Call Me Cockroach

by Leigh Byrne

Her I-don’t-have-the-foggiest-idea-what-you’re-talking-about tone of voice sounded authentic, but I wasn’t fooled. I knew what a convincing actress she could be.

“Either way, there’s no need to dredge up what’s over and done with,” she said. Now I was convinced she remembered. “Over and done with? That’s convenient for you, isn’t it?”

The old Mama was bleeding through the candy-coated one sitting in front of me.

“Tuesday, you know your mama is never going to admit what she did to you. She couldn’t live with herself if she did. Don’t you see? It’s to her advantage to forget that part of her life and she expects the rest of us to forget as well.”

I think she remembers every minute of what she did. Believe me, I’m not taking up for her, I’m merely telling you what I’ve observed over the years about human nature. What she did to you is too awful for her to acknowledge, and the mind has its ways of protecting us from things we can’t process. She’s somehow managed to make it all go away,

I had no way of knowing for sure, but I believed, during my childhood, I’d bumped shoulders with Death a few times.

His words made me cringe. I wasn’t used to compliments and didn’t know how to react to them. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that there were people who found me attractive.

Even though I hardly knew him, I did as he said because he didn’t give me the choice to say no. He came across as being in control. I was used to control.

You begin to think you’re crazy when everyone around you pretends something never happened when you know damn well it did. Makes you think you’re viewing life through a dirty window. You question yourself—your memory, your sanity. Did it actually happen?

And consciously, even though I didn’t acknowledge I needed Mama, on a subconscious level, I missed, not so much her, but the fantasy mother, the mother I’d lost, or never really had.

Most days it took a steady effort to keep my thoughts occupied so I wouldn’t turn down the dark corridors leading back to my past. But every now and then, when I wasn’t paying attention, I stumbled and fell, and suddenly found myself there.

but Mama stops me in the middle. “This is where it happens” she whispers. “I’m going to push you over and everyone will think you fell.” I clutch the ropes and start screaming at the top of my lungs. Mama jerks my arm and pulls me to the other end of the bridge. “I was just kidding, Weasel,” she says. “Quit making a scene!”

As an adult who’d been starved as a child, I considered eating a luxury and a privilege. Because of this mindset, I often overindulged.

The next day I started my diet. I didn’t adhere to any specific regimen, like the Atkins plan, or the then popular Grapefruit Diet, but rather one I’d created on my own. It was called the Eat Practically Nothing Diet.

Soon food lost its appeal. What had once been a deity I worshipped had now become my enemy. Numbers were constantly whirling around in my head. Every morning I woke up planning what I would eat that day.

The controlling and possessive men made me feel wanted and loved—a familiar and dangerously comfortable place for me to be. The worse they treated me, tried to dominate me, the more I clung to them, seeking their approval.

My first flirt with death had only been a notion, I told myself, a moment of impulse. A lot of people think about killing themselves with no intentions of actually doing it. But then the thoughts began to visit me more frequently. I began thinking in detail, considering the different options of suicide, most of which were not available to me, because I was afraid of almost everything.

And even after so many years of knowing the privilege of a full belly, each time I sat down to eat, I still recalled the hungry days, days of eating anything I could lay my hands on.