KILL YOUR INNER CHILD by Samuel Bernstein

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Cat Scratch Fever

The confusion over my mother's true identity during the Santeria ceremony finally flips a switch in my head. Baby pink light bulb please. I now understand that she is Latina. Mexican. Not white. Not Jewish. And more than most likely an illegal alien. I would enjoy this more if she weren't dying.

Knowing Mom is a Latina would not have bothered me as a child. It just never occurred to me. The ethnicity of your saint and savior isn't something you really think about. The dopiest part of it is that the name given as her maiden name on my birth certificate, which may or may not be her true maiden name, is decidedly Latino, not the Anglo one at all. I just never noticed.

Out of pride I then start giving out the Latino one as her maiden name to financial institutions. The problem now is that I don't know which name I've given to which company. It's fairly embarrassing when they ask and I give them the wrong name. It takes a while after that to convince them that I am who I say I am. I don't take it personally though. Their suspicion is understandable, and with my history of pretending on the phone to be my mother, I'm in no position to make a fuss.

The story is that my father had fake documents created for my mother when they married - a driver’s license, birth certificate, social security card - the works. Mom thinks she remembers having a sister. Her father dies young. Her mother is abusive. That is the extent of what I learn about that side of my family.

There has been a marriage before my father, to a man even more violent and abusive. My dad Adam is apparently a breath of fresh air, at least for a while. I think they end up divorcing because Mom always fights back. She tells me about gaining the upper hand with him occasionally, how during one particularly violent fight, for instance, he isn't wearing a shirt, and her Siamese cat freaks out and flies across the room, sinking its claws deep into Adam's back, and hanging on. My father can't get the snarling, spitting cat off until he starts beating his back against the wall. The cat finally falls off and hides under the bed. Adam is bleeding all over the shag carpet and they have to go to the emergency room. Mom is laughing. She says even Adam can't keep from laughing.

Until I am in my 20s I tell people that as a very young child I see him strangle her, that she collapses to the floor unconscious, and I go into asthmatic hysterics, thinking she is dead.

This is a lie.

I never see anything like that happen. I am just an inveterate drama queen, and I put myself into my mother's narrative. She is the one who tells me the story about the cat and Adam's bleeding back. She is the one who tells me he strangled her to the point of passing out. Mom says my father comes one step away from killing her. But that she isn't afraid. She says she never gives him the satisfaction of making her afraid.

She lies about being afraid. I lie about seeing her almost die. Maybe that makes us even.

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