Fetal Despair

fetus

A French psychoanalyst argues that narcissism is a powerful, primitive, archaic, dangerous and regressive desire to return to the womb.  The narcissist wants the world to respond positively to his every wish, desire, need, and ambition.  And where could such a desire every have come from but the womb?  One was fed without moving; one dumped without worry.  One was sheltered from the elements and the temperature was just right.

 I may be a narcissist, but I am not one of this type.  For, as I like to say, my woes began in the womb.  I had a premature leg up on misery.  My mother had the “RH factor.”  And because of it, when my body began to produce its own independent supply of blood, my mother’s blood attacked it in a form of allergic reaction.  My blood was friendly and did not attack hers. I was but a mere fetus and utterly outgunned by my mother’s crazed immune system.

What could I do?  Instead of growing stronger and stronger, more and more vibrant and energetic as the moment of my birth approached, I became weaker and weaker and weaker.  I have to believe that this experience accounts in large part for my negative take on existence and my anxious fear that whatever lies in the future will be even worse than now.  For, as I approached the light, a heavy darkness spread through my physical being.

I was born prematurely and weighted less than 6 pounds.  Also my complexion was yellow from jaundice; I was topped off by a stock of orange red hair and one of my ears was broken from a too forcible application of the forceps.  My father felt some mistake had been made and perhaps my unearthly appearance at birth is partly responsible for my mother’s belief that I was “Satan’s spawn sent to torment her.”

 While many problems attend being the first born son of a first born son, I was lucky in a way to be first.  The “RH factor,” as antibodies build up from one pregnancy to the next, gets worse with each child.  My brother survived but had to be completely transfused.  The third child—a girl, my sister—lived just a week.  I can only imagine the deep darkness spreading within her as she approached her too brief sojourn in the light.

The Show Must Go On!

I was a sickly child.  My parents worried I would be a runt.  At night I would wake up to find them rolling me over on my stomach and shining a flashlight up my a-hole to see if I had worms.  Apparently the worms came out at night.  We walked around barefoot all the time and stepped in manure and chicken shit, the kinds of materials that had worms.

 community houseI had a part in a Christmas Pageant at the community center.  Halloween things were held there, apple bobbing and pin the tale on the donkey, and in the summer picnics.  Everybody brought fried chicken and potato salad.  Once at a picnic I looked up from a chicken leg to see little Tommy Byrd standing directly over a washtub full of ice tea with his pee-pee out.  I was not the only one, but it was too late, as little Tommy let his stream fly.

 I don’t remember my part at the Christmas Pageant.  I had a costume though, and I liked doing that sort of thing.  But this time, I knew I was sick.  My ear hurt like hell and I was pretty sure I had a fever.  But I didn’t want to upset the apple cart because that would upset my mother.  She had made my costume, and I didn’t want to let the other people down either.  So I didn’t say a word about my ear or my throat that was getting sore.

After the Pageant, a lady looked at me and said, “My, that boy’s color doesn’t look good.” And then she felt my forehead and said, “This boy is burning up.”  I was at 104 when they took my temperature; then it went up to 105, and by the time the local nurse arrived it was up to 106.  I don’t know if the local nurse had any nursing training or not, but I expect she did.  She lived by herself in a little trailer and was always there to help with a stomach ache or a burn or a cut off finger.

 She decided to take direct and vigorous action to break the fever.  They were worried about potential brain damage.  So she decided to give me an ice water enema.  I had never had an enema and didn’t know what that floppy red bag full of water was for or the tube either.  But I soon did and was astonished.  The adults whispered to me, “Now hold it as long as you can.  Hold it.”  Because the longer I held it in the more effective it would be.  I thought I was going to burst open right there on the spot.

I jumped out of the bed and, covering my nakedness as best I could, I sort of ran and sort of shuffled behind a curtain where the chamber pot was.  After that all was darkness.

They said they found me still sitting on the chamber pot and fast asleep.  The dump must have taken it all out of me. But the enema broke the fever.  I didn’t suffer any major brain damage that I know of; though that night my left ear drum ruptured, but with only the slightest loss of hearing.

Eventually I had to have my tonsils taken out.  I was getting strep throat and was infecting myself over and over again in a way that somehow involved my tonsils.  We went up to the hospital in Greenville. The doctor said count backwards from ten.  I don’t think I got to eight.  All was darkness.

I woke up feeling pretty shitty.  My mother stuck her head in the door acting all cheery and asked did I want some ice cream—like I would be all overjoyed by that—and did I want chocolate or vanilla. I said, “Go to hell!”  My mother denies I said that, but she lives in denial, so who knows.  I know for sure it’s what I said in my head.  I also knew it was a bad thing to say because the first time I had told them to go to hell, they grabbed me and washed out my mouth was soap.

As Freud says, civilization progresses with a sword in one hand and a bar of soap in another.  That’s civilization for you.

An Errant Bicycle Spoke

fordschooold

The Ford School was built by the Mill for mill kids who lived in places built by the Mill for people who worked at the Mill and who, as tenants in mill homes, were charged an arm and a leg.  The Ford School somewhat lacked in amenities.

I don’t remember that we had recess proper.  Rather we were sort of released, after lunch, especially, to run around in the large field adjacent to the school.  The big kids had a baseball diamond if they wanted to use it.  They had a backstop and three bases, not tied down, a couple of bats, so if somebody brought a ball they could have a game.  The little kids had nothing much to do but stand there or play tag.

 Occasionally one kid would knock down another kid in the middle of the grassy field and yell out, “Nigger pile.” And the kids would all go and jump on each other, making this sort of mound of kids.  I was in it sometimes though I made sure I wasn’t on the bottom because I didn’t want to rip or stain my clothes.  That would upset my mother, who said daily that money didn’t grow on trees.  We would all be there wiggling like worms, saying get your elbow out of my face, or who farted, and then somebody would yell here he comes, and this big fat kid, who saved himself for last, would come and jump on top of the pile.

 One day after school, while we waited for the bus, we were playing tag.  I was “it” and I tagged this other kid who tripped as I tagged him and fell right over just as a bicycle with a number of spokes hanging out passed the kid’s head.  I didn’t put it all together, the bicycle and the spokes, till I saw this jet of blood shoot a foot in the air from the kid’s temple.  One loose spoke had gone straight in there; and given the tiny size of the puncture and its neatness, the blood shot up and out with each beat of the heart as if coming from a squirt gun.

My bus was there and I had to go, but I saw enough to know that an adult had taken over the situation.  I didn’t know anything about anatomy and thought maybe I had killed the kid.  He would die of too much bleeding or maybe the spoke had gone right into his brain.  I was scared to death. But even before I got home, I knew I would just have to wait till the next day to see if the kid was alive.  And if he didn’t show up the next day, I would have to ask somebody where he was, though I didn’t know who to ask.

I couldn’t tell my parents that I thought I had killed the kid. I couldn’t even really imagine the repercussions of that.  Mother would go into frenzy.  Father would become furious.

“Boy Upsets Mother by Killing Mill Kid in Freak Bicycle Accident.”

“Mother Testifies:  I did all I could.  You don’t know what I have to put up with.”

 “Father Reports:  He wasn’t right from the very beginning.”

 I had a pretty restless night.  The next day I was overjoyed to see the kid with this huge bandage attached to the side of his head.  They had even had to shave off some of his hair, which stuck out every which-away, to make sure it stuck.

 Our eyes met, however briefly.  He recognized me as the kid who had pushed him, but he didn’t care really.  He had an air of weary impassivity about him, as if he knew that having to contend with errant bicycle spokes would always be part of his life.

Treed

My mother did not spank us boys much.  She was pretty slow for one thing and not at all given to physical exertion of any kind.  I don’t think she thought it was ladylike.  But in the summers especially, she always kept a switch, which she would occasionally ineffectually apply, on top of the refrigerator.

Sometimes, if we were not acting in ways to her liking, she would take down the switch and say, “My, but this switch is old and all dried out.  This won’t do.  I want you boys to go out right now and get me a proper switch.”  Something about going out to get the instrument of your own destruction really upset me. So we would go out and get and switch, and she would look at it and say, “This is not a proper switch.  It’s not long enough and it’s all dried out.”  Or:  “It’s spring. Aren’t there some switches out there with buds on them?  They really sting don’t they?”  So we would have to go out and get a switch with nice little green buds on it.

The worst for me though was when I did something that bothered her and she would say, “Just you wait till your father gets home.”  A good portion, but not always—sometimes she would just forget she had said it—this meant I would get a whipping.  If she said this late in the day, it wasn’t so bad, because my father would be getting home soon and the whole thing would be over one way or another.  But sometimes, she would say it early in the day, and just thinking about him coming home to beat me would ruin my whole day.

One day, when this happened, something got into me and I climbed up a tree.  I had not thoroughly thought out my plan, but it seemed to be that if he wanted to whip me he was going to have to get me.  I was a good tree climber and got myself pretty far up a nearby tree. But I had not timed my climbing well and so had to sit there two hours before he came home.

I heard the car and he entered through the front.  But nothing happened.  Instead I heard the sounds of the table being set.  And then quiet.  They must have been eating.  I felt really hungry and knew I was licked.  Climbing up a tree is not a good escape plan.  I climbed down and went into the kitchen.  My father just laughed at me; and my mother she I had punished myself sufficiently.

I had to eat my dinner cold.  But I didn’t get a beating.  I thought that was a pretty good trade off.

Though my whole day had been ruined.