I knew that what I had to say to Mama would hit her hard. Our instinct is to protect our mothers, but therapy had eliminated those blinders and allowed me to see that Mama had a responsibility to deal with the truth.
She hated that I used the word abuse. She didn’t think of her tough love and no-nonsense discipline as abusing her child.
Our family had inherited Grandma Neil’s rage, Grandma Small’s rage—the ancestral memory of rapes, molestations, betrayal, theft, lies, and secrets. But, as Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” Or you should at least try.
The letter went on:
I have suffered unspeakable neurosis and psychosis. I’ve been a manic-depressive for years. Your rage made me unable to have healthy relationships with anyone, let alone a man.
I questioned whether her motive for sending me off to school a year early was as much to get me out of her way as it was to assure that I would have a good future.
My words were harsh, but genuine. I saw her as a monster, and I used that word. I said that she “raised us like animals.” I went there, and it was hurtful, but in my mind it matched how she hurt me.
Something horrible must have happened to you, Mama. What? I now know many things, and I assume other things I don’t want to imagine.
You buried us in the Baptist Church, I wrote. And I talked about Pastor Heard. Surely if we’d ever had a mother, we lost you then. You poured your existence into this fucking man. Mama, did you know he, in different ways, tried to seduce or molest many of the girls at church? I accused her of being so desperate to be somebody to him and the church that she overlooked what he was doing to the women in his congregation. To this day you sit up in his church listening to this man refer to women as whores if they have sex before marriage. And yet.
I told Mama she should have gotten help, suggesting that she was emotionally and mentally ill as well. I didn’t consider that in the time and place I grew up, there was no mental health system, no social safety net. Even among educated people, psychiatry was suspect. Being mentally ill was something else you kept secret, if you could. If you couldn’t, you suffered on top of the condition, being shamed and treated even worse by your family and neighbors. Nobody wants to be called “crazy” for real.
Then I shared something that she didn’t know:
I became one of the biggest whores I could, Mama. I’ve slept with over sixty men. You see, I felt you gave me away to Heard . . . if you didn’t care, why should I? I threw away my life. I blocked my childhood. I numbed out to survive.
I told Mama that therapy had led me to an important realization about my career:
Every time I’d get close to success, subconsciously I’d sabotage it just to hurt you because my success would make you happy. Deep inside I hated you because I felt you hated me. Couldn’t you see how unhappy we were? Can’t you see it even now?
I’m just now getting myself together to start living, not just surviving; laughing and not pretending, learning and not running away from my problems. The process is painful.
I closed the letter with a plea for her honesty and respect.
When I finished reading, Rachel said, “Good work. Now, it’s your choice if you want to mail it. This is your work, Jenifer. Your decision.”
The letter was an incredible release, a breakthrough. I decided to send the letter. For more than two hours I sat in the parking lot at the post office holding seven letters: one for Mama and copies of the same letter for each of my siblings. We think we’re going to kill our parents by confronting them. But people, including our parents, are often very much able to hear the truth. They may not take it well, but nobody dies from honesty.
The first time Mama and I talked on the phone after she received the letter, she was subdued. She called back the next day and we wound up screaming at each other.
My siblings gave me varying responses. One sister didn’t have memory of a lot of the behavior I described and was not having it. She didn’t want anything bad said about Mama. A few of them agreed and were pleased I had led the charge because they weren’t ready to. Ba’y Bro didn’t want any drama and reminded me that “everyone was beaten in Kinloch.” He said, “You leave Mama alone, Jenny!”
I actually expected harsher blowback because where I come from, you can’t talk about people’s mamas unless you’re playing the dozens, and then you better be superfunny.
But at some point you have to tell the truth.
The letter did accomplish a few things: first, it ushered in a new level of respect among me, my siblings, and my mother. It opened new lines of communication and the family began to have meetings to air out repressed secrets and emotions. I joined by phone. The letter was a big accomplishment for me, proof that I was learning to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Mama didn’t change at all, but she did at least listen to what we had to say about the whole matter. Months passed before I was back in Missouri for Christmas. I was grateful that no one brought up the letter. I had relative peace in my mama’s house during the visit. After all, how much can we all take at the holidays? They’re stressful enough.
ELEVEN
DISMISSING THE DIVA
Within the year, my sessions with Rachel increased to twice weekly. As the hours of therapy added up, I was becoming better at identifying and managing my feelings. My sex addiction lessened. When I’d begun therapy, my lovers were Tim, Adam, an actor named Sam, who, let’s just say, liked it from the side, and Roger. I still enjoyed sex but felt less compelled to use it as a way to feel better.
I relished being more in control of myself. I had relapses. No trajectory is straight and we fall back on bullshit excuses, fear, and confusion. Rachel called it “dropping the ball.” I would also throw the occasional pity party for myself.
JOURNAL ENTRY: I have no baby, no man, no show, fuck ’em.
On the other hand, I was determined to get well. As proof of my resolve, I kept my resolutions for the New Year. Starting in January 1991, I went 19 days without a cigarette and 167 days without sex. By the end, I felt hopeful. I was doing hatha yoga twice a week, played racquetball, and doing aerobics at the gym. I worked on myself, but it was a circuitous journey. I still sobbed at night and had nightmares about Pastor Heard wanting to fuck me on a piano stool. Having Rachel in my corner made a huge difference, but it was clear to us both that I had a long way to go.