My Mother, the Murderer

BY BARBARA SUEKO MCGUIRE

My parent’s cat, Suzy Q, blatantly out-gifted me on my mother’s sixtieth birthday when she brought a bunny to the back door. The thoughtful books I’d meticulously selected instantly dulled in comparison to this living, breathing, as-yet-moving birthday present. In fact, I later found out that the cat had been showering my mother with gifts all week, including a mouse, a sparrow and two lizards.

My 4’11” Japanese mother claims she hypnotized these lizards before re-releasing them into the wild, a trick she learned from a four year old who spotlighted on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show.” My mom loves Ellen. She watches her every afternoon while working out on the Nordic Track. She even Tivos episodes she really likes to show me when I visit, and I’m doing my best not to read too much into the fact that they always seem to feature some variety of prodigy children.

Regardless, I couldn’t help but feel like less of a daughter when even the cat, an animal for Christ’s sake, out did me. I got all the details when my mother called me at work to make sure I had made the evening’s birthday dinner reservations and to confirm what time my father and her would swing by my apartment to pick me up.

“Suzy Q brought me a bunny this morning,” she said, innocently and with a smile I could hear through the phone. “I put it in a plastic bag and set it on the patio table to show your Dad because he wasn’t home, but anyway, then it hopped off so I had to throw it in the trash can.”

“Wait, what?!,” I said. “Mom? Wait…huh? No, you didn’t? Wait, why didn’t you just put it back in the park? Hold on, you put it in a plastic bag? Was it dead when you put it in the trash can?”

“I don’t think so…” she trailed off.

I could not believe these words had just come out of my mother, a woman who knows the name of every dog she encounters on her morning walk with our mutt, Cashew. A woman who abhors being so rude as to ever beep her car horn at an offending vehicle when it swerves into her lane. Instead, she thinks it’s more considerate to slam on her brakes, never mind the backseat passengers who later suffer from the effects of whiplash, never mind the individual sitting shotgun, who has just gotten a closer look of the windshield than he or she ever thought possible. My mother is genuinely the kindest, most thoughtful person I know, and immediately the kindest, most thoughtful person anyone who meets her knows.

So how was I to process this uncharacteristic and jaw-droppingly traumatizing information into my definition of mother? I called her a murderer.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, laughing. “These bunnies burrow their way into the backyard from the park and they make a mess and eat all of Dad’s fruits and veggies and stuff. And anyway, I couldn’t set it free because now it knows where we live. Suzy Q’s doing the neighborhood a favor, yes she is, aren’t you just such a smart good kitty,” she continued, no longer talking to me.

Well excuse the poor little bunnies for not grasping the concept of real estate and planned communities, I thought, flaring my nostrils and taking a deep breath.

It got even worse when she called me the following Monday to tell me that Suzy Q had caught another rabbit, this time a baby. I thought she was telephoning to tell me that my horrified response to what she’d done last week had actually penetrated and sunk in, and that she’d decided to grant it its freedom. Wrong. My mother was calling to gloat.

“But this time, I put it in a plastic bag and ‘WHAM’ your Dad slammed it into the sidewalk to kill it,” she reported.

“Holy fucking shit Mom,” I said. “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you and Dad doing over there? When the garbage man notices how many dead critters you’ve got in the trash can he’s gonna call animal control.”

“Hee hee hee,” she literally laughed back at me.

I’ve always thought that my survival-of-the-fittest, each-man-for-himself traits came from my father, with whom, among plenty of other equally desirable personality quirks, I share a dry and could-be-cruel sense of humor. But I’m realizing that my assessment may not have been entirely spot on. My mother does have some of the crazy asshole in her. And after 26 years of watching her exude nothing but sweet kindness, it’s clear that the dark side is emerging and I’m looking forward to the show. My condolences to the bunnies.

Barbara Sueko McGuire is notorious for being unable to pronounce a wide variety of words ranging from dachshund (it’s dash-hound, right?) to Penelope (Pen-a-low-pay…?). She doesn’t understand why really good movies don’t get ten fingers up, instead of just two thumbs. Peanut butter, travel, tofu, jagermeister and books are a few of her favorite things. When she’s not involved in an activity associated with these interests, you’ll find her in class at Sarah Lawrence College, where she’s attempting to earn her MFA in Creative Nonfiction.