Wicked Brows, Mommy Dearest, and Wire Hangers

This post is to further my celebration of mothers. Mostly bad ones since Secondhand Shoes portrays two different kinds of mothers. Both bad. Both unforgettable…I hope.

Let’s start with eyebrows. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a brow properly arched or cocked coupled with the perfect evil stare can kill you without a word spoken. Ask, Lila.

Mom cocked a wicked brow at Mrs. Butz’s back, giving her a laser-gun look. If it would’ve been real, the woman would’ve landed on the floor dead.

In fact, my own mother had perfected it. She could put the fear of God and Satan in me with that thing in one full extension toward her hair line. There were times she maneuvered it just right, and I ‘d confess to things I never even did. That old heavily,painted brow was a horrific thing to deal with. It could make you believe you were in the worst kind of trouble no matter how good you were that day.

Mom never had to call on dad for any discipline intervention. Her eyebrows were the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Those suckers were an inspiration for one of Babs’s many quirks.

Oh, did I tell you my own mother pulled all her of eyebrows out one day because she hated them. Neurotic. I know.

Lila like myself was simply horrified by those auto-pilot-operated-brows.

Mom squeezed herself through the gap between him and the door. “You really worry me.” She pushed herself into the room, racing toward me. “Were you talking to another imaginary person?” Her eyes shot to the scissors. “What are you doing? Are you cutting up your wrists?” She squinted her gray eyes at me, cocking her heavily painted left brow. “You’ll do anything to stop this wedding. Won’t you?”

So what does Mommy Dearest have to do with this novel? Um, it was another inspiration in creating Babs. The movie was a perfect display of a psycho-neurotic-personality-disordered mom that would keep any child or adult awake all night for fear they might be pulled out of bed over too many wire hangers in their closet. (I know. I know. Long sentence here.)

Imagine waking up out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night to some psycho-foaming-at-the-mouth-mother. YIKES!

Hope you all have a great Mother’s Day on Sunday.