now.

“What do you mean?” she asks her husband.

“Don’t play dumb. The blankets on the bed are all over the place.”

“So?”

“You expect me to believe that you did that yourself? You obviously had a guy here.”

My mother laughs in disbelief.“What? No one was here!”

She walks over to him. He is scrolling through porn on the computer with one hand on his… well, let’s just say I am avoiding looking in that area.

“Don’t lie to me.” 

“I’m not lying!”

“Bullshit.”

My mom puts her hand over his where it covers the mouse. He suddenly flings her hand away, but when he does, he catches himself on her sharp fingernail. My mom backs away as he inspects the small slice on his fingertip. Droplets of blood start to fall down his finger. His brow furrows and then he looks at my mom. But instead of lashing out at her, he reaches into his pocket and fishes out his cell phone.

She stands in confusion as he dials a number and puts the phone to his ear.

“Help!” he cries into the phone. “My wife is on top of me! She’s trying to hurt me!”

“Wha-” my mom sputters.

He recites their address and tells them to hurry before hanging up.

“Did you just call 911?” 

“You assaulted me.”

“YOU flung MY hand away. You did that to yourself!”

He closes out the porn on the computer and adjusts his… pants. My mom sits on the black leather couch and they both wait in silence for the police to arrive. 

A few minutes pass and then the faint sound of sirens can be heard growing louder and louder. Then they are replaced with the crunching of the driveway.

Mike gets out of the computer chair and runs out the front door. My mom stays sitting on the couch, but she can hear him tell the police that she scratched him. An officer walks inside and approaches her.

“He’s lying,” she says.

The officer reaches behind his back and pulls out a pair of silver handcuffs.

She did get arrested. But Mike threw away his statement and dropped the charges because he made it all up. 

My mother has always had bad luck. She believes that she is under some kind of curse. There is always something wrong with the food she orders. It's the wrong order, or there's a hair in it. If she is excited about something, she can expect it to fall apart before it can come to fruition. Apparently, the same rules apply when it comes to the men in her life. 

I put the nail back on her finger and look back to her face. I choose a pink triangle piece of her lip. 

A few years later, she sits at a tall table near the bar of a restaurant. It’s loud and crowded. The small napkins on the table read “TGI Fridays” in red and black. It smells overwhelmingly like beer.

My mother is wearing a blue V-neck T-shirt and jeans. Her hair is her natural golden brown rather than the dyed blonde that she will stick with later on.  She has a polite smile on her face as the man sitting across from her makes conversation. His hair is short and black and he wears a polo and cargo shorts.

He is her new boss, Stephen. He recently hired her to work under him in his commercial cleaning business, Clean Touch and had invited her to dinner to talk business. My mother talks about how different it is to work commercially versus residentially like she is used to with the small company that she, herself, had started. 

She thought he seemed charming and kind and she felt happy to be meeting with him.

It’s interesting to see him in this way. I don’t have many positive memories even though he was always kind to me. They have all been tainted.

Knowing what I do now, the fact that he would pretend he needed to go to work for something, just to see my mother, feels less romantic and more stalkerish. And there was my mother, smiling politely; none the wiser.

Putting her lip back in place, I go for a small piece of her ear. It is a unique and organic shape with dull corners. 

My mother stands in the spacious kitchen, phone to her ear. She leans against the counter as she listens to the other person speak. Outside the window, the trees and grass sway gently in the warm breeze. My brother, Eric, and I are next door, playing with the neighbors.

“Stephen’s the type of guy to shoot up his family and then shoot himself,” my dad’s voice rings out from the phone’s speaker.

My mother looks over at her and her husband Stephen’s two-month-old son, Jonathan, who is lying peacefully in his car seat.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

My stomach turns. I know that I am getting closer to the events that completely turned our lives upside down; not only my mother’s but mine and my brothers’, as well as multiple others. One that I only experienced bits and pieces of at the time, but was still enough to fill me with dread. I wasn’t there for most of it. But I heard about more of it afterward; collecting more fragments of the story over the years that it took to start truly recovering from it. I know it’s going to be hard to watch. I can already feel my heart rate starting to climb a little higher and the pit in my stomach starting to grow a little heavier. 

I also know that I don’t have to watch. I can choose a happier memory, instead. One full of my mother’s loud, contagious laughter and the kind of warmth that fills you up completely, inside and out. But I feel compelled to witness it. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think I need to see it for myself. Maybe I just want to know how she felt. How she really felt, not just how she told me she felt. Maybe I want to reinforce what I already know, which is the immense strength that my mother has. I know she is strong. But I can sense that I will never truly understand just how strong she is until I experience it for myself.

I know what I have to see and I know just where to find it. I look over the blue pieces of her shirt near the top of her chest. I’m looking for a specific shape. I scan each glass shard near her right shoulder, searching for that familiar cluster of round edges. I finally find it a few inches below her shoulder. It looks like three conjoined ovals, stacked one on top of the other, to make one blob of a shape unrecognizable to anyone other than my mom and me in this instance.

I take a big breath in and remind myself that this is something that I have to do. For myself and for her. I exhale deeply and hold the glass up to my eye.

They’re in the living room, sitting on the black, leather couch and watching a movie together. Eric is at his dad’s house and I am at mine. An eight-month-old Jonathan waddles in small circles in his baby-walker. The room is small, but the ceiling is high, looming over them from above the second floor. Large windows stretch up the walls to the left and in front of them. 

Everything seems normal. But I know that it’s not.

On the screen, serial killer, Mr. Brooks, is stabbed in the neck by his daughter in her room. She watches him for a minute and a half as he bleeds out. 

Stephen stares at the TV with a blank expression on his face. My mother currently has a protection order against him. 

Blood is painted on the eggshell walls of the bedroom. When Mr. Brooks stops moving, his daughter takes his glasses from his face and puts them on her own. Then he is woken up by his wife. It was just a dream.

Stephen showed up three days ago and wouldn’t leave. My mom has been careful not to set Stephen off in any way. On the surface, she appears calm and collected, but I can feel the ever-present anxiety and fear buzzing in her chest like a battered beehive. 

Mr. Brooks turns onto his side in bed and quickly repeats a whispered prayer.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference…”

“Lunchtime,” my mom says in a neutral tone.

“Living one day at a time and enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as the pathway to peace…” 

She gets up off the couch.

“Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is and not as I would have it, trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will, that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next…” 

She walks out of the room and toward the kitchen.

“Amen.”

Music crashes as the credits flash on the screen. In the same kitchen as the last memory, my mother takes a big green and white collapsible container from the fridge. She brings that and a bottle of ranch dressing over to the counter. Opening the top of the container, she reveals a salad of spring mix, green pepper, cucumber, onion, carrot, and tomato. She tries to quiet her mind as she scoops the salad out and gently plops some down on her plate. 

Something is missing from her lunch. Protein, she decides. She puts the lid back on the salad bowl and returns to the fridge. As she places it back on the shelf, she reaches for the pre-cooked chicken breast that she has left over. Then she lays it out on a cutting board and grabs a knife from the block. The knife passes hesitantly through the cold, firm meat before meeting the cutting board. 

Her meal prep is brought to a sudden halt as Stephen swiftly grabs her wrist. He tightens his grip around her and pulls her hand toward his stomach. The sharp blade of the knife is centimeters away from his skin. My mother tries to pull her hand away, but his grip is too strong.

“Go ahead,” he says in a stone-cold voice. “Kill me. Stab me.”

Thinking fast, my mother opens her hand using as much force as she can and the knife goes skittering across the counter. He releases her hand and she calmly takes her plate and walks over to the dining table. The buzzing feeling has now spread from her chest to her head and limbs. She sits down and remains focused on keeping calm as he hurls one insult after another, trying to rile her up. She ignores him and starts picking at her salad. Tuning him out isn’t easy, but she knows she can’t give in to his tactics. It will only make things worse. But she can only take so much.

“You like sucking your dad’s dick.” 

She can’t hold it together any longer. She pushes her plate across the table and leaves the room. He follows her into the bedroom, hot on her trail. When she turns around, he grabs the front of her sweatshirt and holds on with two balled fists. He pulls her toward him, lifts her off of the ground, and throws her down on the bed. She lands with a grunt, breath caught in her throat. He balls her sweatshirt in his fists again, then repeatedly picks her up and slams her down on the bed. His face is red and his breath is seething through his nostrils. The impact of his knuckles slowly leaves oval imprints on her skin. Two symmetrical bruises blooming beneath her flesh.

With her chest rising and falling hard with every breath, my mother manages to back herself against the headboard. She frantically pulls at the hem of her sweatshirt and lifts it up, trying to rip it off so he will release his grip. Now she has her knees up and he’s on top of her. His hands reach for her throat. Her knees are the only barrier holding him back.

“I’m gonna kill you,” he growls. His eyes are wild like an animal’s. “I’ll bury you in the backyard. Six feet under.”

She continues to hold him off with her knees as he pushes himself forward. She doesn’t let his hands wrap around her neck like they threaten to. She fights against the weight and force that he uses on her with all the strength she can muster.

“You don’t love me. You don’t want to be here,” Stephen snarls.

“No!” my mom cries out. “I do love you! Let’s just calm down.” She is trying to diffuse the situation and get him off of her.

And like a switch has been flipped, he snaps out of it. His eyes soften and he frees her from his captivity. All of the tension in his body is gone. 

“

I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

My mother slowly lowers her knees and tries to calm her breathing. 

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she says gingerly. She is still in survival mode, and surviving right now means catering to his fragile mental state. 

He looks at her with a faraway expression. He doesn’t even seem to remember what he has just done. They sit in silence for a few seconds.

“I need to go change Jonathan. Or do you want to do it?” She is hoping for a distraction, but she's also not too sure she wants him handling her child right now.

“No that’s okay. I have to go bring a load to the dump.”

She holds her breath. An opportunity. Stephen gets up from the bed and walks toward the garage. As soon as she hears the door close behind him she races to her baby in the living room. The engine of Stephen’s truck can be heard coming to life and fading away. My mother gently but urgently picks Jonathan up and rushes to put him in his car seat. There isn’t much time. The dump is right down the road. 

With hands trembling, she buckles my little brother into his seat and carries him quickly to the car. She buckles him in and closes the door. Then opening the driver’s side door, she frantically fumbles with her keys before inserting it and turning the ignition. She doesn’t waste a moment putting the car in gear and driving away.

I saw the bruises on her chest. But they weren’t blue or purple like the ones I’d seen before. The round conjoined ovals were olive and yellow. 

She couldn’t call the cops. She had tried that before. And yet again they didn’t believe her. She already had a protection order against him. If he didn’t follow it and the police didn’t do anything about it, what more could she do? 

It wasn’t the first time that a man in her life had manipulated the justice system against her, and it wouldn’t be the last either. The police were on Stephen’s side. He had convinced them that my mother was unstable and manipulative; that she was the dangerous one. He had them on a leash and they had no idea that when he described my mother this way he was really describing himself.

We ran. For months we stayed hidden; staying inside and moving from apartment to apartment. He found us a couple of times; once at three in the morning, drunk, pounding on the door so hard my mom feared he would knock it down. We were scared. No place felt safe. 

I put the blue piece of knuckle-shaped glass back on my mom’s chest. I understand now; how much strength she had to fight him off and keep us safe. And how much strength she has today, to continue to survive her past. 

I’m not done yet though. There’s more. Her story isn’t over yet. And hopefully, it won’t be for a very long time, but there is still more that I need to show you. I shift slightly from the bruise to her heart. The piece is large and jagged. Multiple corners and razor-sharp edges. I handle it carefully, a lesson learned from the bandage on my finger. I look through the glass.

My mom, Uncle Tim, and I are in the car, parked on the outskirts of the mall where the parking spaces are empty. It’s weird seeing myself like this. The only time I've seen myself in these pieces so far has been as an infant. I’m twelve here and my ash-brown hair is shoulder length on the right side, but shaved close to my head on the other. My button nose and round face look so much more endearing from this perspective than when I looked in the mirror back then.

The three of us are dressed in black. And we’re early.

My mother opens the driver’s side door and steps out. I do the same. She opens the trunk and pulls out a large picture frame. Swimming in a sea of white are photos of Stephen. Photos of him smiling. At the wedding, while holding Jonathan, and while standing with Eric.

“I stayed up all night finishing these,” my mom says. I look to the trunk again and see two identical frames, then back to my mother. The dark circles under her eyes are suddenly more visible than before.

“How did he do it..?” I ask. 

“Well… What do you think the worst way would be?” she responded. She is wondering if she should protect me from the harsh truth o be honest. I’m still young. She doesn’t want me to see the worst parts of the world yet. But it’s too late. It already happened. And there is nothing she can do to fix it. 

“I don’t know… A gun? Because what if you miss?” I say. I have never really thought about it before now.

“He hung himself. In the garage.”

“Oh.”

She puts the frame back in the trunk and closes it. We all get back in the car and she drives us to the funeral home. The CD she burned with his favorite songs plays on the way there.

“These battle scars, don't look like they're fading 

Don't look like they're ever going away

They ain't never gonna change.”

Inside, everyone avoids our eyes. My mom gives an employee the CD and starts setting up the photo collages. She can feel holes boring into her back, but the eyes never meet hers. But they shoot daggers, and they aren’t subtle about it either. She already received the messages from his family. 

You did this to him.

You killed him.

Murderer.

The chairs at the front of the room fill up. There is a forcefield of negative energy radiating from the front rows. We sit at the very back of the room. The black casket smothered in red roses looks so small from back here.

I remember this one pretty well. I took two roses from the casket and they lived upside down in my room for years after. He visited me that night while I lay under the covers in the dark. I watched him dance with my nine-year-old self right in front of me, all dressed up for the wedding. We glowed softly as we turned in slow circles, smiles plastered on our faces. I felt a calm wash over me before I fell asleep. It was a goodbye.

It wasn’t until the next morning that his death finally hit me. Images of his body hanging in the garage of the place that was once my home flashed through my brain on repeat. I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me was relieved that he was gone. We could finally feel safe. But another part of me mourned the best parts of him that I knew. I was only twelve. I didn’t understand.

I understand more now. But not all of it. I know that my mom did her best to protect me when she was going through constant battles. She had so much on her plate, but she still tried her best to shield me from it. It takes a huge amount of strength to support your children when you are going through triple the amount of grief and stress.

I have an intense appreciation for everything my mother has done for me. Even when we don’t see eye to eye, I will always love her for her strength and what she did for us.

Okay. One more.

I take a small piece of her bottom lip and hold it up to my eye.

It’s 2020. The biggest panic of the COVID-19 Pandemic has passed and now everyone is eager to get out of the house. My mother sits on the gray couch, swiping through men on a dating app. Left. Left. Left. Left. Left. Right.

Match.