Catherine Burns - It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks - A memoir of a mother and daughter

“It’s a Valium,” she says. “It will make you feel better.”

When I wake up my brother takes me away from the white clapboard house to live with him and two friends from college in an apartment on the other side of town. My sister has already moved in with the singer. The white clapboard house is empty. I feel sorry for the white clapboard house. My brother’s friends are nice to me. They are a couple. They sleep in the same bed like my parents did. They listen to Aerial Ballet and Brewer & Shipley. There is a lot of kissing. A lot of pot. They always have the kind of doughnuts you buy from the supermarket. I really want a chocolate one, but I don’t know if it is okay to eat that kind. Nobody told me what to eat for breakfast. I eat a gross cinnamon one because there is only one left and I think no one will notice it missing. I eat it and clean up all the crumbs and move all the other doughnuts around so it looks like a full box. I check it three times. It looks like nothing is missing. When my brother wakes up at noon he yells at me for eating the last cinnamon doughnut. “How could you do that? The reason there was only one left is because I like them the most. Now I have to eat a chocolate one. I hate chocolate!” He slams the refrigerator door for effect and goes back to bed, mad and doughnutless.

My mother calls long-distance to tell me that in spite of the recession and the fact that apartments cost a fortune she got us a sprawling three-bedroom in a prewar doorman building overlooking Washington Square Park. We are moving downtown. I am changing schools too. I burst into tears. My sister tells me not to worry because even though all the kids from my old school seem important now, one day, she says, I won’t even remember their names. I tell her that’s not true. I tell her I will always remember their names. She smiles at me like I am too young to know what I am saying. But I do know what I am saying. And I feel older than all of them.

I move in with my sister and the singer. The singer is learning to play the harpsichord. I am not allowed to touch the harpsichord. The singer’s house is in the mountains and my sister can’t spend all her time driving me around so I stay inside not touching the harpsichord and climbing up and down the shag-carpeted sunken living room. I play with the ice dispenser on the door of the fridge. I listen to Blue . The singer is impressed that I know all the words. I fly back to New York in August listening to “This Flight Tonight” on headphones. Turn this crazy bird around. I shouldn’t have got on this flight tonight, Joni Mitchell sings.

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