Mother's Madness

Mother was an undiagnosed multiple. I don't think anyone recognized her true nature 
other than us, her children, and we were too young to understand. For a long time, 
not just as a child, I thought some of her parts were actually different people. 
I'd wonder where my mother went and why she left me with such a cruel lady. She 
would dress differently and treat us differently. Around other people, she was always 
syrupy sweet. We alone saw her other sides -- they were our tormentors. 

Mother taught English and Spanish and directed the school plays in a small school 
in the county. After all those small schools were consolidated into one county-wide 
high school, she taught freshman English and was the sponsor of the Beta Club. 
When Grandma S. (her mother) died, Mother joined the senior women’s Sunday School 
Class that Grandma had been in, and later took over as instructor of that class. So 
of course, all the little old ladies in our church thought she was a saint. Mom 
basked in their praise.

Mother stopped teaching Spanish after a failed attempt at getting advanced 
accreditation. She went to an immersion workshop in Kalamazoo Michigan and just 
couldn’t hack it. I remember going with Dad to pick her up at the train station. 
That was when she still had long curly hair and wore long full skirts and peasant 
blouses. She got off the train in tears, “non comprendo, I just kept saying non 
comprendo” she babbled. She went on like that for days. But for years after that, 
she still tried to teach us Spanish. She would have us repeat phrases into a tape 
recorder, and play them back later to show off for company and relatives.

The hardest part of dealing with the abuses of our childhood, was listening to so 
many people saying how wonderful our mother was. For a time I wondered if was true, 
and other parents were much worse than her. I couldn’t imagine how much worse they 
must be. Besides the beatings, she went from torturing my toys, to torturing me. She 
went from throwing my toys down the well, to lowering me down and threatening to throw 
the rope in after me. What must other mothers be doing if Mom was that wonderful? 

Finally I realized that Mother just didn't show her bad side to anyone but us. Her 
parts changed over the years. The Party Girl went away. The Spanish Teacher had a 
nervous breakdown and disappeared. The Well Witch finally went away (thank goodness), 
but her place was taken by the Guilt Bitch. In her later years she was Church Lady 
most of the time. The English Teacher still came around occasionally, even after 
she retired. The Guilt Bitch never went away. Even after her death, Mom was able to 
send messages to us from the Guilt Bitch, in the form of poison pen notes she left 
enclosed with her will.

I never knew that Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD, later reclassified as 
Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID)  was what was going on with Mother, until 
I was grown and she had died. My brothers and I had always just thought she was being 
duplicitous. Looking back now, I am sure it was more than that. I think Mom truly 
didn't remember a lot of the stuff she did to us, and so could not understand why 
we viewed her with fear and hostility at times. I know she lost all rational control 
when she was beating us. She flew into such a total rage that she didn't notice when 
she broke the yardstick into splinters and began to draw blood.

I think Dad believed her madness was all over when the Spanish Teacher broke down and 
vanished. I think Mom was careful not to let him see her changes after that. And we 
were too scared to tell him the details. She always threatened that if Dad was told, 
he'd do something even worse to us. He planned to leave her once, but Johnny and I 
ran and clung to him and begged him to stay. Mother grabbed Tommy and said “this one’s 
mine”. Tommy was really too young to totally understand what was happening. I think 
Dad saw the fear in our faces and knew he had to stay for our sake. There’s no telling 
what Mom would have done to us if she didn’t have to explain any injuries to Dad every 
night.

When I was in first grade, I had tried telling a teacher about problems at home and 
that sure didn't work out. A nice young couple moved in next door and I started 
opening up to the young bride. Their house burnt down in the middle of the night and 
I never saw them again. Years later, my little brother's fifth grade teacher picked 
up that something was wrong at home, but then she met mother at a PTA meeting 
(probably in the persona of the English Teacher or the Church Lady), and assumed she 
had been mistaken. Tommy ended up in one of the college classes taught by this former 
teacher and she told him about her “mistaken” impressions. She had only taught the 
one year at the elementary school, so she had no further contact with the family.

Could we possibly have persisted and gotten someone to believe us? I doubt it. In 
the 50’s the prevalent attitude towards any type of family problem was to keep it a 
secret. Rapes, child abuse, divorces, all were considered shameful secrets to be kept 
hidden.  The official medical advice was “pretend it didn’t happen, and never mention 
it again”.
--------------------
Growing up, I only ever had one stuffed animal. A “panda” bear, like they give away 
at carnivals, it became a torment instead of a comfort. At first, Mom would just take 
the bear away to punish me. She’d set it up on top of a chest of drawers where I 
couldn’t reach it. Later she would stick it with pins, and finally she threw it down 
the well. It eventually clogged up the intake and Daddy had to lower himself down the 
well on ropes to clear the flow. When he pulled out the soggy bear, Mom told him that 
I must have thrown it down the well, like my other toys. No explanation was offered 
of how a four year old could have moved the heavy iron cover.  Dad got a funny look 
on his face, and later sealed the lid with cement so that it couldn’t be moved 
casually.

8/2010