History by Victoria Dym

She was infamous for having whiskey in her coffee cup while teaching. Mother would most days either fall asleep on the couch after her final two cherry Manhattans of the day, which I had learned how to make for her. Or she would beat me, with a hair brush, her stiletto heel, bookend, her fist, my belt—anything that was within reach when her violent nerve was triggered. I was often blamed, for answering the telephone (usually creditors), for talking back (children should be seen and not heard), for having chicken pox, for not cleaning the floor correctly, for anything and nothing at all.

~

The worst punishments were being thrown down the basement stairs (I thought I was going to die before landing hard on the cement floor), being thrown through a wall (there was a hole where I had been catapulted—a negative plaster ass cast, which never was repaired), and the day I had to place my hand intentionally in the car jam while Mother intentionally closed the car door (I lost my middle fingernail; it took 9 months to grow back, still is crooked to this day). When I was 13, she asked if I wanted to know the reason that I was born. She took me into her bedroom, squeaked open the nightstand drawer, and removed an old square cardboard box, with a cracked domed object inside. She explained that there was a hole in the diaphragm. I was a mistake. 2 years later, with a safety pin through the chest of my parakeet, Phoebe, I was warned, in Mother’s handwriting: Shape Up.

~

My father died when I was 19; he was 45. My mother threw herself on top of his body and blamed herself for the cancerous end. Her drinking worsened. After college, I moved to New York. When I called her on a payphone to tell her that I was pursuing acting, she called me a slut and hung up. She threatened suicide 3 years later and I moved back to Pittsburgh. There were 10 years where I did not speak to her. The family home, she allowed to go to Sheriff’s sale, after abandoning it, not paying back taxes. The day after the birth of my daughter, 28 hours in labor, my Mother came to the hospital drunk. She told me that I had betrayed her. Four years later, I watched her have a heart attack in the E.R.. A tumor had dislocated her shoulder. She was put on morphine. She asked me if she was going to die.
​
I said, yes.

---

Victoria Dym is a graduate of Ringling Brother’s Barnum and Bailey Clown College with a degree in Humility, a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Poetry from Carlow University. Her chapbook, Class Clown, was chosen as one of ten finalists in the Coal Hill Review Chapbook Contest, by Autumn Hill Press, and ultimately published by Finishing Line Press in 2015. A second chapbook is forthcoming in December 2017, When The Walls Cave In, also by Finishing Line Press. Victoria lives, writes, teaches, and laughs in Tampa Florida with her cat Mook.