NORA EISENBERG
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Her weaving between the bushes and trees with one or both of us on
her back. "Down horsy," we would shout and she would oblige, lower–
ing us so that we could inspect whatever had caught our fancy on the
romp. "Up, horsy," we would shout and she would take off again. That
my mother's nickname was Tippy, after a wild horse by that name at
one of the boarding schools she attended, seemed particularly fitting
those early years, as we rode her around the park.
In
later years, though,
as she finally sought relief, revenge, or both in drugs, "Tipsy" seemed
more fitting, and privately we called her this
to
each other, missing our
old Tippy with all our hearts.
The other mothers would watch from their benches, amused, as our
mother galloped, not yet the target of the derisive gossip that would
later haunt her. When she got winded, she'd light up a Camel and sit on
the fence, or join the women, who regarded her still, in those early
years, as a friendly elf.
Upstairs in our small apartment, if our father wasn't home, we were
treated with equal license. Nick and I at an early age would cook and
bake , as our mother supervised from the high-rise which doubled as the
marriage bed and f:1mily couch, reading mysteries and smoking, cheering
us on as we mixed and poured and spilled extravagant concoctions in
the kitchenette along the living room wall. Even clean-up those years
was wild and free.
If
we had a really big load of dishes and pots, we'd be
allowed to wash them in the bathtub and even to get in with them -
just as at night we'd be permitted
to
dive into a Tide-filled bath, which
our mother had us share with the day's dirty clothes. Leaning into the
water, bubbles rising up from her hands, she looked like the girl in the
White Rock soda ads, beautiful, beneficent, refreshing.
Then suddenly she was gone.
After years of enduring his shouting and threatening and punching,
years of excusing it - however accurately - as shell shock and battle fa–
tigue , she suddenly stopped excusing and retreating, and abandoning her
earlier forms and turning into an impressive warrior herself, she began
fighting him. Later on we realized amphetamines and barbiturates had
spearheaded her metamorphosis, shooting her full of the nerve and
stamina she needed to do battle with such a formidable enemy as our fa–
ther. But back then, we didn ' t know what was happening. Just that a
major new drama was unfolding before our eyes.
Now when our father screamed, ''I'm going
to
kill you," she no
longer grabbed us and ran, but laughed wildly, as if he'd just said some–
thing terrifically amusing.
And then she'd say things she'd never said before. Like: "Oh, really?
You just do that, big hero." And then she'd jump up and down before
