My mother killed me.

Some families have stories about their members, stories you tell around the fire, stories parents tell about their children at drunken parties while everyone laughs. The stories follow you, labels with an adhesive that won’t come off. Sometimes in life if we are lucky we get to peel off the adhesive, sometimes we are not.

My mother proudly tells the story about the time I went to my pediatrician, Doctor Porter, for a vaccine. I was probably six years old. I don’t know if I knew that I was at Dr. Porter’s office for a shot at the time. I remember his office, the way it smelled. I remember my white mary jane’s pitter-pattering their way over the cold linoleum floors. The waiting room was small, the patient rooms were small, everything seemed small. I recall that my mother was with me, but not because I remember her holding me, reading to me, reassuring me, or even smiling at me. It had to be my mother because I don’t believe my father ever took me to the doctor for the annual check-up.

I don’t really remember much about what happened in the office. I remember a kind man coming in, asking questions, examining me. I don’t remember him actually giving me my injection, or if it hurt or not. I assume it hurt because I have been present for every one of my sons’ shots and every one of them has caused some sort of painful reaction. But to hear my mother tell the tale, which she does often, she says of the moment I received my shot, “you know honey, you didn’t even make a sound. And then you even thanked him when it was over.”

That story whispered to me. I grimace when I hear that story now because I can see her sitting there on the examining table, on the plastic sheet, the little dead girl. When I looked deeper into the memory, I saw the man coming closer, getting ready to deliver pain to the little girl. The girl did not, could not, cry or scream, throw a temper tantrum or yell, “no!” or “stop!” The little dead girl took that injection without moving or uttering a word. And when the pain was over, she thanked the man for it. You see, it was more important to be seen as polite, and good, and grateful, the little girl with the dress and the new shoes. Her mother could not see, over her pride in her polite little girl, that she had killed her daughter, removed her voice and her spirit, taken away her ability to be rightfully angry when she was hurt, and replaced it with a doll that when you pulled the string in its back said sweetly: “thank you, Dr. Porter.”

The mother was so happy to see that she had raised a polite and pleasing little girl because this meant that she was a good mother.  She was not able to see and did not want to see, that her daughter had died, and in her place was a girl doll with a pull string in her back. 

She could not see her daughter’s soul was gone, so enthralled was she in this delightful, pleasing, beautiful toy girl.  And the little girl learned it was good to smile, and good to say thank you to men who hurt you, and good to be still when your insides tell you to run. 

I was forty-two years old when I understood what the whispers were trying to say.  They were saying “You’re not good, you’re dead.”

And now in my memory, I see the little girl on the plastic sheet.  My adult self walks into the office where the mother sits, expectantly, and the doctor gets ready to deliver the injection.  I walk in silently and I pick that little girl up and hold her, much like I hold my own children.  I am fiercely protective of her.  I hold her tight.  She can feel my heartbeat, and it is strong and steady.  She puts her little head on my shoulder and I place my hand on her hair, holding her to me.  No one dares say a word as they see on my face that I am a mother, I am a woman, who can and will burn this all to the ground.  They made a mistake, I did not die. The forcing down of me was like a boulder being pushed down into a geyser, and the force of the blockage of the life that was supposed to be exploded outwards. And here she is.  Now, I am the explosion. 

I take the little girl and we walk out of that office.  Every now and again the little girl tries to be dead.  She tries to be pleasing, quiet, acquiescing.  But the difference is, I am here now too.  When she tries to lead us, by being small, I pat her hair and show her how to be the geyser, how to be powerful.  I show her how to say no to the people who want her to be dead.  She looks to me now to be her voice. 

I hold on tight, as we walk out of that office.