(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 crack down the middle and was called Split Rock. If you sang and called Split Rock, especially if you are a mother with bad kids, the rock will open, and swallow you. At the edge of the forest lived a mother with a girl and a boy. 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 kids. One morning she found a large fish in her trap. She went home, fried the fish, and cooked some rice. She told her kids to save some for her and went back to work. All day she chopped woody vines for firewood and gathered shoots and fruits. As she worked, she dreamed of the mouthwatering fish. In the evening, the mother 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 and 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, I’ll run to Split Rock and you won’t see me again…”
One afternoon she was folding laundry 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 bar of soap and a scrub. There were six of us in the family, she washed 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. Now they were all folded in neat piles on the bed my siblings and I shared. She reminded us about the rock that swallowed mothers and pleaded for us to “pick up your clothes!”
Normally we would have, but that afternoon, my two brothers, my sister, and I were brawling. We crashed around the house, breaking things as we kicked and punched each other, crying when we got a hit, laughing when we landed a hit, farting on faces; my brothers especially, my sister and I weren’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: Split Rock! There was our mother, at the edge of the bed, folding clothes and chanting/crying/singing. Her shrill, uneven voice pierced our home: 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; this was real shit.
I felt a chill and turned to stone like I was Split Rock itself hearing her call. We gathered our clothes, stuffed them in our cubicles, and turned on the TV.
From then on, even when we slacked on chores as kids, all four siblings in our own ways did everything in our power to care for and protect our mother. She still pulls and tugs today, though I remind her to go easy on the drama, and too bad she is not a movie star, her ability to tug heartstrings is stellar.
