My mother frequently told me she wasn’t sure if she loved me, but she sure did love her schnauzers. Unlike human children, they never talked back. They never developed an identity separate from her, they never got too fat or had too much acne, they were always cute and little, unquestionably and unconditionally loved, and they unquestionably and unconditionally loved her back, this woman who fed them by hand and carried them in her arms and narrated their lives in the same kind of baby voice I assume she used on me, back when I was cute and little and unquestionably, unconditionally loved. Their heads were perpetually anointed with overlapping lipstick kisses.
I resented the shit out of those ridiculous bearded dogs. They have a Nazi vibe to their whole aesthetic. Even though my mother told me when I was small that Hitler was the only person we should ever hate, because hate is a strong word and reserved for true evil, she didn’t seem to notice or mind their Nazi-ness. We couldn’t buy German cars, but we could have German dogs.
My mother eventually amended her list of those worthy of hate to include me. I started high school, and she started hiding a bottle of vodka under the kitchen sink. She would stand at the kitchen counter, the ice in her glass chiming along as she told me exactly what she thought of me. “It’s a pity,” she said, her words slurring a little, or a lot, depending on the time of day. “It’s a pity how you’ve let yourself go. So ugly. So cruel.”
She was right; I could be cruel. “It’s a pity you’re a washed up drunk,” I growled.
She shook her head, sadly, slowly. What disappointment her life had brought. “No one is ever going to love you,” she said. “I’m your mother and even I don’t love you. I hate you.”
She took to calling the schnauzers her children. When one was old and sick, it lost control of its bowels all over the living room floor. She had it put down the next day. She bought a puppy later that week, and used my college savings fund to replace the carpet.
Her current schnauzers are the worst of all, untrained and unrestrained. When I drag myself down to Florida every few years for a visit, I leave covered in hair and claw marks. They bounce up and down, digging into my skin, while my mother stands at the counter, laughing up a storm. She drinks Diet Pepsi now, but still finds the suffering of others to be the best joke of all.
“Be nice to your sister,” she says to the dogs.
“They just want you to love them,” she says to me, right before reminding me that I look washed out without lipstick and need to fix myself up before dinner.
I just adopted a Shih Tzu and he is cute and little and unquestionably and unconditionally loved. He is also old, and dying, and somehow I can relate. Life wearies us. I feed him by hand and carry him in my arms wherever we go and narrate our life in the same kind of baby voice I am beginning to fear I won’t ever get to use on a human baby.
I was shocked when I looked in the mirror this morning: I am no longer young. My hair has greyed, my eyes have bloomed lines, I am not the person I once was. It’s all going to be okay though, because I have a dog and he needs me. It is a convenient ledge on which to cling: to be needed by something pure and innocent and uncorrupted by the mess of human relationships.
For what it’s worth, Hitler, throughout his life, always loved and doted on his dogs.
I am no longer young, so today, I put on red lipstick and called my mother. I could hear the schnauzers barking at her feet, the click of lighter and the air-suck of her cigarette. I lit one too, and looked down at the creature at my feet.
“Do you know how to get lipstick off of a dog?” I asked.
She exhaled. “I know just what you need.”
Joanna Greenberg lives and writes in Southern California, where she is an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of California, Riverside. At UC Riverside, she is the recipient of a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship, a Distinguished MFA Fellowship, and serves as the editor-in-chief of the Santa Ana River Review. She is finishing a memoir about surviving her childhood. When she is not writing, she is teaching K-12 language arts and undergraduate creative writing and composition, hanging out with her brood of senior rescue animals, and drinking copious amounts of coffee.STORY IMAGE CREDIT: Flickr Creative Commons/Jonathan Oakley
