My mother wasn’t home yet from being in the city with the record-label delegation2 at thehotel, and I was relieved. It meant I wouldn’t run the risk of being provoked by her andMorgan together, and I especially didn’t want to use the little energy I had left to try andexplain to her why I just needed sleep. Thankfully, I also had my girl Tots as a buffer3. Aswe approached the house, I began to relax a bit. I thought, This is the house I purchasedfor my mother and my family to live in, to find comfort in. Now I was the one who neededit more than anything. I had designed a guest bedroom for anyone in the family whoneeded a place to stay, that I knew I could surely use now. I could already picture itsinviting warmth in my head. All I wanted to do was get a little bit of food in my stomach,get upstairs, close the door, and go to sleep before my mother got home.
As we walked in the house I was struggling to hide how wrecked4 I was, especially infront of my nephew Mike, who was still living there. He was just a kid and had alreadybeen through so much with his addicted5 mother. I wanted to spare him the traumatichistory that was pulsing through me, through all of us. But I was also beginning to panic,realizing I was now isolated7 from the city and my actual home. I didn’t have my driver, Iwas with Morgan, and my mother would be coming back any minute. They could bepoisonous and manipulative together. I felt myself swinging back and forth8, out of thehouse and back to the shack9. I was in their world now. The past and the present felt thesame—unsafe.
The house smelled of calamity and dog hair. I scanned the clutter10 and disarray11. (Inever liked the way my mother kept the house; that’s why I always had cleaning staff forher.) Like my father, I’ve always liked things really clean. Mess causes anxiety for me. Ibegan to put things in order, an activity I commonly do to recenter myself. I thought if Icould bring some order to the chaos12 in the house, even in a small way, that I could stay inmy body. But I kept slipping.
I’m not helpless, I told myself. This was the beautiful house that I had bought, created,and managed as an adult. I was not a little girl in a haphazard13 shack. I can bring order tothis. But God, I was so tired. Maybe, I thought, by some loophole of time and space, wereally were back in the shack. I needed to sleep. Desperately14. And I was starved. My mindagain began to race.
I went to the kitchen to see if I could scrounge up a little morsel15 to eat. Typically,when visiting my mother, I would bring all the provisions needed, including disposableplates and cutlery, to ensure everyone would have enough to eat and with an easy cleanup.
In the kitchen, I found the sink piled high with dirty dishes. I knew it would help toground me if I focused on a simple task. Washing the dishes—that would work. I’m gonnado this. I’m gonna do the dishes, I thought. I’m going to eat off a clean plate, then I’mgonna go to sleep.
Reaching to turn on the faucet16, I suddenly remembered. Six days. I haven’t slept morethan two hours in six days. My hands trembled as I tried to begin the task I’d set formyself. All I could hear was my heart slamming inside my chest. What am I doing?
Washing the dishes. Right. After what seems like an eternity18, I finally got one plate doneand placed it in the rack. Next I picked up a sudsy bowl, but I felt it slip through myfingers and clatter19 to the floor. I tried again: I got one done. I dropped one. Now I had toclean up the dish and water on the floor. The sounds of running water, clanging dishes,and people talking swirled21 together. I was frantically22 trying to clean up everything and getout of sight before my mother got home. I bent23 down to get the dish off the floor, and thelight went dim and the sounds started trailing off. All the space around me narrowed, and Istarted to fall away. I blacked out for a split second but was able to recover before Icompletely collapsed24.
I made it. The surges of anxiety were gone, but so was every drop of my energy andevery ounce of my will. But hey, if I couldn’t go to sleep naturally, passing out would dojust fine. With the help of Tots I stumbled up the stairs toward the guest room, picking upclumps of dog hair on the steps along the way (I was barely conscious, but my standardswere still awake). I was an exhausted25 refugee, and I thought that refuge was exactly what Ihad found. I collapsed onto the cozy26 bed, surrendering to its softness. Everything quicklyturned to a long-awaited dark, and I sank down into it. Finally, peace.
“Mariah! What are you doing? They’re looking for you!” A booming, dramatic voiceviolently pulled me out of the pool of quiet in which I had been floating. Lost andsputtering, I was wrenched27 into consciousness to find my mother hovering28 over me. Myown mother had woken me up from the first sleep I’d had in nearly a week! To makematters worse, she was waking me up to tell me that the record label was looking for meto get me back to work—as if, rather than being my mother and caretaker, she was somekind of agent for the machine that had repeatedly placed my earning potential over mywell-being.
That was the last straw. I really did leave my body. Something deep inside me rosequickly up and out of my throat; it was feral with seething29 rage.
“Well, I did the best I could! ‘I did the best I could!’ That’s all you ever say!” I roaredat her, imitating her exaggerated tones. It was a justification30 I’d heard from her, over andover again, for my entire life. After six days of being hunted down—six days of hiding,anxiety, and near demise31; six days of no rest; six days of trauma6—I had finally gotten tosleep in the house I’d bought, only to be awoken by my own mother. My mother, who hadfound so much rest for herself in that house I worked so hard for!
I wasn’t expecting a hug or a kiss on the forehead, homemade chicken soup or bakedcookies. I wasn’t expecting a warm bath. I wasn’t expecting a massage32, hot tea, or abedtime story. I wasn’t expecting any comforts a sick child might receive from a healthymother. I knew my mother didn’t have the capacity for that kind of maternal33 response;after all, I was the one who took care of things. I took care of her, and everything else. Iwasn’t expecting her to do anything to help me feel better, but I certainly wasn’t expectingher to wake me up! My rage took over. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t feel mybody.
As a survival response, I dipped into the depth of my sarcasm34 and made fun of her,viciously. Cutting to humor when faced with extreme stress or trauma had been a defensemechanism I developed as a child.
“Well, I did the best I could! I did the best I could!” I imitated her mockingly, overand over. I was trying to wake her up, with her own words, to the cruel absurdity35 of themoment. I knew it was wrong, but every filter I might have had to stop me had beenripped away.
I screeched36, “I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEEEEP!” All my fears, all myresentment, all the years of impressions I’d done of her behind her back—all my angerwas thrashing out with each word I hurled37 at her.
“Well! I! Did! The! Best! I! Could!” I shouted.
No one, and especially not my mother, had ever seen me in such a rage. Throughoutmy childhood, it was always Morgan and Alison who would throw hysterical38 fits. Theywould scream and yell and throw condiment39 bottles at each other. They would fight. Theywould shriek40 and threaten my mother or knock her out cold. My brother and father hadfistfights. But now it was my turn to let it rip. I wasn’t violent or throwing obscenities, butI was still going off, for me.
I was in an angry, hysterical frenzy41, but I was still also thinking about my nephewMike. I didn’t want to continue the sick cycle we’d all been through. I was standing42 infront of his door, putting my body between my mother, my tirade43, and his innocence44.
Before we arrived, I had asked Tots to look after Mike; I trusted her because of thecountless nieces and nephews she’d taken care of over the years. I never knew what couldhappen with my family, so she was behind the door comforting him. I was screaming,“This has to stop! We have to break the cycle!”
All the fear and fury I had bottled inside myself was now directed at my mother. Shewas in the center of the cycle I was desperate to break. My mother was finallyexperiencing the full bloom of my anger and was ill equipped to understand it ordeescalate it. She couldn’t even get the joke—on the contrary, she felt threatened andembarrassed by it. She shook off her bewilderment; then an iciness consumed her, and sheshot me a look that said, Oh really? You dare mock me? You dare threaten me? You haveno idea who you’re messing with.
When my mother feels scared, her complete assurance in the historic evidence thatwhiteness will always be protected activates—and she often calls the cops. At varioustimes, she’d called the cops on my brother, my sister, and even my sister’s children. Mymother called the cops even when she didn’t necessarily feel threatened. One Christmas, Ibrought my family to Aspen. It was the first year after I left Sing Sing, and I decided45 Iwanted to create my own ultimate Christmas tradition, so I took the whole Carey clan20. Forme, Christmas means family. I rented a house so I could decorate and have home-cookedmeals and we could sing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs if we wanted to, and I putmy family up in a fabulous46 hotel.
At one point we were all hanging out together at the house, and Morgan proceeded toget spectacularly inebriated47. When he disappeared for a bit, my mother turned directly toher usual dramatics.
“Where’s Morgan?” she bellowed48. “I can’t find Morgan!” Mind you, Morgan was athirty-something grown man, but still my mother was in a self-induced panic. “I can’t findMorgan!” She called his hotel room repeatedly, but there was no answer. So, what did shedo? She called the cops. My mother called the cops in Aspen, Colorado, to find mynonwhite, sometimes drug dealing49, been-in-the-system, drunk-ass brother. The cops cameto the hotel, and it was a whole big drama. She asked them to break down his hotel door,behind which it turned out Morgan was lying naked, butt50 up, passed out on the bed. Thenews spread like wildfire throughout the town, and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the lasttime Morgan and Cop Caller Mom were invited to spend Christmas with me in Aspen. Ireally don’t want a lot for Christmas. Particularly not the cops.
And so, that night in Westchester, she called the cops on me too.
The police arrived quickly, as they tend to do in white, affluent51 neighborhoods. Mymother opened the door. I heard an officer ask, “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
“Yes, we are having a problem,” she replied, welcoming the two white policemen intothe house. I could tell they kind of recognized me, though I was still in quite a state andlooked it. I had been passed out, asleep, for the first time in nearly a week. In a tumultuousemotional whirlwind, I had quickly put my hair into a bun. I had on leggings and a T-shirt(as one would, in one’s home, when one is trying to rest). I had somewhat pulled ittogether, because that’s what you do when there are police involved. But I didn’t have onmy superstar mask, which is how almost everyone knows me (except for the Lambs, ofcourse). Without all the wardrobe and glam, I did appear troubled, perhaps a little wild orunwell.
Though the officers were technically52 in my house, their attention was directed towardmy mother. She gave them an odd, knowing look, which felt like the equivalent of asecret-society handshake, some sort of white-woman-in-distress53 cop code. She had beendefied, and I had dared to be belligerent54. I was being aggressive toward her. I was scaringher. And they received her signal loud and clear. It was in their training. The code was inher culture. This was her world, her people, and her language. She had control. EvenMariah Carey couldn’t compete with a nameless white woman in distress. If I had beengiven just a day or two to rest, I would’ve woken up and been ready to make a video. Butinstead, here I was, standing in my mother’s (actually my) house with the cops.
The most terrifying part was that I was too worn out to feel my source. The negativeenergy of my mother, Morgan, and the police—the whole scene—blocked my light. Ineeded to see Tots. She had a big God in her life too, and if I couldn’t access mine, Ithought maybe I could feel hers. I believed she could somehow keep me safe in a sisterly,spiritual way. I was trying to hold strong to her, but she was also really scared of the cops.
And could you blame her? It’s totally understandable. She was the only visibly 100percent Black person in the house. After successfully keeping out of trouble with policefor years in the Brownsville projects, how could she explain to her mother that she’dgotten arrested in an affluent suburb and was in some upstate jail? Lord knows what theywould have done to her in there (this was way before #BlackLivesMatter and cell-phoneactivism, although even a movement hasn’t stopped most of the brutality). So Tots wastrying her best to keep herself and Mike away from the turmoil55 and out of sight. Againsttwo white cops and one white woman, in upper Westchester, Tots knew she was out-privileged and totally out-powered.
Given his long, turbulent history with law enforcement, Morgan was lying low in thelittle den17 we called the “Irish room.” No one tried to explain to the police that it was just afamily blowout—that everything was okay, and I was just overworked and had lost mytemper. I needed care, not the cops. But no one defended me. The only thing the cops sawwas a scared white woman in a big house full of nonwhite people.
Betrayed, humiliated56, and overwhelmed by reliving the neglect and trauma of mychildhood, I let go. Not that I had any fight left in me, but I knew better than to fight withthe police. I was done. Ironically, I was relieved that the police could take me away fromthis house of trauma and betrayal. My brother had lured57 me back into the same depths ofdysfunction that he, my sister, and my mother had dwelled in when I was a child. Mymother had stolen me from my sleep, then turned me over to the authorities. There wasnothing left to do but surrender. I agreed to be removed from my own house by the police,with one simple request—that I be allowed to put on my shoes. My family might havetaken my pride, my trust, and the last of my energy, but they weren’t going to get mydignity too.
I slipped on some heels (mules, most likely), neatened my ponytail, slapped on somelip gloss58, and got in the backseat of the squad59 car. Being hauled off by cops was certainlyno comfort, but I was defeated and needed to get away by any means necessary. The firmseat cushions and the bulletproof protection inside the car provided a twisted sense ofsecurity. My body was reminded that it was still in critical need of rest. Morgan slid intothe backseat next to me.
I looked at him, empty of everything, unable to accept what my family had just doneto me. I couldn’t believe it. I had to outsource my pain, to put the blame on a substitutevillain. I thought back to how it had all begun—when had things started to unravel60?
In a daze61, I whispered, “This is all Tommy Mottola’s fault.”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and he flashed that sinister62 smile again. “That’s right.” Henodded. “That’s right.”
We drove off into the darkness.
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1
calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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delegation
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| n.代表团；派遣 | |
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buffer
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| n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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trauma
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| n.外伤，精神创伤 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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clutter
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| n.零乱，杂乱；vt.弄乱，把…弄得杂乱 | |
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disarray
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| n.混乱，紊乱，凌乱 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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morsel
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| n.一口，一点点 | |
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faucet
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| n.水龙头 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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swirled
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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wrenched
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| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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demise
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| n.死亡；v.让渡，遗赠，转让 | |
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massage
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| n.按摩，揉；vt.按摩，揉，美化，奉承，篡改数据 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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screeched
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的过去式和过去分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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condiment
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| n.调味品 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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tirade
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| n.冗长的攻击性演说 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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inebriated
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| adj.酒醉的 | |
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bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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50
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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51
affluent
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| adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的 | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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53
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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belligerent
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| adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者 | |
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55
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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gloss
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| n.光泽，光滑；虚饰；注释；vt.加光泽于；掩饰 | |
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squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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60
unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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daze
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| v.(使)茫然，(使)发昏 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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