Thicker than Water: A Memoir

by Kerry Washington

I was no stranger to my mother’s protective veils. She had one for me, too. But this was different. Unlike the veil that she deployed to keep me from being able to read her innermost thoughts, the veil induced by my dad was designed to keep my mother’s rage trapped deep inside her. The veil that greeted me was sheer and fluid—it obscured her from me, created a distance between us that was necessary for her to maintain her secrets, but it never entirely hid my mother from my view. The veil that existed between her and my dad, though? That was ironclad. Night after night, I watched my mother gird herself with emotional armor on the inside while remaining calm and stoic on the outside, almost as if a warmer, gentler portrait of herself was painted on the surface of her mask. This performance, this presentation of herself, was not that of a wife, disappointed and disgruntled. She often tried, at least at first, to project some other, more peaceful version of herself into the situation to diffuse the potential for confrontation between them. So, whatever my dad saw when he walked in the door, this was not my mother’s truth. It was a mask, a performance. The dialogue, and the blocking, were an exercise in avoidance. She seemed to decide that this man was not deserving of her truth, and that the easiest way to get through this moment, this evening, this marriage, and perhaps this lifetime was to keep him out and communicate from behind the mask.