Koren Zailckas - Mother, Mother - Psychological suspense for fans of ROOM

“Psychedelic crisis.” For simplicity’s sake, Violet added, “LSD.”

“Wow,” Edie said. “You look all right, considering. Was it bad?”

Was it bad? High on seeds, Violet had joined Imogene in front of the mirror and been surprised by the size of her own widened pupils. They looked like dark holes in a Violet-featured, rubber Halloween mask.

“Do you feel really heavy?” Imogene had asked. “I feel like gravity is working triple-time.”

Violet hadn’t felt heavy. Just the opposite. She was having a bad trip, and after hearing her mother’s voice, she felt weightless, like not even her friends could ground her in the moment. Some invisible current was already pulling her back across town to the very last place she wanted to be: her parents’ house, where her mother was destined to ambush her with another accusation. Damn it, Violet! Just admit it! You were angry with us and you broke the window! Your friends keyed your father’s car! You came home drunk again and tipped over the trash! Violet could defend herself all she wanted, but no one ever believed her. Not with her mother in the other corner, spinning stories like rows of knitting and crying on demand. Violet couldn’t explain these freak events, but she knew they weren’t her fault.

She couldn’t take it anymore. That was the reason she’d taken the seeds to begin with. Her mother had come into her room Friday morning and (falsely, homophobically) accused her and Imogene of being lesbian lovers, to the tune of, “I’m not some clueless mother, Viola! You with your buzz cut! And that little dyke with her rainbow hair!” It might have been comical, were it not for her mother’s lecture about dressing like a “sloppy lesbian” and the mention of some gay-be-gone camp in Sullivan County. When Violet had screamed at Josephine to get her bigoted ass out of her room, her mother had laid into her harder than she ever had: “You are sick, Violet! I wish other people could see this anger you reserve just for me! You’re so superficial! So false, with those big cow eyes you lay on your father! And the phony compassion you lavish on Will! I feel sorry for you, you know that? All the natural fibers in the world can’t hide how artificial you are. Keep doing your Buddhist chants all day long, little girl. They won’t hide the fact that you’re a selfish bitch. You’re ugly, Viola. You’re ugly inside .”

That was the speech that had sent Violet seeking out oblivion one last time. Seeds crunching between her molars, she’d been thinking she just wanted to melt her face off. She’d needed Love, Salvation, Deliverance. LSD, for short. Violet thought, under the circumstances, she deserved at least that.

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