Praying for Your Mother

Granada Hills, California, 1968.  I'm the tall one.

When I attended Granada Elementary, I often made a game of comparing my mom to the moms of my neighbors and classmates.  She was way better than Maurice's mom, who made us take off our shoes as soon as we came inside, immediately sequestering us in Maurice's immaculate room.

Maurice's mom seemed very tense because he liked to play dolls and dress-up.  To accommodate her peculiarity, I would go into his room and begin playing with the Chrissie Gro-Hair doll I brought.  Maurice would dutifully move his Hot Rods around their track.  His mother would stand watching us for a few minutes, look relieved, and then leave.  We would immediately switch toys until we heard her steps in the hallway.  That Maurice really knew his up-do's.

I found the switcheroo at Maurice's house unnecessary.  I asked my mom why his mom would act like that.  "She's afraid Maurice will grow up funny," my mom said, "but she should just relax.  It's a done deal."

I appreciated that my mom left me and my friends alone to play, intervening only when there appeared to be bloodshed.  I remember once when I was nine, my best friend Kelly and I were in the middle of a game of "Stripper."  In this game, we would turn up the Rolling Stone's "Miss You" on the radio, pretend the bed was a runway, and barrelhouse down it taking off our clothes.  When my mother came in to announce dinner, Kelly was naked and gyrating while I whooped and applauded.  My mother didn't miss a beat.  She smiled calmly, said, "Excuse me," and softly closed the door behind her.

Turning pale, Kelly asked, "Are we going to get in trouble?"

I said, "I don't think so."  Kelly looked doubtful.

My mother never mentioned the incident, nor did she tell Kelly's hotheaded mother Marlene, who liked to scream, "I'm going to wring your necks!" at Kelly and her little sister while sitting on the couch eating Hostess products.

Of course my mom was way better than Marlene.  Once I wrote of my dislike of Marlene in my locking journal.  My little sister Mary broke into the journal with a pair of scissors and read it aloud to her friend Joanie, who, unfortunately, was Kelly's little sister.  Joanie told Marlene all about me calling her mean and fat, and Marlene complained to my mom.

My mom grounded Mary for reading my journal.  The next day, hungering for further revenge, I executed Mary's favorite stuffed dog by hanging it with a frayed jumprope.  She saw Scruffy swinging from an orange tree when she came home from school.  Mom grounded me for that, which seemed reasonable to me.  It was worth it.

Even though she had trouble driving me anywhere without rear-ending someone, gave me a baloney on white bread and a box of raisins for lunch every school day for six years, and had to resign as my Brownie troop leader after an ugly incident involving stinging papier mache paste, the more I compared my mom to other moms, the better she fared.

She was way better than Ricky and Larry Joe's mom, who spanked them every time they got in trouble at school, creating a vicious circle in which the boys' behinds were too sore to sit properly in class, and therefore got into more trouble.  I recall how my mom handled Mrs. O'Brien, my Catholic kindergarten teacher at Granada.

Mrs. O'Brien decided to make her kindergartners into repentant Catholics or die trying.  We were born in sin, and this concerned her.  The separation of church and state, as it relates to public education, did not.  She wore a navy blue wool suit, even when it was a hundred degrees outside and Santa Ana winds howled through the San Fernando Valley.  Her black and pewter hair was forced into a permanent wave that made Shirley Temple's ringlets look sloppy. (I was a big fan of Shirley's at that time.)

Usually some poor twisted bronze or beaded animal lay impaled on a pin at her breast.  On one especially disturbing day, she stepped over me when I was lying on my nap mat, and I saw her underwear.  It was enormous.  Billowing.  Bleached a blinding white.

Mrs. O'Brien liked to tell us little stories at the end of each day.  One Monday afternoon she told us about a bunch of young children who had been killed in a plane crash the day before.  It was in the news, she said.  Our homework was to go home and pray for them.  We all nodded at her, went home, and forgot all about it.

Tuesday morning, Mrs. O'Brien parted her red lacquered lips to command, "Please raise your hand if you remembered to pray for all the little children who were killed in the plane crash."

All of us raised our hands.  She narrowed her eyes and smiled, causing the beige powder to crack slightly on her cheeks.

"You know," she said quietly, "little children who lie go straight to Hell."

I don't know how I made it through the rest of the day.  I stayed under my desk during recess, listening to the thundering footsteps of the sixth-graders around the kindergarten bungalow, thinking,  "I will never be that big."

That afternoon when I got home, I went straight to the bedroom I shared with Mary to prepare to go to Hell. I figured the Devil would be popping through the floor at any moment, ready to take me on an express ride.  I picked pom-poms off the edges of my floral bedspread while I waited.

My mother, who was Catholic herself and took me to church every Sunday, came in with a plate of burned cookies and saw me weeping silently in the center of the bed.  When I explained what was wrong, she threw the plate on the floor, breaking it.  The cookies rolled under the dresser.

"God damn it!" she screamed,  "this shit is why I didn't send you girls to Catholic school!"  She hugged me.  "Mrs. O'Brien doesn't know what she's talking about, honey.  Come with me."

Without putting on her bra or her shoes, and without taking the jumbo pink rollers out of her hair, she carried me out to the car.  We made it to school without hitting anyone, even though she was breathing funny.  She rolled down the window, smiled tightly, and said, "Wait here." She wasn't gone long.

The next day, Principal Suttle met me at the front gate and escorted me to the other kindergarten bungalow to meet my new teacher, Mrs. Romanek.  She wore a blonde platinum wig, favored Day-Glo polyester pants-suits, and often didn't seem to realize we children were in the room.

For years afterward, every time Mrs. O'Brien would see me on the playground, she would sidle up to me and whisper in my ear, "I'm praying for your mother."

Mom, I'm praying for you today too.  Thanks for everything.