The turning point

I was in front of the computer screen as usual, but instead of writing my paper I was watching the Kardashians. My brain was in that half dreamy state when you just can’t focus on anything. I did try to write, but without success, so I figured that relaxing a little bit is better than going to sleep. If I go to sleep I most certainly won’t advance on the paper and if I relax … well maybe…

I was careful not to play the show to loud because my Godmother was watching television in the other room and we had already had soooo many talks on how I should “Just do it”. She couldn’t understand what a curse procrastination was, she couldn’t understand how I “just couldn’t”. So, I was hoping that she would believe that I was being a good student. It was my last year at the university and it would be stupid to blow all the good grades and opportunities.

I felt like taking a snack and, being in the Kardashian all’s happy and relaxed mood, I thought I could sneak over to the kitchen unnoticed.

By the time I was back she was in my room, sitting at the desk. My heart skipped. The nerves made me almost chuckle. The stupid nervous laughter was stopped by her stare.

“I really don’t know what to do… how to get through to you...” – she never yelled, but most of the time she held kind of a distance that would make me think she didn’t really care, like… she would repeat the same stuff but it sounded to me like she thought it was her duty or something, not like she honestly cared. This time… she was also calm but she looked at me in a strange way, and I could feel how present she was in that moment, how she was up to something.

I started with the usual excuses… “I know, Nat… it’s just that I couldn’t write… I just read… and I didn’t have any ideas.. .and I felt kind of frustrated so I figured, I’d relax, take a break...Look, I’ll do it .. you know I’ll do it as soon as deadline approaches… it’s just….my stupid… brain… doesn’t work”. Usually she would interrupt me right away trying to convince me how I have to try harder, how I could relax when I had finished it, how it was all easy for me… but that evening the silence was menacing…

She closed the player, opened a blank Word page and stood up.

“Anna, I want to see at least three pages by 11.” My stomach curled up in a ball, I felt an “or else” more frightening than if it were pronounced. A tiny voice of cheeky reason whispered inside me: “You are an adult,… come on..” As she was passing in front of me I started:

“But, there is no way I could write that.. I still haven’t read everything and…” the door closed behind her. I stood there, chocolate chip cookies in my hand, and a very strange feeling in my stomach…

Well, I thought to myself,.. I could try and write it… Brain fog gone, I sat at the desk and started thinking about the influence of capitalism on ecology… Suddenly desired desperately to impress her! Just like when I was a kid and she would come to visit us. She has always been a half goddess to me…

 She will read what I write, I have to make it brilliant. Search for papers online began… I started reading but I couldn’t get inspired to write… summarizing had always been so difficult for me… I felt so stupid.. and the “or else” was filling up my head. What could she do? Not speak to me?? She wouldn’t kick me out of the house… ground me…? I don’t go anywhere anyhow… and… I mean she can’t take the computer away, I need it for the studies, and I bought it myself… A story came creeping in to my mind… My Mom told me how she once witnessed Nat getting spanked by her mother… Mom and Nat were about to leave the house, dressed for a party, when Aunt Felicia (who’s not my Mother’s aunt, but Nat and my Mom were so close that they kind of adopted each other as sisters) returned from the neighbors’ earlier than the two 19 year old girls expected. Aunt Felicia was very patriarchal and she wouldn’t have approved of many things Mom and Nat did. Seeing her daughter “dressed like a hoocker” (quoting her) made her go ballistic in a second. “I had no idea what was happening”, my Mom told me. “I looked at Nat pale and scared, literally not moving as if frozen. Felicia went into her own room and the next I saw was Nat falling on the bed and belt flying through the air. Nat was sobbing in seconds and her legs already had a few pink straps below her bottom, the short skirt up on her lower back. I felt scared and helpless and… embarrassed… can’t imagine how she must have felt…” The belt was coming down on her mercilessly and she was crying out “Mo-oom… Mom… ple---ase”. Felicia didn’t say a word. When she was done I was crying as well, you know how Granny never even considered that kind of thing…I wanted go and hug Nat,  but one look from Felicia and I was out the door, Nat lying on the bed crying like a little child… As she opened the door for me Felicia mumbled… “If I were your mother…”  I thanked God she wasn’t. Nat told me the next week, ( she was, of course grounded), that she couldn’t believe it either. The last one was when she was 17 and caught smoking… but it felt different, being in high school…and this.. she said… it was so humiliating … and at the same time like… I wasn’t… 15 or 10… it felt like I was 5....especially in the end. And when I went to straighten up in the bathroom and looked at myself with the makeup …. I felt so ridiculous.”… that’s when my Mom, who never had any authority over me what so ever tried to sound all serious and authoritative which looked ridiculous on her. “Anna, I know how you adore Nat, she’s like the only aunt you ever knew and … I know you admire her… that’s why I consider it brilliant that you’ll be living with her, but be careful, hun… Nat is strict, you may not have seen that side of her, but trust me… I’ve seen it with her sister’s children… ”

My eyes slid to the bottom corner of the screen. Shit! It was 10:07! There’s noooo way I can make it!! Shit! Shitshitshitshit! Aaaaaaaaaa…

Ok, I’ll focus and I’ll write something… anything… she will probably have forgotten that she told me it was by 11… I mean Nat is so forgetful…always hundred things being planned.. and she always changes her mind… Ok… but I’ll do it.. like… for myself.. it’s not like I am scared… or something…

Ok, so… Capitalism produced over production… the products are not there to satisfy needs but tastes… ah… everybody knows that… oh.. I have to write something good… 10:15…

Advertising … advertising… oaah… I am so stupid why can’t I write…? I need references.. Ok, I’ll read and then I’ll just write when I have a clear idea…

10:48…. I had written one lousy page… OK, I give up… I’ll just go back to the Kardashians… she’s probably forgotten all about it, and tomorrow morning I’ll probably have some good ideas…

11:00 Nat entered the room with disappointment on her face and a belt in her hand. It was as if somebody yanked my guts, I felt I would pee right there… My lips started curling on the ends without my will… “Nat… I tried…” I gasped for air… my voice went up a shrieking pathetic childish…

“Yeah, I could hear how you are trying though the door. Obviously,… I have to do it… to wake you up… and I hate it…Come” (What does she mean??? What does she have to do!!??? I’ll pee, I’ll start crying.. I can’t move… I can’t even feel my legs… I am an adult I … am … an adult…. Say it… ) “I …a m….I am no… You can’t…”

She sighed… and walked over to me as if she had flown. She grabbed my upper arm and pulled me up like I had no will or strength. The belt burnt through my pajamas, once, twice. I yelped… it hurt! It went on... Sucking in the air every time.  I was surprised… I thought it would hurt only after a while but she was strong and obviously skilled. “Nat… please…” I felt idiotic for begging...  I tried to release my arm, go couple of steps back to get to the wall when the she started to speed it up. I was over the table. The belt hit the chair couple of times and it banged! “Stop… pleeeeeasee…. I’ll.. wri….te …(she went on without a word or slowing down... That's not how I imagined spankings... I had thought when you said you were sorry or promised... it would be over) I proooo … aaaaaaaaa…. I prooo … mise you… Nat .. pleeee…se pleeaaaaaaa.. aaaaoo….it huu-aaa--uurts pleeese”.  

After a couple of swats more she pronounces sternly and angrily: “It is supposed to hurt” with this she pulled me up, tears streaming down my face. When I looked at her … so cold and angry and distant… the tears started flowing even faster … I wanted her to hug me and tell me that she still loved me... I wanted it more than anything… My own sobs and pleading echoing in my head. I felt as if I were 5. So scared, and small and in need of love and protection…

“Now go to bed. Tomorrow when you come back you will be writing in the living room. You will finish that paper by the evening.” I went for a hug. She stretched out a hand: “No, you haven’t deserved it.” I was confused and desperate…Nothing similar had ever happened to me...I cried myself to sleep…don’t know what hurt more… I just knew I had to deserve that hug tomorrow. I skipped classes and went to the library and started writing. It was difficult to sit. Couldn’t quite say if it was itchy or painful or both but all of it reminded me so well of my goal.

When I came home, there was no smile to greet me. She was distant the whole evening but I knew what I was doing. By 8 pm I was almost finished, the whole 15 pages. She was preparing dinner. It reeked of cauliflower. I hated it so much I felt sick, but I thought she would not make me eat it when she saw I’d finished the paper.

“Nat, I did it! I wrote it…” I said with a proud smile on my face while the printer was doing its job. I hand it to her. She went through it fast. I knew her powers and I knew she wasn’t missing anything.

“It’s good. But,… did we have to go through that…?” I felt guilty, my head hanging…  I whispered “I am sorry” and I really was… I looked up, hoping for a smile. I almost caught a strange expression, half smile half wondering… and love, definitely love … but it vanished quickly. “OK, the dinner is ready”.

I felt what it meant. I knew there was no escape from it…. And… I felt it was going to be like that from now on… She will become the authority I had never had in life, and… I knew I was supposed to be happy, because I knew she loved me almost as much as Mom did… and I knew she was capable of seeing further than Mom.. and I knew that it was going to be good for me … someday… but I really hated cauliflower…

I started pouring the food going around the hideous pieces. She took the spoon  from me and there it was, in my plate.

“But, Nat.. you know how much I hate it”

“I hated spanking you as well”… and then she added… “but if it could help you eat what's healthy ,…”

I was on the verge of tears. Looked up and there was the “no negotiations” face.

In three weeks my grades went back up, almost all A’s and the situation was almost back to normal, except that I obeyed her far quicker than before and hugged her more than before… And I felt as if she had truly adopted me, as if she deeply cared… and it was that love what gave me wings …well for a short time before I started going back to my old habits…