As my twenty-first birthday ekes closer, I am reminded of other birthdays. My tenth birthday (double-digits!) was my second combined birthday with Isaac and my mom went all out. She made three cakes, all shaped like balloons, using the star-shaped piping tip to cover each cake's surface with hundreds of little stars. She had made six practice cakes earlier that week and by the day of the party, her hands were cramped and aching but she had that notorious Mrs. Angelino smile plastered across her face as she presented all three perfectly primped cakes before the friends, family, and entire neighborhood in attendance. Each cake was a different pastel color (blue, yellow, lavender) with a coordinating curled ribbon attached at the end, and "Happy" "Birthday" "Gabrielle and Isaac" written between all three of them. Much food was eaten, steak, burgers, hot dogs, and then the staples that my mom made to impress company: stromboli (original Italian consisting of salami, pepperoni, ham, mozzerella and provolone cheese, tomato sauce, served with more tomato sauce, and the Philly cheesesteak stromboli, chopped steak with caramelized onions, grilled green peppers, and mozzerella cheese, served with tomato sauce-the "true Italian way"-or ketchup) and homemade pizza. Before I continue, I feel the need to remind you of who my mother really is. Boundless birthday parties came with chichi Christmases, extravagant Easters and vainglorious vacations, but a sense of closeness and happiness within the family was not the goal. After everything that's happened with my mom, I became obsessed with understanding why she's done all she has done. I spent many hours of many days at the Johnson County public library, searching for answers in diagnostic manuals like a monk does scriptures, seeking salvation from the cage of questions around my brain, around my heart. The words BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER popped up off of pages everywhere. All the symptoms fit my mom: recurrent suicidal behavior, inappropriate intense anger, impulsivity, frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. The list goes on, but one major symptom of borderline personality disorder which fits my mom even better than her pair of Seven jeans is identity disturbance. I feel as though my mother viewed her life as a show, she was the star, and we were the cast. She tried on different costumes, if you will, and assumed the role of the person who would wear that particular costume, and when she tired of it or found that role to be harder than she anticipated, she simply stripped that costume off and put another one on. She played the victim (impeccably well,) she did the whole single-mom-stripper thing, then she was saved (hallelujah!) and then she was a stay-at-home-mom which she tired of and became a working housewife with her at-home business. When she got tired of working again, she went back to being a stay-at-home-mom but she had to add a little zing to it so she decided to be a homeschooler. Then, she played the divorcee who was makin' it work as a new-found single mom, waiting tables at upscale restaurants in the city at night, seeing her kids off to school by day. But then she was waiting tables at upscale restaurants in the city at night and then partying until three am with coworkers ten years her junior, and having her kids see not only themselves off to school, but also the mysterious black dude sleeping on the living room couch. That's when she took on the deadbeat crackhead role she's currently portraying. You see, through it all, we were merely extras in her whole production. We tucked ourselves in at night through the single-mom-stripper thing, winced through the burns from the curling iron as she prepped us for church, kept our perfect Angelino smiles in place at all the right places, reheated chicken pot-pie while she was at conventions for her business, went to homeschool events with other homeschooled kids, and then...we were dropped. She's got a different cast for this new show. They're called ReeRee (?) and Mike and Mr. Ken (??) The point is, nothing was real to my mom. Nothing at all. Once, when I was 11, my mom came into my bedroom to wake me up for church and saw my left arm, so cut up and welted, dry blood smeared and crusting, it looked like ground beef. She shook me awake, and I looked into her eyes. Smoldering embers glared back at me. She grabbed my arm, pain flaring up instantly, tears stinging my eyes, my mind whirling in confusion. Why is she mad right now? "You better be wearing long sleeves today." she said and shoved my arm back, releasing me from the worst Indian burn of my life. All she needed was to assure nobody knew. That's all that mattered. And nobody did. I wrapped my arm in an ace bandage and gingerly led it through my expensive lavender V-neck sweater and she spoke nothing further of it until the next time she saw, which was before soccer practice, and she said the same thing, "You better be wearing long sleeves today." Never, "my-God, you're eleven, what is causing you to do this to yourself?" Never "let's talk about this." Just always "You better be wearing long sleeves today." My family was like a group of zombies who put on clean skin suits. We were rotting beneath, but always looked perfect. And that's all that mattered to Mom. My tenth birthday, like every other day, looked perfect. Because it was Isaac's second birthday, she did a little firetruck side-theme and made another cake, this one shaped like a firetruck, and she even had the fire department bring by a truck for the kids to go in and look at. Of course the scant remainder of the neighborhood who wasn't already there trickled out into the streets, pointing, mumbling, crowding around. People were taking pictures, lifting their kids up into the truck, making small talk with the firemen who were enjoying the plates of food my mom provided. The whole thing looked spectacular-beyond, really. My parents even announced the expectancy of Isaiah that day (I was kind of like, "really?" Like, she gives birth on my eighth birthday and then now, two years later at my tenth birthday party, more baby. Come on.) It all was so very Dick and Jane, Sally and Jack. I don't know if Sally laid upstairs on her bed the night of her tenth birthday and cut her arms up with a shard of glass from a broken light bulb, but I did. But that wasn't the worst of the birthdays. Certainly not. The worst one wasn't even mine. It was Autumn's so very un-sweet sixteen. You remember the birthday cakes and cakes and practice cakes and cakes? That was the one consistency throughout our birthdays. When we moved to Kansas to become missionaries, we gave up an income and after my mom insisted on spending the last of our life's savings on a trip to Disney World and Puerto Rico, we became very poor. Not homeless shelter poor (that didn't come until later) but certainly food-drive, we aren't even Catholic but hail Mary full of grace help us pay the electric bill Catholic charities, Dear Santa I don't want any presents just the water to turn back on, poor. And that meant no birthday parties, a few used DVDs and video games for presents, but no matter how poor we ever got, my mom made it happen for us to have whatever cake we wanted. My sixteenth birthday, I got a used Justice League video game for the playstation and my mom caved in and let me get my nose pierced (because she couldn't afford to say no.) Certainly not MTV worthy, but I got a ten inch Snickers cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. That is a nearly fifty dollar cheesecake. Honestly, I had no idea how much it cost until just now when I looked it up. I assumed it was expensive, as a single slice is eight dollars, but wow. That number was still a bit shocking. I mean, considering the fact that the year I turned sixteen was the worst year financially our family had ever experienced at that point. Every day, Andy would sit down at the computer desk in the dining room, log into his bank account and his jaw would tense, becoming a bulge pulsing slowly as his vacant eyes reflected the red numbers on the screen. He'd sit there for a while, not blinking, just staring, his mind somewhere far away. Eventually, he'd turn the computer off (he turned everything off) and walk away, that bulge in his jaw still pulsing, and say "We're in the hole." Even so, for a reason I don't know, my mom always made sure to buy us whatever cake we wanted for our birthday. And so, when Gavin and I went to my mom's house for Autumn's birthday, not only was I stunned she hadn't gotten Autumn a single present, but she didn't even get her a cake. She bought a box cake mix and some store-bought frosting, and made my sister burnt cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. When I look back on all of this, I feel as though this was the flashing red sign that danger was ahead. Never in all my life had something like this happened. It may seem small, but this really was the major sign that everything was not alright. My mom sat there, hair a frizzing mess, face gaunt, body attenuated, bra-less, shameless even in front of company. I mean, company consisted solely of Gavin but still, a few years before she would have had make up on, hair done, laughing and trying to convince him she was a cool mom. But she was just slumped in the dining room chair, robe half-way undone, picking at the crumbs clinging to the cupcake paper laying like a crumpled flower on the yellow table. Autumn sat there, eyes down,face hot, making sarcastic jokes and remarks, trying as she could to deflect all the bad vibes of a terrible birthday. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, smoothed my yellow skirt, and fixed my curls, telling myself everything was alright. Everything was just fine. Everything's jake. That was February. That was the last birthday party my mom ever threw. One more month and then my mom would lose it entirely. One more month and everything would be wrong. One more month and my sister and brothers would be living in a cheap motel, and then in a homeless shelter. February, Gavin gave me a ring promising me forever. February, my mom was becoming tormented by the thought of forever. She was growing tired of this role of Mom and she didn't want to do it anymore. February, she disposed of us in her mind. March, she took out the trash.
