“Good Mad, Bad Mad”

by Andrea Marcusa

You remember the day your mother rolled down the window, yelled “Go fuck yourself,” at the bus driver cutting her off on Railroad Avenue, and she told you about getting mad. She sucked her straw to reach the melted ice in her cup, gunned the car, and then said that the good kind of mad exploded inside you—the bad kind ate at your heart and couldn’t find its way out. “Sometimes getting mad is a good thing. If you get mad enough at the job, you can work harder and its over sooner.” The good kind came with a fist pump of victory, a slam of a door, a middle finger thrust into the air and a force that, as a young girl, made you feel your Mom possessed powers beyond your grasp. The good kind could be beautiful: scarlet lipstick, spiky heels, a smile that could kill. The good kind involved action -- racing around with the vacuum cleaner, pressing hard on the accelerator, leaning on the horn, telling the latest man in her life to go to hell. 

The bad kind, she told you later that same day, as you carried the stack of towels you folded together at the laundromat back to the car, was sly. “Did you see the pout on the gal running the place?” You glanced back and saw a frowning woman slumped over a mop. You knew that kind immediately. Saw it on certain nights when your mother walked through the door from work. Those were the times you had to ask her the same thing over and over until she finally heard you. “When’s dinner,” you’d ask.  Wait, ask again, wait.  “Oh, yeah Emmie, din-din.  Soon,” she’d sigh. The bad kind showed up as a purple smile mug at the table. It didn’t hold coffee or tea. The bad kind turned into untouched chicken and rice. The bad kind turned into Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, American Idol. Curled on the couch, remote in one hand, mug in another. You can still see it all. You at the table where you did your homework, she surfing from channel to channel, in between sips. You’d wait for your mother to look over at you, just a tiny glimpse. Sometimes you knew the game show answers—like the country in Africa starting with Z, Zimbabwe and say it out loud. She barely noticed. The only movement, her hand raising the mug to her mouth. The only sound besides the TV, that of the screw top coming off the bottle and falling onto the floor. Your mother was usually asleep when you went to bed. 

You still remember that night when the good kind of mad first blasted through you. Maybe you were twelve. There may have been other times, but this is the one you remember. This storm made you take the remote from her limp hand and switch off the TV.  It pushed you to pick up the mug and pour out its contents into the sink.  It made you hide the bottle behind the refrigerator. It pushed you to shake your mother. “Wake up!” But she couldn’t keep her eyes open. You remember her smeared eyeliner, the coffee stain on her blouse, the gold chain that was losing its plating. She looked so tired. You didn’t understand how if the bad kind of mad was eating away at her heart that she could look peaceful. You didn’t sleep that night.  And many nights after. There were plenty before this, too, but you can’t remember them as well.

Then there was the day when you were eighteen and the good kind blew through you like a cyclone and you packed up and walked out. That last glimpse of her on her bed, big toes pushing through holes in her stocking feet, face slack, mug nearby, her yelling,“Get outta my face!” after you begged her to quit drinking, again. 

Now it’s been five years and that night still feels like yesterday. The door-slam, the walk to the bus station, your tear-soaked jacket collar cold against your skin in the crisp October air.  The quiet. You bought a ticket to as far West as you could get. San Francisco because that bus was leaving an hour before the one to L.A. One hundred and eighty-eight dollars from the money you’d saved from waitressing downtown at the luncheonette after school. 

Today, you’re in the tiny room you rent in a decaying house in The Tenderloin lying on your mattress, scrolling your phone for someone to call. It’s three am. You’re still a poor sleeper. You see your mother’s number and dash past it.

You imagine her still on that couch, even though it’s impossible, the purple mug beside her and feel that thing expanding in you. You are sure that it is the bad kind of mad growing in your chest, the one you keep pushing down, the one that keeps pushing back, harder and harder.

You want to ask your mother about it. Ask her if it’s the mad she warned you about, the mad you’ve kept away for years with slammed doors, middle fingers, and a few all your own: hurled beer bottles, dented fenders, strings of expletives, I quits. It’s never hard to get a new waitressing job.  You have your mother’s legs and slim figure. 

Tonight you think you have it all wrong. Those enemies outside – the ones you’ve dressed to kill, flipped the bird, hurled expletives and objects at, seem tiny compared the one that has suddenly locked itself inside you, spreading like a ravenous tumor.

You never bothered when you could to ask her about it. Never once on those rare calls home. Her voice flat, punishing even that time you told her about the big tips you made at the R-Bar. 

 Maybe if you had asked, she could have warned you. Tell you it’d get much worse once she was gone.