Mommy Dearest

 Momma would go into these blind rages.  She'd start punching and hitting me until she beat me down to the floor. Then she'd kick me.  I'd wrap myself in a ball to protect myself, begging her, "please stop mommy, please - I'm sorry" but the crazy fit would continue.  Sometimes I had done something that might warrant this behavior, but sometimes I was snatched out of my bed from a deep sleep and thrown on the floor, waking up to the screaming and beating/kicking rages.  They lasted until she ran out of energy.  When I was younger she'd come back later and apologize to me, and cry, and tell me that it would never happen again.  I loved my mother.  Back then I always forgave her and hugged her and wanted to believe what she said.  But it kept happening.  As I got older the apologies came less often until one day they never came again.

The cuts and bruises healed.  It was the heart scars that lasted over the years.  For a short time when I was nine years old my mother told me I could no longer call her momma; I would have to address her as Mrs. Sigmon.  I was not to speak to any of them at all unless I absolutely had to.  I was not to be around them and had to stay in my room, even eating my meals in there.  There were other rules that I can't remember.  She had a long list of them posted to my bedroom door.  My sister was forbidden to speak to me at all.  I was completely isolated.  I remember most, how the words "Mrs. Sigmon," just wouldn't come out of my throat.  Those words were huge, and painful, and I just couldn't say them without bawling.