the day big mammy bit the big one

Oh no, what was Li'l Jamalyn going to do!

She had slept late due to an overindulgence in whiskey the previous night - having had a long cry at her terrible fate and slim opportunities. She got a good rage on as she drank and wrote several excellent threatening letters to those of her enemies she was getting ready to seek her revenge on. She was actually quite proud of those tirades - every part of speech was in perfect place, all insults brilliantly framed and her violence quite evident through her conjugations and castigation!

Jamalyn looked over at the Jack Daniels bottle and was shocked to find it almost empty! She had drunk the whole thing!

Big Mammy had been unusually restless during the first part of the night, moaning and mumbling. She had gone in to check on her and gave her a swig of whiskey with her evening pills, "just to help you relax a bit, Mammy," she had said. After a few more minutes, Big Mammy was snoring as usual and Jamalyn got to the dirty work of her verbal vengeance.

Big Mammy was not moving. She was no longer making any kind of gurgle, snore or snuffle. A huge pile of poo was leaking out of her diaper. She was clearly gone from this world of pain and sorrow.

"Goddammit Mammy!" Jamalyn cried out. "How could you leave me like this? What am I going to do?" She threw herself atop her cold, dead mother and wept - not in grief, but with the rage of a small child given to tantrums when she did not get her way.

She took the name of the Lord in vain again and again, as she got up to pace around the small, filthy apartment. She had to clear her head. Luckily, one of her cherished Starbucks Mocha Latte's was in the fridge untouched. Jamalyn unscrewed the top and took a long drink. She forced herself to calm and realized the next thing to do was get herself looking presentable, so a shower was in order. The water was hot this morning, and she washed the stink of whiskey, sweat and Mammy's death off of her, scrubbing hard, trying to calm down. As she watched the water drain down the hole in the ancient tub, a steely resolve came over her. She knew what she would have to do.

Toweling off, she then bound up her hair in an efficient bun, and went to find her old work clothes. If her plan were to work, she would have to be very fast and very smart. She needed to buy some time. Her first task was to go down to the market and buy some ice.

fat and lean - more stream of consciousness sketching

Nobody in the house was allowed to speak certain truths, that were - as the Declaration says - self evident (as in "we hold these truths to be," etc.) The proverbial elephant in the room was the absolute and incontrovertible fact that Li'l Jamalyn was not little at all. She was fat, and not just a little bit fat, she was at least five sizes too big for her own good.

At the dinner table Ole Pap was served first, then Li'l Jamalyn, ("Because she is the youngest now, you all shush! " Big Mammy would say.) Then the rest of the menfolk at the table and finally the girls. Not one of the children said a word about the fat little pixie dangling her chubby legs and "accidentally" kicking folks under the table, with her plate piled high while they had little more than a shred of meat and a teaspoon of potatoes. It was taboo. The elephant in the room trumpeted in triumph as the subject was never brought up. To do so would engender a beating, or worse.

Big Mammy was quick to point out the flaws in her daughters - all but Li'l Jamalyn. Though they were skinny as rails you might hear Mammy say things like "Lord have Mercy Sadie, your butt is so big that when you turn sideways it looks like you have two sets of bosoms!" I remember when she put her crooked old hand around one daughter's arms and while shaking her head remarked "No man is going to bed you if you have this fat on you girl. Get to cleaning and burn some of those calories off!" You need to understand that the daughter's arm was hardly as big as six inches around and she was in her late teens. Big Mammy made sure to instill a distorted body image in her elder girls, while building up the boys egos and never letting anyone say a harsh word about her darling Jamalyn.

The Diva was born in Jamalyn early on, and with nary a soul daring to correct it, as you might imagine, the Diva became a narcissistic monster who tipped the scales at well over 300 pounds. Still Big Mammy coddled her and gave her anything she wanted, even if that meant everyone else in the family went without.

Ole Pap divorced Big Mammy after all the children were grown and gone - all but dawdling Li'l Jamalyn. The poor guy did not have any more stomach for the horrific show that played out all day every day. And he had found some sweet young thing who doted on him and so it was time to make his escape. She only wanted him for his money, but that is another story altogether. Anyway, Ole Pap left, only to be tortured and tormented by the two women of his family left to him. Wracked with guilt and rage, he died rather than facing the mess. I guess that is one way to deal with things!

Poor Ole Pap, I wonder if he saw how gleeful Big Mammy was when she got the check left to her in his will? You could feel the earth shake at how angry his new wife was that she got basically nothing, except the duty of cleaning up the mess and tossing all his stuff into the refuse! The other kids just held their tongues and shook their heads.

Big fat Li'l Jamalyn suffers from the belief that her talents are magnificent and that the world owes her a living so she may shine her great light upon beings great and small. Like an enormous Marie Antoinette, she does not understand that others sacrificed so she might prosper - that others went without so that she might eat cake! It is a flaw in her character that runs like the Grand Canyon through her soul. It is tragic in that Southern storytelling kind of way - like the two gals in "The Glass Menagerie," whom the brother abandons in the end and leaves to the strange reality of their mutual madness.

Big Mammy made sure to eradicate Li'l Jamalyn's conscience. Mammy never held Jamalyn to the standard of behavior that was demanded of her other children - she never laid a hand on her baby, but liberally beat the others with all manner of things - shoes, paddles, woodens spoons, belts - she loved to smack her pretty daughters across the face, and cackled with glee that she never left a mark while inflicting the maximum of pain and humiliation! Jamalyn just laughed too - she knew Mammy would protect her and that she could get away with anything.

It is unfortunate that what all this privilege did was ruin a perfectly good human being. What Li'l Jamalyn might have been and might have accomplished was lost many years ago, when Big Mammy coralled her to be the breadwinner, caregiver and nursemaid. It was an odd marriage. In a way, Li'l Jamalyn never had a chance at a "normal" life - she was prepared from day one to be the poor thing she has become.

Pride is a dangerous feeling that we all wrestle with. I have never met anyone with so much foolish and false pride as Li'l Jamalyn. She believes in her own brilliance to the detriment of her ability to function. Because she believes the world owes her, she runs out on her bills and defaults on loans. The Mammy-Jamalyn monster sneaks around from place to place, trading off their identities and hiding from bill collectors. And of course she tells anyone who will listen that poor old Big Mammy was abandoned by her children - without filling in for the listener that she drove them all away. I hope she realizes that most folks have enough sense to observe the obvious - and that not one intelligent soul believes the story, but feel pity for the predicament of the two aging women while running away as fast as they can!

Jamalyn was fat and likely still is. She can't see it like the rest of us can - her eyes were blinded to it from the time she was a babe in arms. Maybe one day she will see through all the lies that are bound around her. I can see them now, wrapped like sticky spider silk that binds her in every direction. She hangs waiting to be devoured in Mammy's web. That was always the plan.

I shudder at her fate.

stream of consciousness sketching - Big Mammy and Li'l Jamalyn

If you live in the South, you are bound to know a few odd souls and are likely to find one or two hidden away in your own family. This is probably true for any locale, but we Southerners have our own brand of crazy, for better or worse. The works of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams are especially helpful in guiding the novice down the dark and dangerous paths that end in revelations of deep, disturbing mental illness, Southern style.

Neglect, abuse, molestation, rape, beating - why these are just the most unsavory things that get swept right under the rug and dressed up as literature. Patriarchy cries out its right to harm women, and no one blinks.

Mamas and daddies blame their children for lives gone wrong, failing to look at things squarely and place blame where it belongs - on the adults! And children who grow to adulthood, raised by such narcissistic miscreants repeat the same mistakes, failing to develop skills in self-reflection and indulge - instead - in placing blame.

Whew!

Li'l Jamalyn is one such Nutty Nelly, whom I had the displeasure of knowing up close and personal. She hated me so bad it made her blood boil. Luckily I was able to dodge most of her attacks and deflect bullets aimed in my direction. Big Mammy let her eat and eat and eat until she became big as a barn and the perfect weapon to fire at old Pap.

Lawsamercy some ugly stuff has certainly been bred and let loose by those folks!

That poor child was not looked after. She was left to her own devices, and a trip to her bedroom would reveal packages of food and old dishes left on the floor or under the bed, not picked up by Mammy or taken back to the kitchen by Li'l Jamalyn - but in her defense she was only 8 years old. She had knots in her hair because Mammy couldn't be bothered to comb them out. Her clothes were wrinkled and she went to school in mismatched socks - again because Mammy couldn't be bothered to find two that matched. That little girl was doomed from the beginning. And Ole Pap - well he was embarrassed and ashamed and instead of doing anything to help the little child, he ignored it.

Li'l Jamalyn ate and ate and got meaner with every passing day. She hurt anyone and everyone that had something she wanted. Most times she would sneak around and steal what she wanted but sometimes she would lie too. Since everyone felt sorry for her, she mostly got away with it. Nobody wanted to face the little fat monster, especially not the Mammy who created her - because she might come in handy as a crazy dingbat one day - bat being the most important part of the word - a weapon to inflict maximum damage on stupid, arrogant Ole Pap. And boy did that fat girl pack a punch!

Poor Li'l Jamalyn could not ever be trusted to tell the truth - in fact you could count on it that what came out of her mouth in a shrill tone that was always way too loud would be completely made up! Most of us were taught not to lie, but this did not apply to Li'l Jamlyn - she could say and do anything she wanted. She lived in the fantasy land of no consequences while the rest of those around her paid every day for her sins.

Ole Pap was smarter than the average man in many ways, but when it came to Big Mammy and Li'l Jamalyn, he was dumber than a stump. It's like his brains left the building and all that came out was blustering, sputtering words, arrogant in the extreme and punctuated by wild gesticulations. Ole Pap's high blood pressure must have gone up fifty points with every unfortunate encounter. Nothing ever changed though, and Li'l Jamalyn got what she wanted no matter what lie she told, who got hurt or that she in no way deserved anything but a good spanking.

Ole Pap and Big Mammy felt guilty down deep, you see. Because Li'l Jamalyn was the unfortunate and unwanted child. She was a mistake. Mammy had plans for her though - she would destroy her just enough so that she would never be able to leave home. Mammy clipped her wings while twisting her towards her heart, giving Li'l Jamalyn the belief that Mammy actually cared for her! It was sound strategy - Mammy had already written off her other brats, having spoiled them with freedom. She did not make this mistake with Jamalyn.

The years passed. Li'l Jamalyn grew as wide as she was tall. Mammy told her how lovely she was, how much prettier and more talented she was than her wicked sisters. It was a twisted reversal of the Cinderella tale - instead of a handsome prince, Mammy would reward Jamalyn with a thousand years of servitude, bind her in spectacular dysfunction and thus secure for herself a maid, a nurse, a cook and a scapegoat.

It is not something that is so rare, this parasitic kind of relationship between a mother and an unmarried daughter. I have known several of these pairs, though none as obscenely malignant as Big Mammy and Li'l Jamalyn. Those two take the cake! Instead of devotion to one another, they prey upon each other, and a demon serves up the other's entrails for them to eat! I have caught a glimpse of that unsavory beast, and he is one ugly sucker! How foolish these two are, that they don't realize the pact they have made with the devil they confess to despise! Personally, I think they were tricked, but isn't that always the way Old Scratch gets under the skins of we flawed and feeble humans?

Ole Pap passed away, leaving in the nick of time - things got worse once he departed for the great beyond. Mammy tried to let Li'l Jamalyn go, but called her back once she realized that aging was not going to be kind to her. Lil' Jamalyn could not get her life off the ground either, so it was just as well that she come home to look after Big Mammy. It is too bad that the sickness that lay at the core of their relationship had to blossom and grow - but when unnatural things get planted, strange fruits are bound to manifest. Such is the case with these two unlikely companions.

It's like each of them has broken limbs that the other one compensates for - or at first that was the case. As years passed and the dark dysfunctions began to show, their joined presence took on the visage of a multi-limbed monster. It was horribly crippled, yet raged with a voice so full of vileness and darkness that everything in the path of this "thing" withered right then and fell off the vine. To Li'l Jamalyn, this was love.

Oh my, no!
Oh yes, I am not pulling your leg!

What the Mammy-Jamalyn creature failed to understand is that love is very different than what they thought it to be.

(And we shed tears for the creature, it is so wounded, so desperate, so unable to truly be alive.)

I can see Ole Pap shaking his woolly head at my words, and see tears fall down his ghostly cheeks. He tries to explain that he didn't know what to do. He shakes his fists at the heavens and turns to walk back into the shadows where he lingers still. Ole Pap weeps for the monster. He knows he made it what it is too. He had a part in its creation.

So what will become of Ole Mammy and Li'l Jamalyn? What crazy things have they done that might be worth telling a tale about? Well let me think on it. I have a few tucked away in my head here, if I can just find the can opener to get them out with! I will have to hold my nose and carefully unroll the top, kind of like how you do a tin of sardines - and Lord knows, those stink!

For now I will let Big Mammy and her sidekick, Jamalyn sleep. I think they need their rest.