Hostage: How A Domineering Mother Ended Her Daughter’s Dreams

Her spite lasted more than a lifetime, but may not have been her fault

Grandma and Grandpa’s headstone — it hadn’t been updated yet when this picture was taken. No one mourned her passing. I didn’t cry at the funeral — no one did except for Mom, and then only for a minute or so.

Self-imposed guilt is what so often forces women to shackle themselves to their emotional jailors.

“I have to take care of your Grandma. She keeps telling me that no one else will take care of her, and I can’t leave her alone.” Every time my mother and I tried to move somewhere else, we’d wind up returning to live with my grandparents in the Mississippi Delta. And there was no love lost between my grandmother and myself.

It always happened the same way: I’d have a shouting match with my grandmother, Mom would try to calm the situation, and we’d try to move somewhere else in the state. We’d stay away for a year or so, and then we’d move back to the house in the Delta — not because we couldn’t afford to stay away, but because of the guilt Mom felt for not being there to help her own mother.

I never questioned Grandma’s intelligence — she was highly intelligent, though not highly educated, and was a racist as the day is long. She also had a hair-trigger temper and was the very definition of a battleaxe. Grandpa was there too. He was quiet and never seemed to stop working, but I loved and…