The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend

Author:Peggy Townsend [Townsend, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

26.

THEN

I don’t remember my mother ever saying, “I love you,” or even hinting at any affection for me. From the earliest age, I felt her resentment like a heavy blanket on my life. It was as if my birth had simply added another burden onto her already hard existence. By the time I was a teenager, her disdain for me was full-blown.

She’d begun going to a new church, one that preached a strict adherence to the Bible, and around the same time found a doctor who prescribed her diet pills. She grew pinch faced and rabid with the Lord.

She raged against sinners, against my father, against the weather and against the bank that held our mortgage. Mostly, she raged against me. One morning, when I was fifteen, she decided to teach me a lesson I wouldn’t forget.

I’d just started dating Matt then. He was on the football team, drove a shiny Ford pickup and was beginning to follow in the footsteps of his father, who drank too much. I didn’t see it at the time, however. All I understood was that a boy I’d considered the most popular in my class was paying attention to me.

My mother saw it differently, believing I was the one arousing lust in a vulnerable young man. Once, she caught me coming out of school with my shirt tied so my midriff was exposed. She accused me of being a harlot, and when we got home, she threw the shirt—my favorite—into the burn barrel and lit it on fire.

When my mother told my father what she’d seen, he looked up from his pork chops and green beans.

“Matt McCauley isn’t worth anybody’s time, let alone yours,” he said.

My mother got up from the table. “Why can’t you ever support me?” she cried. “You’re as bad as she is.”

“Sit down, Helen,” my father ordered. The quietness of his command gave it a sharp edge.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” my mother said, and took her plate and slammed it into the sink. The crash sounded like cymbals at the end of some stirring symphony and she stormed from the room.

My father sat still for a moment and then turned back to his meal.

The next morning, I awoke to find my mother at my bed, holding her sewing scissors.

She leaned over me. “ ‘Likewise, women should adorn themselves with respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control,’ ” she recited, “ ‘not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire but they should array themselves with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.’

“One Timothy, chapter two, verses nine to ten,” she added triumphantly.

I turned to see a big hunk of my hair lying on my pillow and ran to the bathroom, where I saw that, while the right side of my hair hung down past my shoulder as it always had, the left side ended just below my ear.

When I screamed, my mother came into the bathroom and set the scissors on the counter.

“We’re going to church. Now finish the job,” she said.

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