(Illustration courtesy of esplanade.com)
When I was a kid, my mother often resorted to emotional blackmail. She had a stockpile; her all-time favorite was the story, The Rock That Swallows Mothers.
Once there was a huge rock on the side of a mountain in the middle of a rainforest. The rock had a long crack down the middle and was called Split Rock. If you sang and called Split Rock, especially if you were a mother with bad kids, the rock would open and swallow you.
A mother with a girl and a boy lived at the forest’s edge. Their father had died, and the mother worked all day, trapping fish in the river, gathering wild fruits and plants to sell, to feed her children.
One morning, she found a large fish in her trap. She went home and cooked the fish and rice. She told her kids to save some for her and returned to work. She chopped woody vines for firewood all day and gathered shoots and fruits. She dreamed of the mouthwatering fish. As evening fell, she headed back and when she got home, there was no food left, her kids ate everything! She was heartbroken. She ran out of the house called Split Rock; it opened and swallowed her, and her children never saw her again.
My mother got a lot of mileage out of the story. “Do the dishes, or I’ll call Split Rock,” “If you don’t help me, I’ll run to Split Rock, and you won’t see me ever again…”
One afternoon, she folded laundry on the bed and could not get us to pick up our piles of folded clothes. My mother did laundry on a low stool on the bathroom floor with a soap bar and a scrub. There were six of us in the family; she scrubbed a mountain of clothes daily. She rinsed them, squeezed the water, gave them a hard flap, and hung them to dry. It was back-breaking work. They were folded in neat piles on the bed my siblings and I shared. She reminded us about the rock that swallowed mothers, pleaded, and screamed for us to “pick up your clothes!”
That afternoon, my two brothers, my sister, and I were brawling, crashing around the house, breaking things as we kicked and punched each other, crying when we got hit, laughing when we landed a hit, farting on faces; my brothers especially, one held someone down while the other farted in their face, my sister and I wasn’t too much into farting on faces though we tried it once or twice. Split Rock Smitched Sprock, we’d heard the story so many times, it had worn off.
Suddenly, we heard: Spleeeet Rocccck! Our mother was at the edge of the bed, folding clothes and chanting, singing, crying. Her shrill, uneven voice pierced the room:
Split Rock, swallowing rock,
swallow me, my children don’t love me,
swallow me, they don’t care for me,
Split Rock, take me.
We stopped. I turned to stone/Split Rock itself, “hearing” my mom’s call. We all four froze. Then, we gathered our clothes, stuffed them in our cubicles, turned on the TV, and stayed small and quiet the rest of the afternoon.
When we were children, all four siblings believed with every cell in our bodies that we were responsible for her feelings, especially me, the eldest, we did everything in our power to care for and protect her. Sixty years later, my mother upped the pulling and tugging. My youngest brother is the most patient. Last year, my sister turned a corner and is second to my youngest brother’s ability to stay engaged. My other brother checked out about twenty years ago. He and Mom are neighbors. His wife and kids help care for her while he has zero contact with her. He looked the other way if he sat a few feet away, and she called him. I work at staying centered; it’s hit and miss. I remind her (and me) to go easy on the drama and too bad she is not a movie star, her ability to yank heartstrings is stellar.
