The Silver Belt
This story is about the bond between a mother and daughter taken to extremes.
(1)
In the psychiatric ward of a state hospital in Phoenix, after robbing a bank five years prior, long ago having confessed to murdering her husband, and believing herself a witch of a natural kind, was an elderly woman of 74, Mrs. Maria Ventura; not a copier of things like so many would-be cultists, but a real witch made of pagan vengeance. She was and always would be the “real deal,” as they say. After all, Maria had been the victim of Santeria as a virgin more than 60 years ago. The day that a song of perdition set its lyric in her head, an antiphon ringing in her ears. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
As her luck would have it, Maria, the old crone, was granted to step down from the state hospital in the care of her only living relative, her daughter, Eileen.
Along with Maria came her property of which there was little. Not any savings even, which the Venturas could have sorely used. Only Maria and her “homemade clothes”-sacks of drab color to Eileen’s eye, and her “writings”- scribbles on notepads taken from the hospital and a faux leather purse filled with sugar packets, stale pastries, and creamers from the hospital cafeteria; kleptomania being the lifelong guarantor of Maria’s financial disgrace. She had robbed a bank, after all.
A silver belt was the only possession that came out of the hospital of her mother’s that attracted her. When she held it, the belt was sturdy like industrial grade rope belying its delicate facade of inlaid silver and pearl, with wispy white hair woven into the filigree of pearl and silver.
It’s fitting for an amateur writer feeling the tension to write, writing about an object known for its tension. The belt is also often associated with punishment. It whips and it binds, it can even tear flesh. The belt is a great device for magic and metaphor. Eileen gave me the gift of her belt, somehow. And though I knew her little I miss her.
“How’s the self deprecation going, mother?”
“Well you know me, I can’t hardly help it...”
“The doctors think you should try to help it. Are you doing that, mother, are you trying?”
Maria looked distractedly away from her daughter, watching the pigeons fly about the gazebo under a blazing noon day sun, busily rolling cigarettes hoping her daughter would stop bothering her with...questions. Ironic as it was, the self deprecating tendencies of mother were unlike daughter. Far from the tree did Eileen’s apple fall. No hypocrisy was lost on the two, only that they had bigger fish to fry than to attend to every little detail, especially ones as tedious as minatory peccadilloes. Nothing more insignificant as hypocritical mannerisms.
However much the daughter of the demented wanted for her mother to ‘get better’ (whatever that means) she wanted equally as much, if not more (after all, who isn’t selfish) to become a spotlight figure in the stand-up racket. How much Eileen was willing to do to make her childhood fantasies a reality remained to be seen, but she had all the desires of a Star. If not more.
Secretly, Eileen has always admired her mother for her stark views, and, especially her self deprecation. If not for her mother’s ability to verbally abuse herself, Eileen would probably never have found that her mother was quite the natural comic. Whereas, she could only hope to become funnier with disciplined practice.
I met Eileen at a club near my business I go to to hand out flyers. I remember she was full of life like an escapee trying to experience all they had missed. Later I met her mother. Maria used to come strolling through my store with her daughter. I notice these things. You have to notice these things in my line of work, otherwise you get robbed.
Part of her delusion involved the erroneous belief that Maria had had her chance at fortune stolen from her. It was ‘them’ who had her husband killed under mysterious circumstances and also ‘them’ who made her lie and steal. Always ‘them’ making life difficult for Maria to get by.
Just as ironic as the mother daughter pair wanting radically different things from life than they were prepared for, both were blind to see how these incommensurate desires would be to their mutual benefit as to their destinies. Both wanting what they could not have; the oldest story ever told, and least understood. Love.
This isn’t made up, mostly. I don't want to tell you otherwise. I've known many such people who are quite sick and very delusional. It’s part of retail.
A bit of historical precedents about the family Ventura for further understanding:
Gino was never talked about, not because he was off limits, there just wasn’t much to say about someone who’s been dead the majority of your life. Gino had been involved in grand theft auto and petty theft on and off for most of his life. It’s an empty space without room, the topic of Gino, and the less cramped either felt, now that they would be living together, was welcome.
Eileen was no spring chicken, a vexing thought she gainsaid to herself against the probability that she would ever be able to quit her job at CarMax to become a professional comic. Looks were always important, and that is ever true of the entertainment industry. Nothing more than dreams set to stone for the daughter of the old crone.
Before going to pick up her mother from the hospital, a trip made once a week for the past half decade, Eileen wanted to treat herself to some much needed retail therapy in her favorite thrift store called Taxicab, my store. It was a very trendy spot where one could find vintage tees and some nice jeans. Jewelry was harder to come by.
Eileen found herself unable to think at all about the rack of leather jackets in front of her. Her mind elsewhere, on Maria’s, I would think. Her hands were shaking and she left the store empty handed, anxiously on her way to get mom. I didn’t get a chance to say bye.
(2)
Eileen looked cute in a sleazy way; she had always looked this way as far as she could remember. Always attracting the wrong attention from the boys when she was younger. It was her chest mostly that did it. Also, her libertine attitude, but it was mostly her chest. Her’s was an ample bosom that she took full advantage of to woo the boys as a girl and to fuck all the management with as an adult.
However, none of her promiscuity resulted in the stardom Eileen so assiduously sought to attain during the small hours of the weekday nights, when crowds are their sparsest and the conversation has grown mute.
It had always pissed off Maria, the utter lack of class she had been able to pass on to her kin, all the while ignoring her own role in her daughter’s supposedly distasteful DNA, placing full blame on any irreconcilability with her dead husband, the disgraced Gino Ventura, criminal and amateur heavyweight boxer. Maria was certain that she had cursed Eileen with lesbianism when Gino had wanted a son and instead received a girl from their matrimony. It was only fitting that their daughter would become so unfeminine. This was a common source of conflict and struggle between the mother and daughter.
It was a source of anger and pain for Eileen that she hid from her cruel and thoughtless mother. What business was it of her mother's whatever her proclivities were? They could not have a civil conversation about the topic.
Eventually, Eileen turned it around, made the neurotic obsession about her sexuality and appearance a thing to be mocked and belittled. Where better to mock one’s hopelessly uncouth parental situation than in front of, in the age of oppression, a comedy club?
Their dysfunctional commensalism continued when Maria was discharged from the state hospital. Not more than a minute out before Maria concluded, in her mind, that she would never be going back there. Not for the rest of her life. She would never return.
During the day, Eileen tried to avoid dreaming of the spotlight, making it a challenge of acting and willpower. And it paid off, to Eileen’s mind, in dividends. She was able to meet a lot of people in her line of work as a sales associate for CarMax. It was how she had met her ‘manager,’ and how she had also met, most recently, a club owner who she sold a nice used corolla to, for his daughter’s birthday. He was divorced, but that was a lie. He went around ringless whenever he was away from home or the club in the city, and he commuted long distances between the two. She told me all this just like she told me about her mother. I just smiled and nodded at her, thinking she was just putting me on. Then she showed up one day with Maria.
The Ventura women spent most days watching game show reruns like Last Comic Standing. Maria preferred old comics like Lenny Bruce, Carlin, Cheech and Chong-all the racist shit that doesn’t fly any more. All the comics are crap to Maria that Eileen shows her.
“Women aren’t funny,” said Maria. “I don’t know why so many of these people try so hard. It’s pathetic of them to look so smug but to also be so mediocre...it’s hard to watch, dear.”
“Then don’t watch, mother,” sneered Eileen. “We can each watch our own shows. We’ll record all the programs, okay?”
“Fine. Whatever. None of that makes any sense to me. Too many menus...”
“Alright, we’ll watch Netflix. I’ll show you what people find funny now.”
See how old school Maria is? I’m assuming it was like this at home. Whenever they came through my store Maria was leading the way and would force Eileen to try on hideous clothing combinations. I think she just wanted to watch her daughter get uncomfortable in public. Eileen didn’t have to do it.
Maria was a tough case. She made almost no attempt to be agreeable, and given the chance, she luxuriated in the discomfort of others when discussing politics, sex, and other taboo topics.
It was no secret between them that a horrible event had taken place out in the woods up north in Green-bay, when she was a young lady, that Maria had been kidnapped and raped. Her torturers were never found. Rather than assimilate this tragic circumstance into the painful and confounding act of pointless violence it was, she made of its vicissitude a weave from which all her later experiences were directed back to, as the day she was turned from an innocent into a tactical, calculating, termagant. A witch made of a broken psyche, and a man eater.
Eileen could not turn from her mother, though she had always fantasized of doing so. They were bonded as only mother and daughter can be; even as the death of Gino weighed itself on the seat of their demented relationship.
I’ve delayed a long while about the belt. I know. You’re upset like me that the belt is yet to be of use. The next bit I found out from one of my employees who knew the mother and daughter even more than I did.
When her mother did finally pass away, Eileen was unmoved, nothing could be expressed. She was not a gifted speaker and was given to the expressions of people half her age. A pit of loneliness was growing, being troweled through her heart with guilt and remorse.
Maria died after insane stories were told over and over about why she had to kill her husband and why she has always had to be so religious to ward off too much of her “natural witchery,” as she liked to refer to her illness.
Maria, in a paroxysm of animal rage, attacked Eileen, lunged from her recliner at her daughter, going straight for Eileen’s neck. She was choking while trying to also choke. Eileen quickly won out to the pathetic attempt of her mother to lay one last beastly claim on earth before being sent away from here.
I found this all too believable. I’ve been choked plenty of times. It takes very little pressure to begin the process of leaving this earth…
In a state of grief somewhere between denial and acceptance, after the rage wore itself down, Eileen began wearing her mother’s silver belt. Its sturdiness was that of a girdle; it’s weight that of a feather like Maria had been before death. Now it would be Eileen’s belt.
Life continued as it always had for Eileen after the passing of her mother. With pride she sold used cars while silently wanting to make people laugh.
Humor: Eileen’s Achilles heel and her greatest want. “Eventually,” she thought to herself, “I’ll make ‘em laugh.”
And just as quickly as she spoke these words internally on her way home from CarMax did an internal response come.
“No, you won’t, dear. You’re not funny.”
Eileen almost swerved off the interstate when she and her mother answered her thoughts from inside her head.
It was from this sensitive locus, Maria chose to sink her teeth into her daughter. The witch had gotten bored in her daughter’s body, finding entertainment value in her daughter’s discomfiture.
“I’ve always told you not to try to be funny. You don’t have it, dear. But I know you’re stubborn and will probably try anyway.”
Her mother never left. All that Santeria, you know. Crafty old broad that she was. A wild case of enmeshment.
(3)
When they used to venture out from the house, which seldom they did (aside from going to CarMax, the club, and thrifting), the singularly contained Ventura women would bicker with each other until one was worn out. Always Eileen. Ghosts don’t get worn out like humans.
“It was your father, dear. I have to keep reminding you of this because you won’t accept it. We’d both be dead a long time if I hadn’t done what I did.”
Eileen was silently driving home from CarMax, eager for the night’s stand-up showcase at the club. There would be scouts looking for talent.
“Are we chafing again , dear? I told you to pick up some ointment. Time to start taking care of yourself.”
That was rich! What did the dead hag know about self preservation? What didn’t she know? Was the witch not still right there with her daughter, a growth upon her psyche?
“If I didn’t make you kill me-“
“I didn’t kill you mother! You attacked me and then you had a heart attack. So just shut up about dad. I don’t want to hear it!”
Eileen made sure never to speak out loud in public, but in her car she was not so clandestine about her mother’s ghost. She was willing to risk looking crazy in her car in a world of other crazies in their cars, some of whom had bought their vehicles from her.
You probably talk to yourself too, when no one’s looking. I imagine that whatever was happening inside of Eileen must have been like this. Probably a lot of headaches, too.
As a part of her illness, when she was alive, Maria was convinced that she had been raped by Eileen’s father, that she had been pregnant several times before she had Eileen by the Cultists out somewhere in the Green-bay woods. And that this was the reason that she had had to murder Gino all those years ago when Eileen was still a baby. Gino had to die because ‘they’ told her it must be so, her voices.
Eileen’s mother beleaguered her day and night, chastising the way that she held herself in public, the way she spoke to the bank teller and the cashier at the bodega. It was all so much trash talk Eileen had never herself experienced by a heckler inside or out, except for her mother, the witch.
I can only assume poor Eileen was being bombarded at all hours with her mother’s delusions. It was probably like being injected with mescaline on a timer.
Yes, Maria berated Eileen every time she forced them both on stage. Eileen, stubborn as she was, would not say ‘no’ to any gig no matter how small or absent the profit. Exposure was always the name of the game and still was. She was perfectly happy performing gratis when she knew it would piss off Mommy Dearest that much more.
“No, you fool! You can’t give it away for free like this! Look what happened to me for not being more protective. ‘They’ will come for us, dear. You can’t be this naive!” Maria stomped around Eileen’s skull, a sulky brat.
Slowly, the money began to dwindle. Eileen lost her job at CarMax after screaming at some customers to just, “Get in the car and drive far away!”
The only club that would give her time on the mic was Haskell’s. Bart, the manager, the one she had slept with a year ago, could barely even look at her now. She had become rundown in a very short period.
A ghost of herself walked across the stage ignoring the jeers and the booing. Eileen spoke as if drained of her personality. Then she walked away after five minutes of flailing, out of the club without a word and continued home.
“I can show you a joke, dear. Let’s take off my belt. It’s feeling a little tight isn’t it? Good! That’s much better. They are here now with us, dear. Can you sense their presence? I always can.”
The self deprecating “ghost mom of mortifications past” became too much, as the two argued the rest of the night, and then finally Maria “showed” a wearied Eileen how she was able to kill Gino with the silver belt, and hanged them on the doorknob of the bedroom. Unable to kick free, Eileen self-asphyxiated.
The struggle was brief and labeled a suicide when the body was found a few days later by maintenance.
Epilogue
Wanting further life, the silver belt appeared in my thrift store, Taxicab. I saw the belt come in and immediately knew who it once belonged to. I just had this creeping feeling. My employee wasn’t there to verify. I can’t recall if I ever saw the belt on Eileen, but I tell you this, that thing was peculiar to the touch. Prickly.
Another girl, younger than Eileen, bought the belt as quickly as it came in, and had a brief conversation with me about it, where it came from. I lied. Merch has to move. Besides, I didn’t know for certain if it really was the same one. The tall, lanky tattooed merchant that I am isn’t sure who owned any of the stuff we were donated.
The girl, about 21, came in with a man. A club owner, who could have been her father if he hadn’t been referring to her as “baby” while kissing her on the lips the whole time. She giggled awkwardly at his flirtations.
Before the couple left with the belt she said thanks to me. I smiled and nodded. She blew a kiss.
“It’ll look great on stage tonight, anyway,” the girl said, exiting Taxicab Thrift Co.
“You a singer?” I asked loudly.
“Stand-up comic,” she yelled back before the door swung closed.
lol, the belt found its way into stand up eventually! genius, Colin!
And might I say, I hope the ladies got off on their way out, I hear dangling by a belt is a thing.
Very interesting read.