I’m going to tell you a story; it’s a true story, and I tell it so that the world will know what kind of woman my mother was. I say “was” because she died in 1987, just eight days shy of her thirty fifth birthday, of a brain tumor. I was four years old. I’m not overstating things or being dramatic when I say that her death absolutely broke me. That’s because I have one bad memory with her that led my four year old mind to think that I made mommy die, that I am the reason she never came back. But that’s a story for another time, probably in therapy.
My mother was born in 1952 to Ukrainian immigrants who came through Ellis Island after WWII had left them with no homes to go back to. My grandmother, Babi, and my fuck wad of a grandfather, Dymitro, met in a Displaced Persons Camp. My grandmother had sponsorship to come to America; Dymitro (may he burn in hell) didn’t. So he romanced my four foot eleven inch tall (she was a dietary dwarf as a result of growing up starving during the Holodomor) thirty year old grandmother and convinced her to marry him. Thus, he got to come to America, too.
They settled in a Ukrainian community in Syracuse, New York and had two daughters: Mary and Terry. Terry was my mother. She had a very unhappy childhood: Babi had figured out that Dymitro (that bastard) had used her and he would regularly have extra-martial affairs and be violent. He once pulled a gun on the family and threatened to shoot them all. My mother’s school told her parents that she was most likely “retarded” (I think she had a learning disability or autism), and she struggled with making friends as her peers would make fun of her weight. Dymitro (I hope he chokes on a dick), learned English while Babi never did. One day he sued for divorce on the grounds that she was “unfaithful” (oh, the irony) and she, not knowing English, couldn’t defend herself. He abandoned the family completely.
Despite all of this, my mother went to college with the goal of going to medical school. When it came time to apply, she only had enough money to apply to two schools: both rejected her. She became so despondent that she dropped out of college a month before graduation. She got a job cashiering in a restaurant, the same restaurant where my father worked as a waiter. They eventually went on a date (picnic in the park complete with shots of vodka and a viewing of Young Frankenstein after), and they went on another date, and another, until they decided to move in together. He proposed one dinner over dessert (my mom had a notorious sweet tooth) and she said yes, on one condition: that he return the diamond ring and that they would get matching gold chains instead. Her reasoning? “I’m not getting married, we are getting married.”
So they were married and bought a 1916 house in Binghamton, New York. They had an extensive garden, a gray and white cat named “Sam”, and two daughters, of which I am the younger. Everything was good, until the town did something that smashed the sidewalk right in front of the house. I don’t know if they were removing a tree, or digging up pipelines, or whatever, but they caused damage to the property. This is where you will learn everything you will ever need to know about my mother.
She called the town and explained what had happened and asked that they send someone out to repair the damage. A date and time were set, and she stayed home from work to meet the man who would re-pour the concrete. The man shows up late, and he starts giving my mother a hard time: “the damage isn’t that extensive” or “I can just fill in some of the cracks and it’ll be good as new”, that kind of thing. He was just being lazy; he didn’t want to execute a proper job and certainly not at the behest of a woman, to boot. My mother stood her ground; the two of them went back and forth for a while, voices getting louder and gestures more animated, until the man finally agreed to fix the fucking sidewalk the right way: from scratch. As he turned to get to work, he said over his shoulder, “Are you happy, lady? You’re getting what you want!”
My mother paused and looked in squarely in his eyes. She said, “No. I gave you my name. And I’m not getting what I want. I’m getting what I deserve.”
Then she slammed the door in his face.
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