My Mother's Aim

The most pained memory I have is not the one of my mother’s overdose but one of a time before. A memory I have of my mother with a gun to her mouth…

My mom and Ernie lived in the corner house on Zak road next to a park and down the street from my middle school. From the outside it looked like a cute little suburban neighborhood where kids played in the street and rode their bikes around the block. For the most part it was just that…except on some days.

My step dad, Ernie, was an outdoorsman. Actually, I believe he still is. Growing up, he always made sure his girls were fishing and camping and exploring. He didn’t treat us like boys, he respected who we were as girls but us being girls didn’t stop him from teaching us everything we needed to know about being outside. He taught me how to shoot his hunting rifle. He bought me my first BB gun for Christmas. I knew about guns, had been around guns and being in the presence of a gun had never scared be before I saw my mother holding one. One morning when I was in the 8^th grade I woke up to shouting. They were fighting again. I’m not sure what they were fighting about this time—I never knew what the fights were actually about. Maybe he found my mother’s weed stash again. This was common. As I was getting dressed for school, the shouting turned into screaming and now the babies were crying. I opened the bedroom door and went to eat my cereal. The kitchen walls were no Kevlar to the bellowing coming from their room. Then all of a sudden the door swung open and both of them rushed from the bedroom. Ernie chased my mom who was carrying his rifle. My mother turned her back to the wall and faced Ernie. She pushed up against the living room wall shouting at Ernie but all I could hear was him pleading, “please, please, Soco, don’t do this.” She was pushing the rifle into his hands yelling, “Just do it Ernie, Just do it. I’m tired of this. If I’m so awful to be with, just do it!”  When he wouldn’t grab the rifle, she put the barrel into her mouth. He grabbed the rifle away from her and walked back to the bedroom. My mom followed him and as she walked by she asked me, “Don’t you have school to get to?” I got up from the table, grabbed my backpack and walked through the screen door. To my dismay the front door had been open the entire time. As I walked outside on my way to school I saw the two kids standing on the sidewalk listening to the drama oozing from our living room. But this wasn’t the first time theatrics from our house spilled into the neighborhood.  

The humiliation.