This story was inspired by Alice Miller, Polish/Swiss psychologist, from her book, Drama of the Gifted Child (I stole the title from her), which opened my eyes and explained it all. It finally made perfect sense to me.
Drama of the Gifted Child
by Mykola Dementiuk
She had warned her daughter to stay in the kitchen and do her homework and not come into the living room until she was called, but as usual the little girl came in just as her mother hiked up her skirt, straddled her new boyfriend, and began to grope at his zipper.
"What?!" she screamed, breaking from her boyfriend's mouth, whispering Sorry! in his ear.
"There's no ketchup," the little girl mumbled, standing in the doorway, one hand twirling an unkempt pigtail, the other stroking a flushed cheek, desperate to suck a thumb which she knew would be slapped out of her mouth. Her mother had left her a lukewarm hamburger on the kitchen table -- heated in a pan, bun and all -- and though the little girl searched the refrigerator she couldn't fine the familiar tall bottle.
"Jesus Christ!" her mother groaned, sagging to her boyfriend's chest, whispering Sorry! again and clutching his shoulders. The boyfriend groaned and kept his hands on her mother's nylon clad thighs, gently stroking beneath the tight garter straps. The little girl stared blankly at them; it was as if she was watching a rerun of something she's seen lots of times before.
Her mother turned around. She stared at her daughter and sighed. "It's in a small jar," she explained slowly. "On the middle shelf of the refrigerator door."
She watcher the girl silently mouthing key words to herself, processing what she was hearing: small jar, middle shelf.
"It's also red," she continued, "but it's spelled C-A-T this time, CATsup; they were out of the K-E-T brand, and it's in a small red jar, ok? On the refrigerator door."
The little girl looked at her mother, pondered the rest of her explanation, mouthed a few more words, then her eyes brightened as if recalling something.
"Oh!" she said to herself, and turned back to the kitchen.
"And stay in the kitchen until I call you!" her mother shouted, turning awkwardly back to the boyfriend.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked.
"Nothing's wrong with her!" she snapped, then frowned and snuggled into his chest and once more groped for his zipper as he inched his fingers higher up her garters.
In the kitchen the little girl went through each jar and bottle on the refrigerator door, then inventoried the sparse collection through the rest on the refrigerator, but there was nothing even faintly familiar to the word ketchup or catsup or however else it may have been spelled. Why couldn't bottles be like cans, with pictures on the labels rather than just words? And the clear glass didn't always help: the label-less jar that was red was jelly with a mold growing in it; the white jar that did say mayonnaise was not mayonnaise -- as she had horribly discovered long ago -- but some kind of congealed lard one of her mother's old boyfriends used to fry potatoes and forgot when he took off; what looked a mustard jar was actually rotten egg salad that still another old boyfriend prepared and left uneaten.
The new boyfriend hadn't been with them long enough to start cooking yet. But she didn't lie him any more than the others. When he came by, or the few times he slept over, he was always grinning and looking at himself in the mirror and combing his hair and examining his nose and teeth and eyes. With only one full full-length mirror in the house -- a small mirror in the bedroom, and a small one in the bedroom -- she had listened to her mother and the boyfriend bickering countless times about hogging the big mirror, about being so conceited, about being God's gift to the other sex. When the boyfriend finally did give up his place before the mirror, satisfied with his image as being acceptable to show to the world (as if the mere fact of having looked in a mirror somehow improved and bettered the image staring at itself), the little girl's mother immediately assumed her place before the glass and stared and examined herself even longer and in more detail than the boyfriend had studied himself.
No, the little girl didn't like him, but at least in being preoccupied with himself he didn't pay any attention to her, unlike her mother's other boyfriends...like the one with the beard who made her put on her mother's bras, tightened and pinned them in the back, then stuffed T-shirts and panties into the bra cups and made her walk around the house with her fake big bosom until he said he was ready and she had to press her big chest to his crotch as he screamed and rubbed against her. Or the one who said he hurt his hand whenever her mother was out and she had to escort him to the bathroom, un-zipper his pants, reach in and retrieve his penis, and pulse it with her fingers until he also screamed and peed something white all over the toilet seat and tank...She hoped this new boyfriend kept looking at himself forever.
The little girl shut the refrigerator and returned to the table. By then the hamburger was cold, but she was hungry and took a bite. It was tasteless, dry, unappetizing; ketchup, or catsup, would have made it go down easier. It was a leftover from last night's dinner. The new boyfriend had taken them out to dinner, and though the mother and boyfriend drank their dinners in the back lounge, laughing, necking, and paying no attention to her out front, the little girl had two burgers, two plates of fries, two Cokes. She drank the sodas, ate the fries, but was only able to finish one of the burgers. Trying to wrap the uneaten one in a napkin, the waitress smiled and said, "I'll do it for you, dearie..." and brought it packaged in a little neatly folded doggie bag.
The little girl went back to the refrigerator.
"C-A-T," her mother had said. "Not K-E-T like the other times." C-A-T, C-A-T she kept spelling to herself.
"Like Cat," she suddenly said aloud, surprised she hadn't realized it earlier. C-A-T like Cat, she frowned, and stared at the shut refrigerator door. Was it a game her mother was playing? A trick to show the new boyfriend how stupid she was looking for a cat in the refrigerator? She sat back down. Were they making fun of her? Miss McCoy in school didn't do that. In the new class they put her in, none of the other kids made fun of her. In the old one they did....
A month before, the school had called her mother and advised that her daughter was assessed as a slow learner and would be put in a special education class so she could learn at her own pace and not feel as she had to compete or fall behind.
"It's not an indication of her intelligence," the teacher told her mother. "Some children simply take a bit longer to get started than..."
"Then what?!" her mother erupted. "Don't tell me my kid's a slow learner! If she slow maybe you should look at the kinda teachers you got instead of blaming it on the kid!"
She kept her daughter out of school an entire week before a social worker -- Ha! The creeps were called truant officers in her day -- called and said she was concerned of the little girl's absence from school, then hinted that the single-mother's welfare entitlements might be in jeopardy if the child weren't returned to class. The mother dragged the kid back to school the next morning -- the brat was a royal pain in the house all day anyway -- and dropped her with the warning: "Don't let those assholes put you in any slow learner's class, d'you hear?"
Of course the little girl was immediately placed in such a class. She immediately grew attuned to the small number of children, the comfortable, patient pace of the reading and homework assignments, the warmth, care, and concern of the teacher Miss McCoy.
It's not C-A-T! the little girl said to herself. It's K-E-T, K-E-T, and suddenly her eyes widened, her mouth opened and she grinned.
K-E-T! Just like on the bottle in the diner last night, and just like on the little packets she saw the waitress toss into the doggie bg.
The little girl darted to the garbage bin under the sink. A drawing of a little dog with his tongue stuck out peeked up at her from the crumpled paper bag. She opened the bag: two red packets of K-E-T-C-H-U-P! Two little packets M-U-S-T-A-R-D! And two green packets of R-E-L-I-S-H!
The little girl gleefully nodded her head and returned to the table.
"Ketchup," she said. "It's ketchup, not C-A-T-sup."
She opened the red packet and smeared the ketchup on the cold meat. It was delicious! She ate contently, ignoring the squeals and yelps and groans of her mother and the new boyfriend from the other room. The other packets she pocketed in her jeans for another time.
"Liar!" she smacked her lips. Liar, liar, pants on fire! She chewed, and mumbled, "It's Ketchup, not Catsup." She was going to tell Miss McCoy. She couldn't wait.
****
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