Mother/Daughter

Alice Neel

Mother/Daughter

The preferences for extroversion and introversion are often called as attitudes. Each of the cognitive functions can operate in the external world of behavior, action, people, and things (extroverted attitude) or the internal world of ideas and reflection (introverted attitude). Carl Jung

My mother was an extrovert. She plowed through life like an express train, taking no heed whatsoever as to how her behavior affected others. Jung says that extroverts tend to act, then stop and reflect. Not so with my mother, her reflections were more like internal strategy sessions. (How can I get out of this mess with a minimum of damage?) She was also diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder, and like most borderlines, she was charismatic. She was also very beautiful.  I hated her. Some would say I was jealous, and maybe there was a grain of truth to that in the beginning, but as her life unravelled, I became increasingly hostile. 

To say that she was ill prepared for motherhood is an understatement, and yet here she is, holding me like a bomb. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, it is clear that our relationship was off to a rocky start. I cried all night, every night for one entire year. She tried everything: nursing, bottles, burping, changing, walking, rocking. Nothing worked. She considered herself a problem solver, yet I was a problem she could not solve. 

It’s funny, I remember that olive green dress, she wore it around the house for years. In my mind’s eye I see her in the kitchen, her tall straight back standing at the sink, scraping my unfinished dinner down the garbage disposal with one hand while talking on the phone to her current amour with the other.  Even before cell phones, she was addicted to telephones.  She always wore huge yellow rubber gloves to save her manicure. Her manicure was important to her, far more important to her than I ever was. One of her many talents was dialing with rubber fingers although speed dialing was usually not an option, the men didn’t stick around long enough to become one of her contacts.

There was just the two of us. I never knew my father, and when my mother spoke of him, it was always with a grimace. She was one of those women who could change at the drop of a hat; ebullient one minute, morose the next. She really should have been on the stage because the woman could put on quite the show when she wanted something. I often pitied the poor bastards who were beguiled by her charm. Her eyes became magnets, drawing people in with a bewitching cunning, and she had this ability to pout, her thick, baby doll lips puckered, causing her to look like an aging Barbie Doll. Between the eyes and the pout, it was game, set, match, especially with the male sex although she  was also a master at playing women, pitting one woman against another until she ended up destroying them both. Her jobs never lasted because of her ability to manipulate women in the workplace causing havoc, the men never lasted,  because she used them up and spit them out. Her taste in men was astonishingly eclectic, she would sleep with anyone as long as  they supplied her with enough cash.

An introverted person's energy is generally directed inward toward concepts and ideas whereas an extroverted person's energy is generally directed outward towards other people and objects. There are several contrasting characteristics between extroverts and introverts: extroverts desire breadth and are action-oriented, while introverts seek depth and are self-oriented. Carl Jung

Because she was  constantly reinventing herself I never knew from one day to the next who would walk through the door. We moved every two years or so, our apartments were always on the wrong side of the tracks, dark and sparsely furnished because we never took anything with us. I became increasingly introverted, in retrospect, traumatized, because I never knew from one day to the next what to expect. 

“Pack up your bags, Cecelia Sue, we’re moving,” was as familiar to me as what’s for dinner. 

“I don’t want to move, I like it here, I like the school, I love my art classes.”

“There are other schools, other teachers, Cecelia Sue, we’re moving to Toledo, and that’s final.” Or

“It’s steak tonight, Cecelia Sue, put on your pretty blue dress, Tom is taking us out to dinner.” Tom was her latest, a fat man with a red face, darting rat-like eyes, cheap suits and a pinky ring so small that the flesh bulged out around it probably making it impossible for him to ever take it off. Tom had money. Tom was spending almost every night in my mother’s bed.

A psychologist once told me that above all, a child needs to feel safe. Safety was foreign to me, and as time went on I became more and more introverted.  Art was the only thing that sustained me, it was a constant in an other wise unstable world. Today my paintings resemble a Jackson Pollack nightmare and my nightmares, well, suffice to say, I dread going to bed at night.  

“Look, Mama, see what I painted,” I recall saying as a little girl.

“Oh, Cecelia, how lovely.” She would give it a cursory glance as she applied another coat of nail polish, her fingers outstretched like daggers. 

“I won first prize in the young teen’s art contest at school, Mama, they even framed it.”

“Honey, Mama is proud. We’ll hang it right here over the couch.”  And so she did. It was a painting of a horse galloping through a field, and as we moved from place to place, the horse moved with us. We often arrived at new apartments with the clothes on our back, a few mugs, and my horse painting. As our lives became increasingly insular, the horse continued to gallop away. 

“Cecelia, come here and let me look at you.” 

“I’m busy, Mama, I’m painting. 

“You’re always painting, I’m lonely, I want to talk.” She had been drinking, her words slurred as she begged me to come. In retrospect, perhaps I should have appeased her, for it was later that night when my life changed for good. I awoke to flashing blue lights outside my window, police in the kitchen, and my mother in her bathrobe, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, cussing and screaming as they cuffed her and took her away.

“Who called 911?” 

“She did,” one of the cops said. “She claimed self defense.”

“Where is the body?”

“In the bathroom.” She slashed his throat with a razor blade.”

“Look, there’s a kid here.”

“Jesus, call protective services, we need to get her out of here.”

“Don’t worry, we will take good care of you,” a female cop told me, trying to be kind. Her kindness was wasted on me, I had no idea what good care was, I had never known it, but I was to soon find out as I was shuffled from one foster home to another. One of my foster mothers, a wealthy woman who encouraged me, saw great talent in my painting and paid my tuition at The Rhode Island School of Design.

Today I don’t make a lot of money on my art, but I make enough to survive. I visit my mother in the penitentiary once a month. She is always subdued, I suspect she is medicated. She looks terrible, without make up, graying hair, without her usual hair dyes. She calls me “Darlin.” The horse  hangs on the wall of her cell. He is a bit faded by now, but he continues to be free, something my mother will never again know.

It's All Temporary