My Mother's Turtlenecks. By Wallace Kirkman. Age: sixteen.My mother loved my father and
hated her neck. She thought it was too... fleshy or something. If I hated my neck, I'd have it removed! But, she never trusted doctors. And so she wore turtlenecks... all the time. In every picture we have of her, she's wearing a turtleneck. She had turtlenecks in
every colour of the rainbow. She had blacks, she had whites, she had grays, and plaids, and polka-dots, and hounds tooth checks, and stripes, and mickey mouse! And even sort of a... mesh turtleneck.
I can't imagine her without a turtleneck on. Although ACCORDING TO FREUD,
I try to... Every moment... of everyday...We have a picture of me when I was a baby wearing one of my mother's turtlenecks. Hmf,
swimming in one of my mother's turtlenecks is more like it. Just a bald head... and a big shirt... It's very
erotic... in an...
Oedipal... shirtwear sort of way.
It's a rare photograph. Because I'm smiling. I never smiled all that much during my childhood... I'm taking lessons now, trying to learn again. But it takes time.
I stopped smiling when my mother stopped wearing turtlenecks. I came home... from a typical day in the second grade, to find her, taking a bath... in her own,
blood. On the kitchen floor. Her turtleneck was on the kitchen table, so it wouldn't come between her neck... and her
knife.
I then understood why she wore turtlenecks all along. To stop the blood from flowing. To cover the wound that had been there all along. They tried to cover the wound when they buried her with one of her favourite turtlenecks on.
But it didn't matter then. It was an empty hole by then. My mother wasn't hiding inside.
She wrote a note before she died, asking to be cremated. And I asked my father why she wasn't. He said my mother was
two women, and the
one he loved, would have been scared... of the flames.
I look at that photograph of little me inside my mother's womb. It's the closest I can get to security. There are no pictures of me inside my mother's womb... But her turtleneck... Her
turtleneck... is close enough.
The monologue 'My Mother's Turtlenecks' from 'Women and Wallace'.Thank you everyone who came and wanted to come for Theasthai, and for the everyone else who has supported me (by laughing at all my drama in class). I am proud and happy for my results.
I WILL POST BIO NOTES SOON AFTER THIS.
