Archive for the 'Everybody knows about Roo' Category

“Hey, is it raining?”  Ren asks me.  I am talking to Mare, getting Eden into her car seat. It is an unseasonable May day – thick with heat and pollen.

“What?”

I look down and on Eden’s smiling face there is a puddle of foamy white.

“What is that?”  I ask Ren. 

“I don’t know!” she says.

“Don’t lie to me,” I say.

“I don’t know what it is, Momma!!” she says, her voice tinged with hurt.

“Do not lie to me, Karenna.”

“Okay, I spit on her.”

Damn – this is the stuff.  The bad part, the tender spot I ignore until she hits it and then I am crippled and unprepared.

 I don’t want to punish her for telling the truth, I don’t want to be a scary, out-of-control mother.  I want to land on her for spitting – SPITTING – on Baby Sissy and then having the nerve to brag about it.   

I don’t know what to do.

“Why would you do that to Baby Sissy?” I ask.  Ren has a giant shame button.  I only have to tap it.  Instantly, she pales and looks uncomfortable.  “Oh my goodness, Ren.  What a thing to do to a baby.”  I wipe the spit off.  Ren is shifting and looking away from me.

“Momma, I think that I spit on Eden because I was feeling grouchy,” she says,  and I think, Ah, good.  Yelling isn’t the goal, getting her to stop is. 

“I’m glad you’re telling me that, Ren.  It’s much better for you to tell me the truth.  Plus, if you are feeling grouchy, we can talk and I can help you.  But if you hurt Baby Sissy, I don’t want to help you.  I’ll be so angry at you nothing else will matter.”

(But I didn’t actually get angry.  –That’s okay, this worked, I don’t need to get angry.)

“Hey,” I say to her, looking right in her eyes.  “It’s okay to be grouchy.  But NEVER,” and here I do my super-intense-I-mean-it Look.  “EVER spit on Sister, okay?”

She nods, and I back the Loser Cruiser out.

Less than five minutes later Ren spits on her sister again.

“I forgot!” she says.  “MOMMA I FORGOT I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO.”

And I actually think for one split second, Maybe she did forget.  She’s only four.

And then I know that I am kidding myself, and I am allowing my fear of the kind of mother I don’t want to be to get in the way of being the mother Ren needs.

“Karenna I am so angry at you I can’t even speak to you,” I say.  “Because I will yell and say things I will be sorry for, so we’re just not going to talk to each other.”

“But –“

“IF YOU SPEAK AGAIN I WILL YELL SO LOUDLY YOU’LL CRY FOR A WEEK DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

She bursts into tears but doesn’t speak.

Eden chirps inquisitively.

And here I employ my most devious trick as a mother.  Both children believe Eden speaks in complex sentences only I understand.

“No, Eden,” I say.  “Sissy is not a mean person, I don’t think.  But yes, you’re right she was very mean to you just now.”

A wail from Ren and another chirp.

“I know baby,” I soothe, “it does seem like Sister doesn’t like you.  I’m so sorry, I don’t know why she acts like that.  Maybe tomorrow if you’re not too sad you can talk to her about it.”

Ren bawls in earnest and opens her mouth to speak.

“NOT A WORD,” I tell her.   

We get home and I bark at Ren to go to her room.  She drags her feet, so I grab her by the elbow and haul.  She bawls, and I hate this so much, this angry, domineering mother dragging a weeping, begging child up the stairs.  But if I don’t man up and get on this kid I know she will be a disaster and it will be my fault so in I go: mean-faced, so she doesn’t know I’m dying inside.

“How dare you,” I hiss in her face.  “How dare you spit on my baby and lie to me about it.”

She howls and I go downstairs.  Mare is playing with Eden.

 “You were really scary,” she says.

“Good,” I say.  “That was the idea.”  Mare is silent.

“Am I scary right now?” I ask.

“No,” she says.  “You seem normal.”

“That’s important.  You need to know that I am in control of what I am doing.  I am not acting in anger, and I am not fulfilling an urge to hurt my child.”  I am speaking to myself as much as to her.   “Every parent gets mad at her kids,” I say, “that’s normal.  The challenge as a parent is to distinguish between our anger – which is about ourselves – and our job to discipline, which is about doing what is right for the kid.  Being nice wasn’t working.  When it gets to that point it is my job to come down hard and do what has to be done.”

 “If you had talked to me like that,” she says, “I’d be devastated.”

“You’re different people,” I answer. 

“Why is she like this?”

“She’s a certain kind of smart that I think has to be a little scary.  She knows a lot about people and how they work and she knows how to get what she wants.  I think that’s frightening when you’re four.  She wants to know that I’m bigger than she is, and this is how she finds out.” 

 I assemble a plate for Ren’s dinner – cereal and fruit, which is all she eats these days.  While she chews, weeping, I change the sheets on her bed, turn on the air conditioning, set the pillows back the way she likes them.

“I am putting Eden down,” I say, “and you can’t be in here with her because you are not nice to her.  You sit on the kitchen floor and say nothing.”

Ren sits on the floor through the softening of the afternoon light as her sister finishes homework and I start dinner for the rest of us. She cries silently, sometimes not-so-silently, and is ignored.  She is not allowed to get up to greet her father when he comes home,  or to help Sister make her book poster.  Ren sits like Scrooge observing her life as it plays out before her in the sticky-thick evening air, oblivious to her presence.

I make steak salads (“STEAK??” Ren sobs.  “I LOVE steak!”) and Cute Husband invites Mare to visit him in the Lair in the cool basement to eat together.

“Hey, SPONGE BOB IS ON!” Cute Husband shouts up to me.  “It’s a GREAT episode!”  It’s a perfect shot – Ren wails in her damp pile of despair on the kitchen floor.

The kitchen is clean, everything is put away, and I turn finally to the Doodle, with her matted hair, streaked cheeks, sweat-peppered lip.

I put her over my shoulder, she nuzzles, I carry her to the shower.  I scrub her scalp with the strawberry shampoo, clean her ears, her elbows, her neck.  She sits, docile, turning her chin into me like a timid cat asking for a rub.

I turn off the water, grab a towel.

“Karenna, do you know what trust is?”  I ask.

“Yes,” she says.  “When you trust someone, you trust them.  And then when you don’t, you don’t.”

“Can you tell me someone you trust?” I ask.

“You and Daddy,” she says. 

“And who is someone you don’t trust?”

“Jared.  He always takes my crayons at the art table.”

I towel her hair and then squeeze lotion into my hands.  I smear it onto her back and shoulders.

“I love you as much today as I did the day you were born,” I say, tracing the line of her spine in peach-fuzz flesh.  “I will love you that much every single day of your life, forever.”

She smiles.

“Today you lied to me.  Twice.  Your father tells me that he told you not to spit on your sister this weekend.  So you broke promises to us both, which means we can’t trust you.  And baby, I love lots of people.  But there are very few people that I trust with you and your sisters.  I won’t leave a child with someone who is hurting her, I don’t care who it is.”

“Momma, I promise I’ll stop!”

“No.  Baby, that’s what you need to know.  Your promise doesn’t work.  You broke your word to your father and me.  You lied to us.  We don’t trust you.”

A single tear drops down her cheek.

“I feel like a bad kid,” she whispers.

“That is called shame,” I say.  “It is the feeling you have when you have done something wrong, that you are sorry for, wish you could take back.  It’s just a feeling.  It’s the thing that helps you not do bad stuff.  It’s a gift.  Remember that you feel this way, and that it is your good heart telling you not to do the wrong thing.”

“Will you still be mad tomorrow?”

“No,” I smile.  “You get to start again tomorrow.  But you will have to work to make Daddy and me trust you again.  That one you have to earn.  And you’ll have to talk to Sister, too, and work it out with her.”

“How do I make you trust me?”

“By being a person who does not lie and does not break her promise and does not hurt her sister.  Saying it doesn’t count, you have to do it.”

I pull the fresh nightgown over her head, fluff her hair, carry her up to her room.

“You said we could have ice cream and movie night,” she whimpers.

“I think you know that’s not coming.” I rub her back.

“Does Mary get to?”

“Of course,” I feel fresh sobs starting in her chest. “Don’t wake Baby Sissy,” I say, dropping her gently into bed.  She pulls the blanket up, big tears spilling on to her pillow.

“I love you Karenna,” I tell her.  “You’re my baby and I’ll love you with my whole heart forever.”

She sniffles and shakes and I leave her there in the darkness of fresh sheets and clean body, and snoozing sister and love and shame and regret.

And I think, Today I was a good mother.