Shades of Caucasian

I couldn't deny it when my therapist called me a misogynist. I didn't wonder why, or even try to excuse it. I was raised by one of the meanest woman to ever walk the earth, and to make matters worse, my mother unleashed her on me.

Babchi was my Polish grandmother. She was a five foot five, one hundred and eighty pound brick shithouse with tremendous upper body strength. Thick droopy jowls made her face look like it was melting. Parts of her skin failed to change color in the sun, leaving her splotched like a spaniel.

Babchi never spared the rod. As a matter of fact, she cultivated abuse into an art form, employing public humiliation and blunt instruments to carry out her particular brand of cruelty. She favored metal spatulas but didn't discriminate. I was once hit with a vacuum cleaner; my brother was bludgeoned by a lamp. She had laser accurate aim when logistical issues prevented her from reaching you in time. We joked she had boomerang heels. I never once remember feeling affection for her. She never made any attempt to curtail her dominance with random acts of kindness, never felt guilt the way Mom did after a doling out a beating.

After Mom died, I took pity on Babchi. I hope I never witness a mother lose a child again. She literally fell apart after that. Succumbing to Parkinson's, she died in a nursing home. I failed to visit with any frequency and she never remembered who I was when I did.

Some people leave lasting impressions on my memory. I remember the tall bald man at the end of my street I thought was God, the milkman that brought us a two and a half gallon jug of cream by mistake, my college professor who saw in me what I couldn't.

Some of these memories are like deeply embedded scars. I'd like to forget Babchi and the legacy she left behind. But I see her every day on the back of my hand, and in my chin, where the skin lacks pigment.