When I Was a Little Girl and My Mother Didn’t Want Me
from
The Best American Short Plays 2001–2002
[Lights up. An elderly woman speaks. Her voice alternates between urgency and bemusement, emotion and reflection.]
My father was killed and I never knew why.
Then I was given away. By my mother.
I was so little . . . six months.
There were too many of us, nine of us, my mother gave me away.
When I was old enough to know . . . I cried a lot. My father was killed and I never knew why.
No one would tell me.
Now there’s no one I can ask. “Why? Why?”
It happened in a fight, in a tavern, he was only forty-four years old.
My father I never knew. Forty-four! Now, he could be my son.
I wasn’t always an . . . old woman. Eighty-one.
I was a girl for so long. I was a little girl for so long. I was six months old when my father died.
And there were too many of us to feed, and my mother . . . gave me away.
There were nine children. I was the baby. I was born late, I was the baby.
My mother gave me to her sister Lena who didn’t have children.
This was in 1918.
This was in the Black Rock section of Buffalo, the waterfront on the Niagara River.
Germans, Poles, Hungarians . . . immigrants.
We were Hungarians. We were called “Hunkies.”
I don’t know why people hated us. . . .
[WOMAN pauses; decides not to explore this.]
Uncle John and Aunt Lena were my “parents.”
We moved to a farm far away in the country.
And my real mother and my brothers and sisters moved to a farm a few miles away.
Uncle John and Aunt Lena were good to me.
I don’t know if I loved them . . . I think I loved them. I think . . .
I think they loved me.
They wanted children but couldn’t have them, so it was right, I think, that my mother gave me to them. . . .
[Pause.]
It was a, a good thing, it was a . . . necessary thing.
I would learn one day that it happened often.
In immigrant families in those days.
In poor immigrant families.
My father was killed and I never knew why.
They said he was a bad drinker, he got drunk and was always in fights.
The Hungarians were the worst, they said—the drinking and the fighting.
They said he was so handsome, my father.
My mother, Elizabeth, was so pretty.
Curly hair like mine.
They said he had a temper “like the devil.”
In the tavern there was a fight, and he died.
A man took up a poker and beat my father to death.
I never knew why, I never knew who it had been.
Yet this was how my life was decided.
There is the moment of conception—you don’t know.
There is the moment of birth—you don’t know.
There is the moment your life is decided—you don’t know.
Yet you say, “This is my life.”
You say, “This is me.”
[WOMAN regards herself in wonder like a stroke victim regaining some of her awareness.]
When I was a little girl and my mother didn’t want me I hid away to cry.
I felt so bad and I felt so ashamed.
When I was old enough I would walk to the other farm.
There was a bridge over the Tonawanda Creek a few miles away.
They didn’t really want to see me I guess.
My name was Carolina, but they didn’t call me that.
I don’t remember if there was a name they called me.
They weren’t very nice to me I guess.
They didn’t want me, I guess. I was a reminder of . . . something.
Elizabeth, my mother, never learned English.
She spoke Hungarian all her life.
She never learned to read. She never learned to drive a car.
My aunt Lena never learned to drive, so the sisters didn’t see much of each other.
They lived only a few miles apart, and were the only sisters of their family in America, but they didn’t see much of each other.
That was how women were in the old days.
She was a short, plump woman.
Curly brown hair like mine.
People would say, “You look just like your momma!”
Then they would be surprised, I’d start to cry.
My mother scolded me in Hungarian—
“Go away, go home where you belong. You have a home. Your home is not here.”
I loved my big brothers and sisters.
There was Leslie, he was the oldest.
He took over when my father died.
There was Mary, I didn’t get to know real well.
They were born in Budapest.
There was Steve, who’d been kicked and trampled by a horse. His brain was injured, he would never leave home.
There was Elsie who was my “big sister.”
There was Frank who was my “big brother.”
There was Johnny . . . and Edith. . . .
There was George, I wasn’t too close with George.
There was Joseph, I wasn’t too close with.
[Pause.]
They are all dead now.
I loved them, but . . .
I am the only one remaining.
Sometimes I think: The soul is just a burning match!
It burns a while and then . . . And then that’s all.
It’s a long time ago now, but I remember hiding away to cry.
When I was a little girl and my mother didn’t want me.