“Whenever I’m with my mother I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.” Amy Tan could have not said it more clearly. This quote, taken from her book, The Kitchen God’s Wife, pinpoints my relationship with my mother as I was growing up. It seems that I could never say the right thing around her because she’d explode when I’d speak. Her meek, petite, slender body was deceptive of her personality because her demeanor was quite the contrary. However, regardless of the endless, repetitive lectures and scolding, I have ultimately understood the meaning and significance of my mother’s behaviors and actions towards me.
Many times, I second-guessed Mom’s actions and decisions, like the morning when I was in second grade and could not find my hairbrush. That morning Mom was trying to get my brothers and me ready for school. Her long, dark brown hair was still wet and uncombed from her shower. Her curvy, yet slender figure stood in front of the stove, as she served breakfast. As always, she’d cook four three-minute noodle soups in one big pot. Then she noticed that my hair hadn’t been braided. Her almond-shaped eyes quickly glanced in my direction, then back to the pot of noodles.
“Tráeme el cepillo,” she said abruptly, still serving the long stingy noodles. “Bring me the hairbrush.”
I frantically went looking for it just after slurping the always-overcooked noodles—beef flavor. For some reason or other, my brush would always be missing, despite me bring the only girl in the family, besides Mom. She moved quite swiftly, as she desperately looked for the keys—those always were missing, too—when I came back empty-handed.
“I can’t find it; I don’t know where it is,” I said, frustrated.
Silence. She continued lifting the cushions from the sofa in search of her keys.
“What do I do?” I thought to myself. “What am I going to do?”
“Get the dustpan brush,” she calmly replied.
“What?” I asked, not believing what she said.
“Get the dustpan brush,” she repeated, her voice raising her voice. I did as I told, as to not waste more precious time. As I handed the black, dusty brush to her, I automatically turned around to have my hair brushed, knowing she would. The dusty, dirty bristles ran though my hair. Like always, she told me to tilt me head back as she started dividing sections of hair o make a braid. Despite being well-groomed, I felt dusty, dirty, and self-conscious. However, after that day, I knew exactly where my hairbrush was.
Many years later, my junior year in high school to be exact, my brother, Ricky and I had come home from a track meet one late evening. I was tired from the week’s workout and my shins were in pain (shin splints). Ricky went in the kitchen and started heating the food that Mom had prepared earlier. I was getting ready to take a shower as Mom walked through the door from the laundry mat looking tired and annoyed. Ricky asked her if she wanted to eat.
“ No, mi’jo, no te preocupes por los demas; tu come,” she answered him calmly, almost soothingly. “Don’t worry about the rest of us; you go ahead and eat.”
“How come you don’t tell that to me?” I butted in.
Mom looked directly at me. Her brow furrowed. Her countenance changed from a soft, tired one to a fierce, stern one. “Don’t think about getting in the shower. You have to go dry the clothes.” As she spoke to me, she shook her pointing finger at me, accusingly like she always did when she’d lecture.
Immediately, tears of anger welled in my eyes. I silently obeyed and left before the first tears rolled past my eyes. “Why do I, the only female child, have to take care of all the others all the time?” I thought.
At times I felt that she over-protected me. I wasn’t allowed to go to my friends’ quinceañeras—including my best friend’s—or to the movies—even though we lived almost down the street from the theatre. Towards the end of my junior year, a boy asked me to go to the movies that weekend with him. (It was his plan to work his way up to asking me to the prom. I knew it, too, but how was I ever going to tell her that a senior had asked me to the prom?! ) It took me several days to ask Mom’s permission to go to the movies. I decided to ask her when she was in her room watching one of her favorite shows, “Laura en America,” a show very similar to Oprah. If I asked her then, I thought, she would pay little attention and would she yes in order for me to let her enjoy the show. She didn’t like being interrupted while she watched television; that was her time to relax. With butterflies in my stomach and heart pounding in my throat, I asked her. She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t acknowledge me. Her silence had me screaming on the inside.
“Who are you going with?” she asked without moving her eyes away from the TV.
“Elvis,” I responded.
“What’s that?” she asked in Spanish. Apparently, she had never heard that name. I think she asked that in order to trying to avoid the subject.
“It’s a name. My friend, Elvis, is in my Spanish class.”
She glanced at me emotionless, and then continued watching Laura.
Her silence represented the end of that conversation. Mom did not answer yes or no which created turmoil in me.
“Vete,” she finally said sarcastically. “Go.”
Feeling embarrassed, relieved, and trying not to show any signs of excitement or emotions I darted for the living room.
The weekend seemed to take forever, but finally had arrived. As I got ready, I could feel my mother observing me from the corner of her eye. Trying not to call much attention to myself, I did.
“Is he going to pay for your ticket or are you going to sit outside and wait for him like an idiot?” she asked abruptly, almost doubtingly. What kind of question was that?
“Well, duh, Mom. He invited, so he gets to pay,” I said, almost justifying myself.
As I tried to give her a goodbye hug, she almost teared up. “Can you imagine what your father would say?”
I couldn’t believe she brought him up. I have no recollection of my father, no memories, nothing. All my life, she had said that he left her or that she left him. Whatever the story may be, the point is, he had never been in the picture, so I didn’t understand why she mentioned him.
“Mom, he hasn’t been in my life so I wouldn’t care what he’d have to say—he doesn’t get a say in anything,” I responded.
“Go,” she whispered as she gave me a limp hug. I like hugging her because she is petite, and I feel big compared to her. When I hug her, it feels like the roles are reversed for that short instance. Mom then pretended to clean the kitchen, even though I had cleaned it earlier that day. I walked out the door.
The movie ended just a few minutes after nine. When Elvis dropped me off, I bolted out of the car before the car came to a complete stop. I sprinted upstairs to the apartment and got home at 9:12. I did not make curfew, not because I didn’t want to. I had just run out of time. When I opened the front door, all the lights were out. Everyone had gone to sleep.
Mom did not say a word to me the next day. The tension in the room was unbearable! I had disappointed her. I didn’t understand why she was so upset—I was only 12 minutes late. Nothing I did pleased could ever please her.
Mom’s tough character made my life miserable. All this time I thought she targeted me and was mean because I was the only daughter. I thought that her Mexican roots and machista views were the basis of her oppression towards me. I was wrong. The reactions of this dainty dictator I call ‘Mom,’ have helped shape who I am. She treated me like an adult to teach me independence. There was a motive behind every action, behind ever word she directed toward me—despite my questioning. Having graduated and moved out the house, I can say that the greatest mines have been detonated, and the field has been cleared.
