Mother/Billie
“It’s a sin to hate your mother”
“When hope had been crushed like that, my mother would get dressed with violent and irritated movements, as if every piece of clothing were an insult to her. I had to get dressed too, and the world was cold and dangerous and ominous because my mother’s dark anger always ended in her slapping my face or pushing me against the stove. She was foreign and strange, and I thought that I had been exchanged at birth and she wasn’t my mother at all. . . .” -Tove Ditlevsen, from her memoir Childhood 
As I write about how dissociative amnesia has manifested in my life, I know I need to write about the details of my life and the people in it, in so far as I remember. Of course, I need to describe my mother, Billie.
Knowing I need to write about Billie, I begin. I struggle to express what I need to express. I give up. I try again. And again. Weeks. Months. I can just barely write about her. I veer back and forth in my judgment of her.
Actually, I can just barely write about anyone in the family. Why? You might guess that it’s because thinking about them is too painful, and that’s certainly true, but that’s not all of it. Another reason is that I was taught that to express anything negative about any family member—to expose them—is wrong.
Maybe almost everyone learns this. We learn it from a very early age, so mostly we have no idea that it isn’t true. We don’t know that actually it isn’t wrong to speak badly of your family. It’s actually fine. It’s only that it’s prohibited. The prohibition is how the older, more powerful people protect themselves.
So it may be fear, specifically, that is blocking me. In fact, as I try to write, I notice that my hand often ends up over my mouth, an unintentional gesture which occurs when I’m writing or talking about someone in my family. Or sometimes I sneeze.
Some writers manage in spite of the prohibition. How important is it to work through these things? Just how much fear is there? Partly it depends on how severely you were hurt when you “talked back” to your parents, told on your siblings, criticized your grandmother, hated or accused anyone.
Were you told it was a sin—that God hates haters?
Were you slapped, beaten?
Were you threatened with exile from the family?
Did they tell you your words hurt them?
Did they tell you your words were killing them?
Did they threaten to kill you?
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When I was five or so, Billie left me in the city park for an Easter egg hunt. I remember looking for eggs and then, after everyone left, waiting alone for Billie. I remember not being sure if I was waiting in the right place, and when she found me, I sobbed. This is one of the few more-than-a-snapshot memories I have before I was eleven. It may be the only one I ever discussed with Billie. Why did I always remember it when it was such a miserable incident? There are hints from this journal entry from when I was thirty five:
Dec, 1995
I was sitting and reading and thinking that I should call Cindy or Susan like I've been telling myself, but I felt anxious and it seemed intolerable and I was trying to figure out how to get the courage. Then Mother called. She calls very rarely these days. I started asking her questions about the past and when she went off into her religious stuff I would pull her back. She was cheerful and seemed to enjoy talking about things, though she would often get defensive and say how I got loads of affection and she always put her children first and saw that we got what we needed. It's true that we had nice clothes and furniture and so forth, but I wanted to know what she got me for Christmas. She couldn't remember anything but clothes, but insisted that she must have gotten me other things.
. . . She said she got lots of gifts as a child and could remember some in detail, like a dress her aunt sent her and some rubber boots with fur. She has a very good memory for clothes.
She said I was only about 4 or 5 when I got lost on that Easter egg hunt. She had told me to wait in a certain place but I evidently got mixed up. She was truly frantic. She said part of the problem was that I was standing behind a tree. I had thought I was older. Why did she leave me on my own if I was only 5? I remember my confusion and shame and misery when I couldn't find the place I was supposed to wait at. And I hadn't found any eggs since I ignored the boiled ones to look for chocolate ones.
You can see a little of Billie from this entry. As I try to figure out why I’m having such a hard time calling my sisters, she answers in vague, defensive generalities. I ask her about my childhood; she tells me about hers.
Perhaps, like me, she could remember only what she could bear. She prefers talking about religion to anything else, probably because religion for her was supportive and uplifting.
Did she get me any gifts besides necessary clothes? The reason I was asking was that it had occurred to me that I didn’t actually know if I had gotten gifts from anyone in my immediate family. There were a few things around to play with, some Lincoln Logs and an Erector set, and I had some dolls, but most were hand-me-downs, allowed me by the disinterest of my siblings as they grew older. Others, a few, were given to me by other relatives.
I theorize that I remember that Easter egg hunt because it was a moment where Billie clearly indicated that she cared about me. Probably she really was “truly frantic.” Possibly signs that she cared about me were rare enough to be worth remembering.
I certainly don’t remember any physical affection. I don’t think she knew how to do that. Cindy told me our mother didn’t know how to hold a baby, and Cindy couldn’t remember her ever comforting a child.
In a photograph taken at a family reunion when I was five, she seems to be purposively separating herself from her children. She stands as if she were the only one in the picture, posing for her own portrait.
This all fits with everything I remember about her. She was certainly traumatized herself and could not be a good parent.
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I have a few positive memories. At least once, we drove around during a thunderstorm. I believe she loved them as I do today. Maybe I was scared of the thunder and lightning and she wanted me to like storms? Like pushing me into the swimming pool once when I was afraid—she knew I could swim and I did. (I don’t remember that—she told me. She also told me she taught me to read.)
I remember her singing along to the song: “When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbing Along.”
Once, in my teens, we played an enjoyable game of ping pong on a table we found at a building on campus.
That’s about it for joyful memories.
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I don’t have continuous memories of her at her worst—I don’t have memories of her beating me—but I do remember more of her than of anyone else. That may be because I lived with her until I was eighteen. My memory improved as I got older.
She had a phobia of germs. This meant we had to often clean ourselves and our clothes after visiting friends or relatives, or we might have to do a thorough cleaning of the house when there was some disturbance like finding mice or a plumbing issue.
She was probably depressed at times. She would sleep late and Cindy often had to wake her to take us to school. I remember her lying on her bed, crying, and I lay down beside her. She was often late picking us up, sometimes very late. She was vain about her appearance, often standing in front of her dresser mirror, fussing with her hair, trying on different outfits, worrying about her weight. She spent more than she should have on her clothes—which she sometimes made me return to the store. Before the divorce, she drove me around to bars/taverns, making me run in and look for my dad. She took me shopping with her for clothes (hers, mostly) and furnishings, leaving me to wander around the stores trying to relieve my boredom in some way. When I was older and had money from jobs and presents, she borrowed it from me—at least once she stole it from me. She was often trying to cover a bad check. After the divorce when I was eleven, she tried to work but couldn’t keep a job. We got by on child support payments, Cindy’s contributions, and rental income.
When I tried to get out of returning her clothes to stores or lending her money, she said I was selfish. When I protested any of her demands she said I was disobedient. When I was fifteen, I came home from school upset about something, and she insisted I go talk to the teacher which for some reason made me cry. She scolded me for my “self-pity” and sent me to my room. I believe the accusation of self-pity was her usual way of dealing with my distress.
She told me to be pure, not worldly, that God loves the innocent and pure. Into my teens she called me her “little lamb.” (Today that feels more than irritating; it feels ominous. The lamb is the sacrificial lamb.)
Once, in my early teens, she got upset with me for looking sad and insisted I tell her what was wrong. I didn’t know what to say and her insistence made me cry.
She was, in fact, an awful mother. Not unremittingly awful but in no way a “good enough” mother. She used shame and guilt to control me, to manipulate me into meeting her needs. I conclude this from what I (continuously) remember without going any deeper.
I don’t whether to count any of this as trauma. Some is arguably normal, like her concern about her appearance, so you might wonder why I even mention it. Her phobia surely wasn’t normal, but there are far worse things to deal with than that. At least she was there, wasn’t addicted or severely depressed or ill, and we were never homeless. Our house was attractively furnished. I always had decent clothes to wear and books from the library.
I veer back and forth in my judgment of her. At this level, this superficial level, she doesn’t seem too bad. But this outline only includes what I always remembered which means it doesn’t include the worst.
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There are signs of violence from a few incidents that I just barely recall.
I remember a chest of drawers where she kept a belt and feeling fear around it. Perhaps she threatened to use it on me. Perhaps she did use it on me.
Billie hit Susan, grabbing her hair and hitting her with a brush or hanger. Once? Many times? I don’t remember how many times I observed this, only that I did. (Susan told me that Billie had hit her ‘every day’ since Susan was five.)
Once she wanted me to wear a red woolen dress without lining and slapped me when I refused. My only memory of being hit.
I started a fire accidentally by putting a cloth over the light bulb of a lamp—Billie took it down the stairs and outside. I include this because when I have thought about it, I have repeatedly sneezed—a sign that I was hurt.
The most detailed memory: Billie upset with Susan’s album, the soundtrack from the movie, Easy Rider. When Billie heard “God Damn The Pusher Man” I guess she thought it was blasphemous. She grabbed the album and tried to break the vinyl, first inside and then she took it outside and tried to break it against the limestone wall of the house.
I write this to tell you about Billie, yes, but maybe I need to repeat that this is what I always remembered about her, and doesn’t include what I dissociated. The memories of fear (the drawer that the belt was kept in) and the several ones of violence might be seen as tiny cracks in the box of repressed memories.
I know now that she beat me. I know now that she didn’t protect me from worse abuse from others. Though, perhaps, in divorcing my paternal parent, she tried.
Sometimes I think of her as a crocodile. I was raised by a crocodile. All those teeth. All those wounds.
Of course, she wasn’t a crocodile. She was human. She cared. She suffered. I believe she loved me when I was very young. I believe she couldn’t love anyone who was suffering, angry or needy because it brought up her own suffering which she had never learned to bear. But the worst thing, maybe, was that she needed me to love her. I was a cold and hateful person if I didn’t.
I veer back and forth in my judgment of her. But whatever she was in herself, Billie flung into me (and my siblings) a thousand embers of pain, fear, and self-loathing. At times, those embers still burn.
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See my Resources page for links to more information about dissociative amnesia.