By
Denise Galasso
My mom came home from work looking professional and beautiful as she always did. She wore named brand skirts, blazers, blouses and long wool coats. She kept all of her clothes ironed neatly in her walk-in closet. I loved her walk-in closet. It was a great place to hide and it smelled like her perfume. It was my place of refuge. It also became the location of the infamous clothes-cutting massacre.
She asked me to come into her room. I was about nine years old. She sat me on her lap and asked me if there was anything that I wanted to tell her. I didn't know what she was getting at but according to the look in her eyes, I certainly had something to tell her. My mom was so honest with us when we were growing up. At times, she was too honest.
Once when scolding me she told me that I'd better not lie to her because she always knew when I did. When I asked her how she knew that I was lying she explained that I would look away and not look her straight in the eye. So, whenever I lied to her after that, I would look her dead in the eye.
This is the most horrible thing that I believe I ever did as a child. I am certain that this action is criteria for being a demon child or direct descendant of Satan. Now, I know my background is Italian but that doesn't really prove much. If anything, it only adds to the "I'm a child of Satan" credence with all the mafia proceedings and of course, Napoleon didn't help any.
As an adult, I am so fully resentful of this action, which at the time I thought I was being so savvy to my mom's honest to goodness parenting. To look someone in the eye and lie is not just everyone's pet peeve, it makes people despise you.
My mom spoke using the softest most careful tone.
"Is there something that you need to tell me?" You know that I love you very much, right?"
My mom sounded almost worried. I quickly reviewed my list of questionable activity that I performed throughout the day.
"Let's see, she knows about the fire in the toaster oven, she knows about the fire behind the bed. She knows about the fire out in the front yard. Does she know that I tried on her fur coat naked? No, that wouldn't make her be so concerned. I was in her closet a lot those days always trying on and admiring her grown up clothes.
Then it hit me.
"She knows that I cut her clothes. How could she know?"
I looked her right in the eye.
"Yes Mommy. There is something that I have to tell you. The other day I was taking a nap right here on your bed. Something was making some noise. I think it was the front door opening. I opened my eyes and saw a man sneaking into the house. He went right into your closet."
If I stuck to this story I knew she just had to believe it.
"My goodness." my mom said.
"You know to keep the door locked. How did he get in?"
"Well.." I said.
"I think he snuck in the window."
Then she asked me if I could get to the phone, which is right next to her bed, and call the police or my aunt whose phone numbers were also right next to the phone. I told her that I didn't want the burglar to know that I was awake so I pretended to be sleeping.
"Oh." She said.
"That was a good idea."
I couldn't believe she was going for this.
"Then what happened?"
It was almost as if I was going to turn this into a real hero story.
"Then he crept into your closet�.Oh yeah and he had a pair of scissors with him."
My mom got up and pulled the red handled scissors out of her drawer that she occasionally used to trim her hair.
"Do you mean these scissors?"
"Um, I think they were different ones."
My mom explained that it was these very scissors that she found laying on the stool in her closet. She was not accusatory by any means but it was all coming together far too quick. I suddenly remembered leaving the scissors that I found in my mom's bathroom on the stool in her closet. It would have been the perfect crime had I not left those damn scissors on the stool!
"Yes, Mom. That's it. The man went into your bathroom and got your scissors�I thought he was going to kill me. Then he went into your closet and cut your clothes."
Now, the truth is I didn't just go into my mom's closet and cut all of her clothes to pieces. Not totally and not on purpose.
I remember the day quite clearly. I went into her bathroom for something and saw the scissors on the counter. I picked them up and thought about how cool scissors feel when they cut stuff.
I can't really describe it. I picked up a piece of tissue out of the trash and cut it. I cut some paper too. Then I just had to keep cutting stuff. It just felt so good. I had no intention of ruining or hurting anything. I wasn't angry or feeling destructive at all. I just liked the sound of the metal blades swooshing beside each other and I couldn't stop doing it. It was more like a compulsion.
There were even a few times prior to this incident where I would just lop off a chunk of hair at the very top of my head because I liked to feel the little spot of cut hairs. I would just tell my mom that I got gum in my hair and I had to cut it out. I just really liked scissors.
I just stood there in my mom's bathroom moving the scissors back and forth with my fingers. I walked out of the bathroom with my scissors.
I was bored. I wondered what other kind of materials would feel like to cut. I grabbed a towel and made a very small incision. That felt pretty good. The fabric was soft and it felt nicer to cut than the paper. I dropped the towel and forgot about it for a while.
Then I walked into my mom's closet. I gently pulled out one of her thick cotton skirts that still hung on the hanger. I made a little cut. I was sure there was no way that she would possibly notice a little slit like that. That felt fun too. So I grabbed the next skirt in line and made a little cut. That felt good too. Then I cut the next skirt and then the next skirt, the next shirt, a pair of pants, the next pair of pants, scarves.
One by one, snip by snip�cut, cut, cut. I cut every piece of clothing in the whole closet. Thank God my mom placed her fur coats separately in a different closet.
Imagine my mom going to work the next day. She was in a real estate sales meeting when she glanced down and noticed a small slit in her skirt.
She thought, "Well, that's weird." She must have snagged it on something on her way to work. She left work early and went home to change into something different.
She tried on another skirt. That was cut too. She looked at her sleeve and there was a cut in her blouse. She tried on twenty different pieces of clothing. All of them cut. I damaged over $17,000 of my mother's entire wardrobe. She had to replace everything.
Apparently, people had taken notice of my obsession with cutting things. I spent a lot of my summers with my mom's sister, Aunt Carla and Uncle Vincenzo.
Aunt Carla had her own home based court reporting business. She had the old stenograph machine, which was like a typewriter, but it typed in shorthand. It was so cool to watch her type on it. She would plug in her headset into a reel to reel and then type away. When she turned everything off I allowed to play court reporter.
One day my aunt was out of the office. Just like every other office desk she too had a cup of pens, a stapler, that cool magnetic paper clip dispenser and oh yes, scissors.
These were big. They were metal. Just like my father's mounted stuffed animals, the reel-to-reel player called my name. The tape was brown on one side and black on the other. It was so shiny no matter how I looked at it there was a glimmer on that shimmering, silky tape. The tape was winking at me. It talked to me.
"You know you want to cut this tape. You've never cut brown silky tape like this before. Come on, Denise�cut me."
Three days later, my mother did get very angry. She had just gotten off the phone with Aunt Carla. Someone cut her work tape and everyone knew who did it. I wasn't allowed back to Aunt Carla's for a few days and I had to call and apologize.
Aunt Carla was nice and didn't seem mad. She probably just couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong with me.
It was only a matter of minutes after I reported the clothes cutting bandit to my mom that I confessed everything. She had suggested that I call the police and maybe we could have made a report about the incident.
That's about the time that I broke down and told her it was me.
My parents asked me repeatedly if I was mad at them. My mom was sure that I was mad at her because she had to go to work instead of being a stay at home mom. They rather figured it was my way of getting back at her.I tried so hard to explain that I really wasn't mad. I just wanted to cut stuff.
My mom wanted to get me counseling but my dad was dead set against it. They just couldn't figure me out. They figured with enough love I would phase out of it.