Descriptive Essay Mother-in-Law

Katie Nass

Mr. Neuberger

English Comp 101- 135

25 September 2012

Descriptive Essay

Mother-in-Law

            I glare at my wife, while she drones on about her mother. The words are a train wreck between my ears. The wretched women, the phrase I never say to my rose of a wife, is coming for a visit. Yes, the woman that gave my darling life, is going to stampede into our lives. The giving birth part is the only prize winning thing the witch ever did. I suppose the raising part might have been good too. No, no I take that back. She went through years of therapy and bottles of pills. So, yes birth is the only morally upright and respectable thing I believe she has done. I hear screeching wheels. “Oh God no, why didn’t you tell me she was going to be here right now!” My eyes are huge looking at Lily. She stares at me, shrugs and walks away.  It turns out she did.  I guess I should listen when she discusses “It”.

“I’ll make dinner sweetheart. Don’t want you to lift your little glass like finger. I know you do all the work around this flea of a house anyway.”  She’s grinning that gaping gutter that grazes across her ghastly face every once and a rude comment.  She just wiggles her winey dog size fingers at us as she steps into our kitchen. All I can do is bang my head on the hard as a rock coffee table, and hopefully, knock myself out.

“Oh honey, I didn’t realize how tiny your kitchen was. Doesn’t he support you? You bring home the bacon don’t you dear,” she yells in a glass shattering manner, making it through the six inch walls of the kitchen. I open my mouth to say he has a name and supports her and a whole lot more, when Lily takes away my air by slapping her hand over my pie hole. I see a look of death enter into the eye sockets of my lovely but now highly frightening wife.  It’s like her mother is sending me subliminal messages of “Oh honey you better not. I’ll steal your soul, eat it, and spit it back out.”  I shrink back into the couch and shrivel into a shell of that human being that I was five minutes ago.

At dinner, I stare at the plates that were assembled on the mahogany table. I’m frightened, I’m scared. I’m petrified. Is it edible? Is something going to inch out and assault my face? Am I expected to eat it? I hopelessly look at my wife.  She just ignores my glances.

“So mom what is this.” She’s looking down as she spoons it in her mouth a little at a time.

“Oh just a personal recipe,” winking at her. Oh my darling, please let your soul still remain inside you after the wink of death. Randomly, Reptar just slams her scaly fist down on the cherry table. It’s like the cherries jump out of the table and the color is gone. “Ian eat my food. I made your plate special.” Her pointy monster like teeth poked out between her scaly leathery blood red lips that twist into a smirk as she holds her mug. I put the slop on my tongue and shiver. Eww, ugh, blah, yikes, “baaaaaarrrrrrffffffff” there goes dinner.

“You ignorant pathetic moron how dare you throw up my food?” she roars picking up the knife she used to cut up the abhorrence she calls food.  I turn as pale as death. Oh nooooo, she’s going to launch it at me. I close my eyes. I’m done for.

“Mother,” I hear. My eyes open. Lily grabbed her scaly wrist so hard the knife falls from her hand. Her reptile eyes look over her baby like she would eat her in her cannibalistic way. But Lily doesn’t back down. I am a spectator with puke on his shirt, in shock, with his mouth gaping open. Thinking in the back of my head hahaha, “I was right; she is crazy and narcissistic,” hahahaha. Gulp, she almost killed me. My head spins, ugh. “Mother how could you do this? I know you never liked him but this, this is crazy.  I know you made the food to be horrible just so he would have to eat it. Grow up, he is my husband and I love him. That’s not going to change. You stabbing Ian for not eating your food isn’t going to solve anything. You’re just ruining our relationship, you and I, not Ian and I. Are you even listening to me?”  The witch’s head falls into the mushy nastiness. We look at each other.

“Janet,” I say. No response. Oh my god, my wife gave her own mother a heart attack.

“Mom, mom!” she shakes her furiously, relentlessly, recklessly, rattling the now brittle frame of the reptile, raising the rubbish she’s face down in up to her ears. 

“Honey I’m calling the ambulance.”  I have the phone gripped in my hand and hear the rings that sound like a alarm clock going off. “911. State your emergency.”

“I think my wife’s mother just had a heart attack. Please get here as soon as possible.” On the other end of the line she says and asks the usual stuff. My heart is thumping like the rabbit’s foot in Bambie.  I have the phone loosely gripped in my hand now. Lily pulled her mother’s face out of the gunk she made. She’s crying, “This is entirely my fault.”  In my head I said, “Who would have thought the coldest breed of reptile, would die in such a heated way?”