Аманда Хокинг: Switched

A few things made that day stand out more than any other: it was my sixth birthday, and my mother was wielding a knife. Not a tiny steak knife, but some kind of massive butcher that glinted in the light like a bad horror movie. In fairness, maybe the knife didn’t glint. Maybe my memory added it in like some silly CGI effect. I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that Mom definitely wanted to kill me.

I’ve tried to think of the days and years that lead up to that one, to see if there was something that I should’ve noticed about my mom. Unfortunately, everything before it is pretty hazy. When I ask my older brother Matt about it, he always answers vaguely with things like, “She’s batshit, Wendy. That’s what happened.” He’s seven years older than me, so I know he has a better idea about the things that happened, about what Mom was really like, but he never wants to talk about it.

The horrible truth is that I actually have no memory of Mom before that day. Not a one. I can remember doing Christmases and birthdays, and I can even remember my dad, who died when I was five, but not her. Psychologists have insisted that it’s just my way of processing trauma, but I just wish I could remember. Even if it was all bad things. Especially if it was all bad things.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was a brat growing up. My aunt Maggie attests to this, but in a very light fashion and always follows it up with a hug and some reassuring sentiment about loving me no matter what. Matt won’t even joke about it. Whenever anyone makes a comment about me misbehaving as a child, he just purses his lips and insists that I was a normal, curious little girl. I definitely wasn’t, but I’m not the only one suppressing things, I guess.

We lived in the Hamptons at the time, and my mother was a lady of leisure. Celia wasn’t there that day, and in retrospect, I’d say that was the big trigger. Celia was the third nanny I had, which is further evidence of my unruliness as a child. Matt had the same nanny his whole life until I was born and I proved to be too much for her. Celia and I got on rather well, but she had an emergency and left the night before. That meant my mother was in charge of me, for one of the few times in her life, and there was a party going on that day.

Okay, I lied when I said I had no memory of my mother. I very distinctly remember her yelling for my brother, or my father, or the nanny, or my aunt, or anyone anywhere every time she was forced to interact with me. It was as if she couldn’t stand the sight of me. As it turns out, she probably couldn’t.

My aunt Maggie came over a little bit later to help get ready for the party, and she eventually managed to rouse my mother. I was still in my pajamas with chocolate soy milk stains on my face, and she offered to get me ready. To this day, I have no idea how Mom ended up taking that over. It was so unlike her, and nobody can remember why she decided to actually take charge of me.

The bath was a horrendous ordeal. I was an unnaturally filthy child, and she had to scrub at my skin, which only made me wail petulantly. My hair was the worst. It was a constant state of snarled mess, no matter how hard she combed at it, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying. I sat on the stool in front of her vanity, her hands holding me down tightly so I wouldn’t squirm away.

She had let me wear her oversized plush robe when I got out of the bath, and it made me feel grand somehow. My hair was still damp as she raked the brush through it, and I screamed bloody murder and tears ran down my cheeks.

She had a tri-mirror on her vanity, so I could see her from three different angles as she brushed my hair. Her cheeks were red from straining, and she was out of breath. Her own hair had been pulled back in some kind of ratty bun, so I don’t know how she could complain about my hair. She was still wearing my father’s red silk robe, the same way she had been every day since he died.

Mom finally managed to get my hair to her liking, putting in clips with little pink bows on them. She chose some frilly pink dress to go with it, and I remember protesting like mad about it. I hated dresses, but she tackled me and forced me into it. Finally, she put on little lacy socks with shiny white shoes, and let me go so she could get ready herself.

The thing is that I didn’t even want this party. I liked gifts and all that, but I didn’t have any friends. The people coming to the party, they were my mother’s friends and their snobby little kids. She had planned some kind of princess tea party thing, that Maggie and Matt and our maid had very dutifully spent all morning setting up. I did not want a princess party. I wanted dinosaurs, and I wanted to be outside running around. By the time the guests had started to arrive, I had already ripped off my shoes and socks and plucked the bows from my hair.

Mom came down in the middle of opening gifts, looking almost the same as she did before I left. Her hair had been smoothed out, and she had put on bright red lipstick that only made her look paler. She was still wearing my father’s robe, but she had added a necklace and black heels with it, as if that would suddenly make the outfit appropriate. Nobody commented on it, but they were probably too busy staring at me with absolute horror. I had complained about every single gift I had gotten, and I had broken or thrown away a portion of them. They were all stupid dolls or ponies or some other thing I would never play with.

When Mom came into the room, stealthy gliding through the guests to where I sat at the end of a long table, I had just torn through a box wrapped in pink teddy bears. It contained yet another porcelain doll, and before I could even finish my diatribe about it, I felt a hand slap me sharply across the face.

“You are not my daughter,” Mom said, her voice her cold and emotionless. My cheek stung painfully from where she had hit me, and I just gaped at her.

Maggie quickly redirected the festivities, but the idea must’ve been percolating in my mother’s mind the rest of the afternoon. I think when she said it, she meant it that way every parent does when their child does something they don’t understand. But the more she thought about it, the more it must’ve made sense to her.

After an afternoon of similar tantrums on my part, and many scenes involving me or another child crying, someone decided that it was time to have cake. Mom seemed to be taking forever in the kitchen, and for some reason, Maggie let me go check on her. I don’t even know why Mom was the one getting the cake, instead of Maggie or the maid, who were both far more maternal.

On the center of the island in the kitchen, there was a massive chocolate cake covered in pink flowers with a big wax number six in the middle.

Mom stood on the other side, holding a gigantic knife she used to cut and serve the cake onto tiny saucers. Bobby pins were starting to come loose from her hair, and she had gotten a frantic look.

“Chocolate?” I wrinkled my nose as Mom very carefully tried to set perfect pieces onto the saucers.

“Yes, Wendy, you like chocolate,” Mom informed me.

“No, I don’t!” I protested, crossing my arms over my chest. “I hate chocolate! I’m not going to eat it and you can’t make me!” While I did love chocolate soy milk, I generally despised all other chocolate, and most candy and sweets for that matter. Mom might have known that, but it might have been a simple oversight on her part.

“Wendy!” Mom closed her eyes as if she had a terrible migraine.

The knife just happened to be pointed in my direction, some frosting sticking on the tip. At the moment, I didn’t feel afraid. If I had, maybe everything would’ve gone different. Instead I just felt like having another one of my tantrums.