I still Hate the Taste of Cinnamon

Contributed by Tiffiny Russell

Trigger Warning: SA

“If you think you are going to leave me, you can get the fuck out before I get back.”

The words hit me like a slap. I replay them over and over in my mind, staring at my reflection in the window of the Greyhound bus. This is the second bus in a 24-hour trip from Reno to Billings, Montana.

I managed to snag a window seat on this one; I am exhausted, yet sleep remains impossible. I keep ruminating on my mother’s final words.

My mother knows exactly where to hit the hardest—physically, mentally, and emotionally. She had slammed the door on the way out, dragging my two-year-old sister behind her.

I know she expected me to capitulate, to feel guilty, to feel a desperate need to take care of everyone. After all, she had been fostering those reactions in me for as long as I can remember.

Up until I was sixteen, I was the middle child: the quiet one who hid in closets and under beds, the one who always helped without asking, the “good” one. The golden child.

I have an older half-sister, May, who is twenty-one—three years older than I am. We don’t even look related. She must take after her dad, though none of us kids would know; we’ve never met him.

Mom got pregnant at fifteen, was forced into marriage with the guy, and left him on their wedding night. She lived with a biker gang until she made her way to Reno at seventeen. May has strawberry-blonde hair, brown eyes, and freckles everywhere. She has always been overweight, a fact that "mother dearest" never lets her forget.

May didn’t do well in school, and she has acted out since the day I was born; her behavior made education difficult for her. She hates me with a burning passion, though it’s not entirely of her own making. Mom constantly compares us, always finding May lacking.

I would hate me, too. Sometimes, I do.

“Why can’t you be as smart as your sister?” “Why aren’t you skinny like your sister?” “Why aren’t you as pretty as your sister?” Why, why, why… as if May has any control over her genetics. I am 5’8”, 110 lbs, with long, curly dark hair and bright green eyes. I was a straight-A student with an IQ of 125 until Mom pulled me out of school my junior year.

I was on the dance team and even did a little modeling when I was fifteen. If I had stayed in school, I could be going off to college, but I’m not. No woman in my family has ever gone to college; that’s not what women do. My grandmother, mother, and older sister all dropped out of high school to be with a man. That’s what the women in my family do.

I also have a sixteen-year-old brother, James. He is the only boy, and therefore, he is allowed to do anything he wants. The prince who can do no wrong—not even when he put a pipe bomb in the neighbor’s yard and the bomb squad had to be called. That was at fourteen, his first time in the back of a police car.

It wasn't his last. I love him, though; we are best friends, full siblings, although he has never met our dad. Jose was long gone by the time James was born.

Then there is Sabby. She is nearly three—an adorable, sweet little blonde baby. She looks almost exactly like our mom. She is beautiful and innocent, but her eyes are blue where Mom’s are green like mine. She is the reason I was pulled out of school.

Mom had to go back to work and needed someone to care for her, so I was thrust into the position of caretaker. Mom married Kevin when I was fourteen—he was her sixth husband.

He was twenty-four, she was thirty-four, and he didn’t have kids of his own. Mom spent her life savings on fertility treatments and surgery to give him a baby. They divorced when Sabby was one. Mom really knows how to pick them.

I wish I could say that I remember the previous five husbands, but I don’t. I know my dad was number two, and he left when Mom was pregnant with James and I was two. There has always been an endless parade of men through our house. I don’t know who she was with when I was three, but that was the first man who sexually assaulted me.

All I remember is big, rough hands, the taste of cinnamon candy on his member shoved in my mouth, and pictures of pornography. I know he did something to my infant brother as well, although my memories are somewhat repressed from then until about age seven.

I developed an anxiety disorder called trichotillomania. I pulled out my hair so I was mostly bald for my early childhood, which led to bullying and more trauma. I also used to bite my arms until they bruised.

These habits continued until my third-grade teacher, Mr. Ziggler, bribed me with any book from the library if I would stop by the end of the year. I chose Robinson Crusoe.

Mom didn’t want to hear about anything that made her upset, so I stopped telling. I kept everything to myself and hid inside books. Sometimes she was wonderful and fun; we would laugh, paint, go shopping at thrift stores—the only places we could afford—or go camping in the mountains.

Most times, however, she was drunk, high, sad, mad, or just gone. There were a few times we stayed with Grandma while Mom was in a treatment or mental facility.

I learned to cook, I learned to clean, and I learned how to take care of the people around me. I learned how to bottle every emotion inside so as not to rock the boat. I did what I was told; I was her shoulder to cry on, her best friend, and her punching bag. I still hate the taste of cinnamon.

She gave me a set of cheap luggage for my sixteenth birthday—not the kind with wheels, just the generic black fabric ones you have to carry. She wanted me to become a famous model and take her to see the world. She thought I would fulfill all of her dreams without ever asking about mine. I used that luggage to move a thousand miles away.

I bought a Greyhound bus ticket to Billings, Montana, leaving Reno, Nevada, at 7:00 am on April 6th, 2000. It was a Thursday.

As I sit on the bus, feeling the hum of the wheels on the highway and listening to the soft snores of other passengers, I can’t help feeling as if I am on the precipice of a cliff. Behind me: Reno, Nevada, and all of my family.

Ahead of me: Billings, Montana, one friend, and the rest completely unknown. I’m terrified. I don’t know what will happen, but I know I never want to go back.

When my mom slammed the door, I didn’t crumble. I looked around our dilapidated two-bedroom apartment—full of too much junk, too many people, and too much trauma—and I didn’t crumble. I packed, and I got the fuck out before she came back.