Good Girl
by Gail Upchurch
Sweet messages written on the bottoms of my brown paper bag lunches. Crocheted, granny square blankets. A shared strawberry malt at Woolworth’s. In the eighteen years that I’ve been a mother, I have consciously held tight to as many of my mother’s joyous little dailies and weaved them into my own mothering practice. As much as I appreciate her and celebrate all that she got right, I’ve also fought against the more unsavory parts of her parenting approach–-namely, the emotionally destructive physical discipline she doled out whenever she deemed necessary.
The day after Super Bowl XX, when the Chicago Bears made it all the way, when Daddy made homemade chili, and we all sang the “Super Bowl Shuffle,” Mr. Barclay, my fourth-grade teacher, placed the white card in my hands with all his markings. Two “D”s and an “F.” My mother would beat me–-she had promised me as much. Desperate, I changed all my unacceptable grades to “B”s.
When I got home from school later that day, my mother was already home, munching on salted peanuts. “I’m expecting that report card to come home tomorrow.” She announced this to the kitchen generally, not giving me eye contact.
“I got my report card today,” I said, my heart pinging my chest.
She looked at me like I was dumb. “Well, why do you have me waiting? Go and get it. Let me see.”
My mother must have noticed the shit job I did. “Wait, just a moment,” she said, her voice elevating. “It looks like you changed these grades.”
“No-no, I didn’t,” I stuttered.
She shifted in the wooden chair, narrowing her eyes, “I’m going to ask you one more time.” The words slowly oozed out of her mouth.
“I didn’t change anything. Those are my grades.” I was out of my mind by then.
She sprang from the chair and called her good friend Mrs. Anderson, a second-grade teacher at my school, to get Mr. Barclay’s home phone number. It was at this point that I knew I was dead.
“Wait, wait.” I begged. “I’ll tell you!”
She swiveled her head around. “Nah, nah. You had your chance.”
I wrung my hands. I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t know how I got those grades, that I was a good girl.
She called Mr. Barclay to ask him about the two most egregious forgeries. “Uh huh. So a ‘D’ in math and an ‘F’ in science,” she said. I could only imagine how much worse things would have gotten if she had found out about the “D” in music. Right before she hung up, she thanked him, saying, “I’m about to go beat her ass.”
She ordered me to get a belt from my father. I was off center, my body heavy like a block of concrete, but I did it because I couldn’t not do it. Daddy handed it to me without ado. It was black and leather and had dents from the stress of his belt loops and general wear and it was cracked in a spot, and I wondered how much more that spot would hurt when it landed, and I wondered if it would be the thing that killed me. Daddy’s face registered worry. He followed me up the stairs, and I didn’t want him to come because I didn’t want him to watch me get beaten, and I gave Mother the belt and she ordered me in the room and Daddy looked on from the kitchen and leaned against the sink (and what was he thinking as I took off my robe?), and I stood there in only my underwear and Mother screamed at me to lay face down, and I strained my neck and wondered when the first strike would come down, and it did, and it seared my flesh, and I was molten. And I flipped my body over and I sat up and then stood because I couldn’t handle that kind of pain (and was I supposed to love this woman? and was this love?) and she pushed me back down on the bed and was yelling things to a rhythm. Every time the belt came down, Mother screamed a word: “DON’T-YOU-EVER . . .” but I couldn’t listen to the words because of all the whipping, and I pulled on my undershirt, balled it up in my hands, and I tried to cover my legs with my arms, and I screamed as loud as I could because I hadn’t lost the connection to my body yet, and I felt everything, and Mother yelled, “Shut up!” and she meant it, and I wanted her to stop whipping my legs and arms, and whipping me, whipping me, whipping me, but she wouldn’t, and it went on and on and on, and I had to somehow keep myself quiet and I writhed, and I heard myself whimper. Then she stopped. I didn’t even know why. I was out of breath, but I didn’t cry because at some point I left my body.
A quiet slipping away.
Mother kept talking shit: “You think I’m stupid?” And I was someone else now. Spiritless. And I didn’t know who that was who answered Mother, mumbling, “No.”
At some point, I got on my trembling knees, and I prayed to the Lord like they taught me in Sunday School, and Mother caught me praying. She said, “You ought to pray, you lying rat.”
My mother has been dead for sixteen years. Love and regret sit next to each other in my mind. The beating, which ended up being The. Last. Beating., has stayed with me, like a kind of haint. If she had known the impact that beating would have on me, the way it loops and stains all of my relationships, perhaps she would have disciplined me differently. No matter, I refuse to normalize breaking the bodies (and spirits) of my children. So far, so good.
Gail Upchurch is a writer of young adult and adult fiction. She is a 2025 Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a 2022 Kimbilio Fellow, a finalist for the 2022 Pen Parentis Fellowship, and a 2021 Tin House YA Scholar. Besides this, her short story “The Cottage” was nominated for a 2024 O. Henry Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University’s program for writers and an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in fiction from Chicago State University. Gail has recent short stories published in The Missouri Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Tupelo Quarterly, Torch Literary Arts, and Sequestrum and is currently at work on a young adult novel and a linked short story collection.
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