More Than Words

Chapter 6 - IMMISCIBLE

IMMISCIBLE (adj.)

1. Incapable of being mixed; incompatible

2. Incapable of blending into a stable homogeneous mixture

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Evan

I was seventeen when I learned what child protective services was, that something like that even existed, when Amy, my single-most best friend on the planet, was assaulted by her mom.

Her mom, who took us to the pool on the weekends. Her mom, who took us on a girl's trip to Cape Cod the summer before the incident. Her mom, who sat me down and scolded me like my own mother should have after I had gotten drunk for the first time when I was sixteen.

Her mom, who opened her home to me at any time of any day. Like the day when my own mother told sixteen-year-old me not to come home after an argument we had after she showed up at my work unannounced.

I don't even remember what it was that I said that made my mother so mad. I just remember her head doing this subtle bobble thing that it does when her lip fights the urge to snarl. It's reminiscent of how a cobra fans out the skin by its head and then bobbles before it finally strikes.

She asked my coworker what would happen if she ever spoke to her mother the way I apparently was speaking to mine. My coworker replied that she'd get smacked, to which my mother said that she thought that was what I deserved at this moment.

Standing behind the counter and out of my mother's reach gave me a certain sense of security and so a rather brazen sixteen-year-old me retorted with something akin to "I feel like smacking you, too."

How dare she come into my place of work and harass me with this bullshit? And then to involve my equally teenaged coworkers? When I did wrong, I was wrong. But when she did wrong? Somehow it was still my fault.

That was the point at which my mother told me not to come home. Hence how I ended up on Amy's couch for nearly a week.

What's comically absurd about the entire situation was that the next day my mother actually called me to interrogate me about why I didn't come home.

That wasn't the first argument we ever had...and it wasn't the last. We were like oil and water, and my dad was the emulsifier. He was the barrier, the voice of reason, that stood sentinel between my mother and me.

He died a month after I turned 18. He saw me graduate high school and get accepted into my dream university and then his time here was done. My biggest cheerleader, my biggest fan, my guardian was gone. And without our emulsifier, my relationship with my mom turned from oil and water into sodium and water.

Incompatible.

Volatile.

Explosive.

One night, about a year after his death, we were driving home from the movies. She didn't like that I wouldn't sneak into another movie after ours ended. I think she was embarrassed that her daughter's moral compass was straighter than hers, but who knows? Whatever the reason, whatever the catalyst, things exploded.

She slammed her fist into my arm, like she had done so many times to me as a child when she was mad that I had gotten into trouble at school. But I was older now, and living on campus away from her had made me braver.

So I fought back. I hit her back. Fists and hands flew. She had an iron grip on my hair, and I hers. At some point she pulled the car over on the highway and I remember blaring the horn, begging the heavens to make someone hear the horn and pull over to help me.