I understand why Van Gogh cut his ear off. Well,I wouldn’t do it for love or anything,I’d do it because everything is just too loud. Sometimes I feel an urge,I find myself raising the scissors to my ear,but I know I’ll never do it.I’ve already made my thighs covered in pink scars,stinging on my skin as a constant reminder of everything I’ve done to myself.
That’s how mother makes me see it.She looks at me in disgust whenever I wear shorts that don’t cover every little scar,she’s disgusted with anything that doesn’t make me look spotless.Some nights,she comes into my room and starts to rub lotion on my thighs,hoping the lotion will make my scars disappear.
She’s always tried her hardest to make me seem spotless,a canvas to decorate to her own liking.A mini-me.I don’t think I’m much like mother.She’s emotional,let’s her feelings control her actions and decisions.She can be aggressive,and she can scream and hit.I don’t like when she screams and hits,because she bares her teeth like an angry predator and her eyes go as wide as a mad-man’s. My whole life,I’ve been described as stoic.Teachers always told me they’ve never seen my smile.Truth is,I don’t think I have one.I don’t mean to say that in an edgy way,I just don’t think I’ve smiled enough to be able to have a specific one.Whenever I try in the mirror,it looks unnatural and sorta funny,my teeth are square-shaped.Mother’s are sharp and spiked like a canine’s.I only ever cut because I could feel myself smile when I took care of my wounds.
I think it was the nurturing aspect of the whole thing.I liked imagining that mother was standing behind me,delicately rubbing a washcloth on the wound,wiping the garnet-colored blood away.Then there’s the sticking sound of the band-aid being placed on the cut.Mother’s soft voice,the melody of her song rings in my ear,and I feel the urge to bring the scissors to it and stop all the noise.
I was sitting downstairs,across from my mother.She was reading from a novella,76 pages long.I looked when she went to the bathroom.
Mother reads short stories,so she can read many in a month.That’s how she is.She’s in a book-club,so I always vision her bragging about reading twenty books,listing off their names,rattling the scrambled plots off the top of her head.She talks much more to the book-club then she does me.When I’m not the perfect replica of her,she doesn’t love me.
My white tank-top fell off my chest,a little baggy on me.Mother’s green flannel and dress pants fit her perfectly,clinging comfortably to her body.Mother is quite skinny,perfectly balanced everywhere but the ankles.Her ankles are so tiny I can hook my fingers around them.I wonder how she stands upright.
“So,Jane,any homework?”Mother muttered.
“No.”
“Okay.”
Silence,again.
We sit like this for about an hour,silence.The only noise being my feet occasionally kicking the chair legs,and the only look between us being mother’s warning glare. As nighttime approaches and the sky darkens,mother brings me to the bathtub,and I endure a bath.Her hands running on my bare body makes me feel gross,like my skin is infected from the cancer lying deep within her.This is the only time,besides when I’m perfect,when mother loves me.Mother loves the idea of loving someone,I think.She hums one of her songs,and her hands run soapy over my thighs.
I go to bed in one of mother’s old nightgowns.I try not to look in the mirror,I fear I will see my mother,and the only thing of me that would remain is a hollow shell.
I have an internal clock,I know when 5 AM approaches.It feels almost like a shift in the air.
I sit on the ledge of the bathtub,and I hold the scissors to my left ear.
But this time,I cut.
I cut a small cube of flesh off my earlobe.Blood drips and falls,and I grab the bandages from the cabinet and desperately wrap my ear up like a package.It still burns.I try to figure out how I would explain the incident to mother,but I believe she would just be more upset about her blood-stained nightgown.
I hurl in a ball in the empty bathtub and cry,my nightgown getting stained with water from what remains of my bath from the previous night.Blood stains the bandaging,and my brain becomes foggy.
The door opens,and mother kneels beside the bathtub.
“Oh,dear,you hurt yourself again..”Her soft,oddly motherly,voice trails off.She grabbed the wet nightgown and peeled it off me,moving me just as she needed.”You got my sleep-gown all wet and bloody,Jane.”Her voice turned stern,and she muttered the words as she usually does.
She bathes me again,and her hands roam all the spots that just make me cry more.
I stayed in the bathroom the entire day.Mother let me stay home from school,and then she went back to her bedroom.I stayed on the floor,sleeping and staring sleepily.My body ached with hunger,but I refused to eat.The only thing I could think of with each low growl of my stomach,was the thought of taking that cube of flesh and chewing it,and swallowing it.
I traced every scar with my fingers,and at this point I had formed words with my scars.
Ear.
Ground.
Blood.
Nightgown.
Mother.
Dirt.
Mud.
I grabbed the scissors again,once the sky had turned pretty shades of purple and orange faded together.I grabbed the scissors and brought them to my ear,but then my thoughts began racing again.
I concluded to do it in a band-aid way.I would rip it off.A towel was shoved in my mouth to muffle my screaming.I brought the scissors to my ear,and I shut the blades on the skin.
I screamed into the towel the entire way to the garden in the backyard.Even though I could barely hear myself,every noise had gone blank.Blood was falling down the side of my face,I may have felt a wet chunk or two slide down my arm.
Mother found me in the backyard about ten minutes later.I was screaming,gripping my hair so hard and yanking it so chunks came off at a time,and my ear was buried into the dirt.
I’m partial-hearing now,and there’s now just a patch of skin with a slight inward-bump where my ear used to be.Mother still looks at me with disgust.
Why did I do it if mother still doesn’t love me?
I’ll never be her mini-me.