When it comes to fists.

I don’t think she remembers although, I hope I get to ask her, someday...

These days, our time on the telephone is brief. Shortened by her inability to stay focused. The medication stronger than her will. Sometimes she comes into focus, can have an even exchange of words with me. Sometimes I feel strong enough to ask her. Like the last time we spoke. She says, “They’ve got me on a good combination now. I take shots once every two weeks. My head still gets away from me. It was never like that when I was with your mom. Maybe it didn’t happen because I was so happy with your mom.”

I don’t know what to say to her. Maybe her memory is delusional, focused on what was good and ignorant of just how chaotic it was. I wonder if she remembers taunting us.
I never raised my hands to her and she never got her hands on me. My nimble feet could run for blocks to whose ever home would let me in. There are a hundred and one beds, homes, and parks where I could sleep alone, or with my biological mother by my side.

She called her a “fat cunt” one evening. One of her favorite terms for my mother, who never struggled with her weight. I was sixteen on that fall evening. We were preparing to head to a dinner with my French class at the local high-society dining establishment. In the kitchen with my back to their argument, I heard those words emerge and I turned on my heels; unknowingly, my fists clenched at my sides. Laurie looked at me with eyes wide and filled with an unleashed anger that kept her lids peeled back. Beyond her my mother watched, tears in her eyes and a readiness I recognized. “Come on, try me Chelsia Ann. You wanna fight me, bring it on.” She looked me down to my fists and back up to my eyes. All stood still in that moment. I looked down to my fist and realized that this time, I was ready. Or at least I thought I was. All I could say was, “Don’t you ever call my mother that, again.”

Laurie leapt towards me and I quickly ran around her as my mother threw herself against Laurie, and then up against the counter. Their struggle moved dishes and pans off the counter and onto the floor as I ran through the house to the unfinished bathroom. The door, I knew could not hold her back. Put up as a temporary fix, its particle board strength could not hold her. I put my back against the door, braced my foot against the toilet, pushed my other hand against the towel rack, and held on.

She made it to the bathroom door and through her weight against it like a rabid dog, attempting to break through. Her familiar threats of “breaking legs” or arms or ripping my skull out of my head came out of her mouth faster than her beating tempo against the door. Wrapped around her rage, I knew my mothers arms were there keeping her back until all I could hear from behind the door was her heavy breaths and her whisper in the crack of the door telling me, “You better not fall asleep tonight Chelsia fucking Rice, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Sometime between that time behind the door and the parking lot of the French restaurant, my mother and I reapplied our mascara, gave each other the love and hugs that we needed to put on our face for society, once again, and continued onto our plans to celebrate our union of mother and daughter under the guise of a french dinner. In the presence of my peers and instructors, we checked our faces, I ate escargot for the first time, and marveled at the flames on my banana flambé. I knew what happened that evening wasn’t over, we still had to return to our home and the conflict that would remain unsolved.