different stroke for different people

Finally, it came the day when we were chased out of the house. It was a group punishment. Our crime was watching the idiot box past midnight. Normally we got away for doing it but on this particular night it was a big no-no. First came the warning and the sound was muted. Second time, our mother came charging us and we ran in all directions. Then she opened the front door and screamed at us to get out.

‘You all get the hell out of here, @#**@##.....’ the mother from hell shrieked at us. All of us rushed out of the door and into the darkness of the night.

My brother managed to open the side door and we crept inside the house quietly and into our respective rooms. Years later, I used that entrance to sneak in after my dates.

That night was a prelude to what was going to happen in several occasions when our father came home in the wee hours of the morning. On one occasion, we got back into our rooms as usual but this time I had the foreboding that Mother would not let us off so easily. She was fuming with fury and we weren’t ordered out. We ran for our lives as she came charging us with murder in her eyes. We managed to get out through all exits in the single-storey house.

By the time we got back into our room, my sister dropped onto her bed and prepared to go to sleep. I knew better than anyone that when my mother was in this kind of mood it would be unfinished business if she didn’t vent it on some scapegoats. Boys were not her main targets.

I used my pillows and set up a dummy on my bed and then covered it with my blanket and then I slept under my bed with my bolster as my protector. I was awoken by my sister’s cry and the whizzing of the cane. Being forewarned I was forearmed, so I pressed myself against the side of the wall.

It didn’t take long for my mother to discover the dummy on the bed and soon she got down on her knees and aimed the cane at me.

‘I’m sorry, don’t beat me!’ My bolster was ever ready to receive the cane.

‘Come out!’

I was no moron, it would be suicidal to come out. My mother’s busy hand was never still.
I cried even louder every time the cane touched my bolster. The ordeal was over with the slamming of the door.

Poor sister was whimpering on her bed. The welts of cane marks on her body proved how vicious our mother was in her anger. I was unmarked.

I wasn’t that lucky most of the time. Sometimes, I was too tired to hide from her. Surrender was bliss, less taxing on the mind, the waiting game, the guessing game…. Sometimes, she left the house in a bad mood and then came home in a good one. Sometimes, she left in a good mood and came back in a bad cloud.

Years later I met a woman who was a few years younger than my mother. She was stuck in a marriage which she didn’t want to get out. She inflicted pains on herself to attract her husband’s attention. I would like to hear the viewpoints of someone who has a mother like that.