“Mama! “ Sadie cried as she topped the hill that led to the pecan orchard. “Effie’s head’s …caught in the crib gate.”
“Get a hold of yourself, Sadie,” said her mother, “What is it?”
“ Effie got her head caught … in the baby crib. And she can’t get loose.”
“Why didn’t you get her out?”
“I tried,” Sadie said, as she caught her breath “But I was hurting her. Mama, come help her.”
“All right,” Mattie said.
After folding down the neck of the toe sack and placing a rock on the fold, Mattie walked deliberately down that hill and up the next to get to the farm house. Sadie ran.
As Mattie walked into the room, she leaned down to listen for breath. Then she stood to pull apart the wooden rods that trapped her baby.
“Push her through, Sadie,” she said.
Sadie pushed. “It’s hurting her ears, Mama.”
“She’s not crying,“ Mattie said, as she pulled the bars further open. “Push.”
“I can’t get her through …”
Mattie pulled the bars apart until one of them broke .“Now look what you’ve made me do,” she said. “I told you to push.”
Sadie pushed, hard, until Effie’s head popped through, then she ran to lower the gate and pick up the baby. Mattie pondered the broken dowel.
“Mama. She’s not breathing…”
Mattie listened at the child’s mouth, then took Effie by the legs, flipped her upside down and whopped her on the behind till she started breathing. Then she held the baby at arm’s length to assess the damage, rubbed her neck to make sure there was no bruise, then handed her child to Sadie.
“Don’t cry, Effie,” Sadie said, as she hugged her. “You’ll be OK now. “
She turned to her mother, “I thought she was dead, Mama.”
“Fix her a bottle,“ Mattie replied , as she wiped her hands on her apron and headed for the door, then stopped and turned around.
“Get her fed, and come straight back to work.”
Sadie fixed a bottle for her sister, fed her, then held her on her shoulder and patted her until she burped, then fell asleep; finally she laid Effie on the couch.
“You lay right here, Effie,“ she said. “Don’t move.” Then she ran to find bed pillows and some string, then lined the pillows around the inside of the crib, and tied them in place.
“I hope I don’t get whaled for taking so long, “Sadie said to her sleeping sister. “But you are worth it, you little Effie, you.”
She placed the baby in the crib and patted her back until she was sure she was sound asleep, then slipped out the door, and ran to the orchard.
“Where you been so long?” her mother asked.
“I put pillows around the crib… so Effie wouldn’t stab herself… on the broken bar…and so she wouldn’t get choked…again,” Sadie said, as she caught her breath, then got busy picking up pecans. A few minutes passed before she spoke.
“Mama,” she said, “we shouldn’t have left Effie by herself.”
“Are you judging me?” Mattie replied.
“I didn’t mean to,” Sadie answered. “I just thought …”
“Well, don’t think,” her mother said. “I have to work all day in this orchard … and you come out here hounding me?” She paused.
“Judging your mama is evil,” Mattie continued, hands on hips.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When you said we shouldn’t leave the baby by herself, you were judging me.” “’Judge not that ye be not judged.’” She paused. “And don’t you judge me again… as long as you live.”
Sadie moved over to the other side of the orchard to pick up pecans, but after a while she came within earshot of her mother.
“You should have put bed pillows around that baby’s crib, in the first place,” Mattie called out. “The baby could have choked itself to death.” She paused. “Do you know what that means?”
“No ma’am.”
“It means you mighty-nigh murdered your sister.”
Sadie hung her head, and began to cry. “I wouldn’t ever hurt Effie, “ she said to herself.
Mattie smiled, “Don’t you ever forget it, Sadie … you mighty-nigh murdered your sister.”
Sadie didn’t say another word. But when she dragged the next bag of pecans back across the hill, she slipped up to the house, and peeped in to check on the baby sister . Effie was sleeping peacefully, so Sadie went back to work.
Sadie was too young to understand that she had told the truth when she said, “we shouldn’t have left Effie by herself,” and would have bristled had anyone even hinted that her mother might be mistreating her children. It never occurred to Sadie that Mattie had twisted Matthew 7:1 in order to chide her for telling the truth, and then shifted the blame for the accident from herself to her child. Nor did Sadie realize that her mother’s self-righteousness and emotional numbness were symptoms of serious mental illness.
Back in the ’50s, almost no one had even heard of the term narcissism, so Sadie could not know that 40 years later her mother would be judged by the very scripture that she twisted, when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and that clinical narcissism would be seen as a major contributor to her disease.
Saddest of all, Sadie could not know that 20 years after her mother’s diagnosis, she, herself, would suffer the same fate.
What is Narcissism indeed? A physician recently posed an answer in this form:
“Why did the narcissistic chicken cross the road?” he asked.
“Because she thought it was a boundary,” he answered.
Narcissists break other people’s boundaries , routinely , but do not allow their victims to set boundaries for them. Because narcissists set the rules, and change them at will, they can never do anything wrong — in their own minds. And thus they rarely accept the fact that their lives are dangerous to others…and to themselves.
Living with a narcissist is devastating, as Sadie found out, too late. Specialists say the solution to dealing with narcissism is to get away from it, but that doing so is not easy.
Dr. Les Carter understands this disease and how to get away from it when you watch the video ate the web address below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAW1NS2Sspw
Sadie did not know the danger of living with a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. If you have read this article, you do. If you are living in this kind of abuse, view the website. Then take action. Indeed.
Leon Smith is a storyteller and regular contributor to The Anson Record.