Waiting on a Friend

     They told me stories about how I came into this world and it sounded like a horror movie.  They dragged me in with forceps that left marks on my face so I wasn’t a very cute baby at first.  They drugged and tortured my mother as well.  They did the same thing to me years later when I gave birth to my own child but hers was much worse.  My mother was traumatized after and because she was unnerved, young and ignorant during her pregnancy they gave her some toxic mixture called Nervine. I still can’t figure out what that stuff was but she only took it a few times because she said that she thought that it may cause me harm.  

    

     They said all I did was scream, and scream, and scream when I made it out.  The only way they could stop the screaming was to drive me around in the car.  Mom, said the neighbor lady came one day and that when she took me in her arms I stopped crying.  Mom said that incident convinced her that she was a terrible mother and had somehow done something unforgivable.  By the time I could I rocked myself.  They said I broke two cribs doing it and so they had to give me a regular bed early but I still did it.  It took years before I could even sleep without at least kicking my foot in a broken rhythm.  It’s obvious that I was fucked up from the jump.  Later, when I was at my worst I would say, ‘I didn't even want to be here.’ 

     

     I remember feeling alone and tormented early.  I wanted a baby doll that was real.  No plastic baby doll would do.  Then the magic day came and they said guess what, ‘You are getting a real baby to play with.’  I think I was three.  I was so excited because this was the greatest news ever.  I would have shot santa right between his eyes before I would trade that real baby that I was promised.  And so it went.  The baby’s going to be here.  Yay, baby!  

     

     Then something went horribly wrong.  My mother, who has always had problems with her stomach and suffered her whole life got a bleeding ulcer and was puking blood.  She went to the doctor and I shit you not, he sent her home.  Almost nine months, and she’s shitting and puking blood so his advice was to tell her you’ll be okay just go on home.  

     

     A relative found her on the floor of the bathroom and got someone to help her get Mom to the hospital.  They really did try to kill my mother but she was strong and she refused to leave me.  The barbaric birth practices of old are not shocking and it seems that these days they like to kill you at the hospital as a regular thing for everyone.  She wasn’t so special after all in light of recent events so I’d say that’s about par for the course.  So there I was.  Waiting for that real baby to come so I didn’t have to be so lonely.  

     

     It’s one of those things where I know I remember it but I don’t really remember it.  I just know what it did to me.  The whole family was screwed to the wall over it.  They decided to cart all the baby stuff out while she was still in that death camp hospital so she wouldn’t have to look at it when she got back home.  Understandably, my dad had come off the feed.  He wanted to take the shotgun to that doctor and everyone was in a pretty bad mood I’m sure.  They actually had the nerve to ask my dad if he wanted them to save the baby boy, who they informed him would be mentally handicapped because of oxygen deprivation, or if they should just go on and try to save my mother.  

     

     She’s a fighter so she cheated death.  I’m sure she was in bad shape when she got home.  I don’t even like to think about what state my little mind was in at that point. I was so grief stricken over not getting that baby but it wasn’t just that.  Everyone was so traumatized that I don’t think they had the energy to spend much time talking to me about it.  It probably wouldn’t have mattered.  All I knew was I spent all those months which may as well been years for a child’s mind waiting for a friend who never showed up.  As it turned out I was able to get some different friends but I think the whole thing may have driven me nuts, which wasn’t a very long drive.  

    

     Later, I started in with temper fits.  I’d scream until my throat was raw.  I roll around on the floor stretching my nightgown out with my feet.  To my parents credit, they didn’t beat me.  They just sat there watching TV and ignoring it to the best of their ability.  I got over it but I wonder sometimes when I look back how that incident colored my personality.  When I was fucking myself up with hell bent self destruction I know in large part it was self pity and I worked my ass off to get out of that soul debasing state. These days I’m so dog tired that I just feel like I want to get the hell out of here.  I made a promise though when my own son showed up.  That was a pretty messed up horror show ordeal too but I promised no matter how bad it got I would never leave him here alone. The same promise that my mother made to me in that death camp hospital in 1969.  So here we are all these later and we have our problems as mothers and daughters often will being that it is a very intense relationship with often complicated dynamics. Lately, it seems the two of us are hell bent on working the bugs out of ours and not to soon either as it feels more and more every passing day that we may be playing beat the clock.  

     For now, I’m still Tara, still here and still a volunteer.