The Smack

I will never forget the shock of the smack my mom gave me. No one had ever spanked or even yelled at me until we moved into the new house. I was six the summer we moved there. It was a beautiful, old Tudor house with more than enough room for my parents, my brother and me. We’d been living in a small apartment and this was a big move. I was going to have my own beautiful room. In the fall I’d start first grade, and would walk to school like a big kid.

It was a four bedroom, house with one separated from the rest. There was a back stairway from the kitchen leading to the room at the rear of the house above the garage. It had dormer ceilings, and its own bathroom. You could also reach the room from the main stairway where there was a large landing with a door that led to that back bedroom and four more steps to the bedrooms in the main part of the second floor. It was a servant’s room, but I didn’t know that. Before moving in I’d asked my mother if that back bedroom would be my playroom and she’d said no. 

We moved in on a hot August day, and there were boxes everywhere. As my mother unpacked I made my tour of the house. There were so many rooms. Our apartment was a two bedroom with a galley kitchen, a small dining nook and a living room, this place had nine rooms!  After completing my inspection of the downstairs I headed up the main staircase, stopping to look out the wavy paned window on the landing on my way to the mysterious back bedroom. 

I walked in and all that was in there were stacks of boxes, primarily my books, toys and games. Aha! It was going to be my playroom, and my mom had wanted to surprise me. I marched myself down the back stairs to the kitchen where she was working hard to sort out the kitchen. I imagine she was hot and cranky. She was doing all the work (my dad had gone to his office) while keeping an eye on my baby brother. I sure wasn’t helping her.

I wasn’t a fresh kid, but I was certainly sassy. “You said that room wasn’t going to be my playroom” I declared. “It’s not” she said. “But all my toys are in there” I reasoned. “Well, yes, but it’s not going to be a playroom”. I don’t know where I’d heard the phrase, maybe on TV, but I drew myself up, crossed my pudgy arms over my chest and said “You’re a filthy, rotten liar!” The smack came so fast I hardly knew what hit me.

I don’t know which one of was more surprised. We stood there looking at each other for what felt like ten minutes. I don’t think cried. Eventually we both caught our breath and my mom explained to me that when everything was unpacked and put away someone was going to be inhabiting that room. This was 1964, and though we lived on Long Island, not the deep south, to go with our big new house, we were going to have a live-in maid. Katie moved in that fall. She was young, and sweet, maybe in her early 20’s and had a little girl who lived with her parents in North Carolina.  

It was my first inkling I was a privileged, white child, with a hard-working father and a stay at home mother.  A mom who ate her lunch alone each day in the breakfast room while I ate with Katie in the kitchen. I can’t say how that smack impacted my relationship with my mother, or if we ever acknowledged it. She died the following April, and it was Katie who comforted and took care of me while my father went to work. 

That smack is the one and only time anyone hit me. Is that why I recall it so vividly? Do I remember it because I hold on to every memory I have of my mother? Was it the shock of the moment that etched it in my brain? Maybe it was the feeling of betrayal or loss that often accompanies a shift in a parent-child relationship. As I’ve said many times, memory is a funny thing. We’re all certain that our memories are clear and more important accurate, but science tells us otherwise.  I remember the smack, the feeling and echo of it, does it matter if this isn’t exactly how it happened?