II. 

Qui es veritas?–Pontius Pilate

“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.”

“Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!”  Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Chapter 2:  “Shut Up Shuttin’ Up” 

(as said by Bugsy to Bugs Bunny 

in the 1954 Looney Tunes animated short film “Bugs and Thugs”)

Lakewood, OH

1966

I came to lying on my back on the hardwood of our living room floor, looking up at a slender young woman with short blonde hair. She wore green pedal pushers and a faded gray sweatshirt with torn sleeves that revealed pale but strong-looking forearms and large hands. Someone was shrieking, “Shut up!” over and over. 

As I gazed beyond her looming, stern face, the mouth whose lips seemed to taste something bitter, the eyes resolute behind brown cat-eye glasses, to the ceiling light fixture above her (a brass disk with paisley designs and irridescent, tear-shaped lights that reminded me of a face, and which I later thought of as a Medusa), I realized it was me who was screaming. I wasn’t in any physical pain. I must have told her to shut up. Whether she’d given me a spank or I just threw myself down on the floor and let loose with a tantrum remains unclear.  

The woman was my mother.