Crazy Enough by Storm Large Page A

trying to tune her out, Mom went on to marvel at herself because she, Suzi Large, somehow, had amazed her medical team by having more alters than that other woman, thus beating that record. “By forty-three percent,” she said.
    The doctors were so confused at the intensity of her disorder, yet her ability to still function, somewhat, that one of them was going to cite her condition at his next lecture and her case would end up in yet another medical journal.
    Wow, so I guess you win and congratulations are in order.
    â€œIt explains everything! The voices, the wobblies, how I suddenly can start speaking fluent German.”
    The wobblies we knew about. They were dramatized dizzy spells that, we believed, were used as an excuse for her to fall down on purpose, in public. Weddings, graduations, or funerals, pretty much anywhere people were gathered or participating in an event geared toward loving and celebrating somebody who wasn’t my mother. The fluent German thing was a new one. When she tried to show us, she seemed to be parroting all of the German one could learn by watching Hogan’s Heroes . “Nein! Dummkopf! Schnell! Macht schnell!”
    Mom’s award-winning multiple personality phase lasted quite some time, as it was creepy, and people had heard of it. She got a load of mileage out of the disorder.
    My brother John was the best of all of us at forgiving Mom and her curiously revolving ailments. As much as she pissed him off andbroke his heart, he would visit her in the hospital long after the rest of us had given up.
    During Mom’s “schnell dumkopf” period, John brought his new girlfriend over to visit Mom in her temporary digs at some halfway house. Mom met the girl, made tea, and some small talk. The young lady was studying to be a nurse and, though her focus was on pediatrics, she had taken some psychology classes and oh, yes, she had heard about multiple personality disorder.
    Green light.
    Not long after tea, Mom excused herself for a minute and came back with crayons and paper, plopped on the floor, and cooed like a toddler, “Sumbuddypwaywiffme!” John must have wished he could blow away like a palm full of talcum powder. John’s girlfriend, however, was new to all the many splendors of Mom, so she snapped into nurse mode. She crouched in front of Mom and said firmly, “If Suzi is in there, I’d like to talk to her. May I please talk to Suzi?”
    My brother burned against the wall he was leaning on, grinding his teeth into stony little nubs, as he watched Mom dip her head as if nodding out, then looking up and around, feigning confusion, saying, “Oh, oh my. How long have I been on the floor?” Then to John, “Are you all right, darling? Did Mommy scare you?”
    As loyal and diligent a son as John was, I think it was about a year before he ever saw or spoke to her again. I, on the other hand, was more than ready to cut her off forever.

    Even though Mom allegedly had a cast of thousands within her, not a single one was very motherly. So naturally I sought the affections of other mother types and, thankfully, struck gold with a few.
    The first and longest-running momstitute was Daphne’s mom, Annie Leavitt. In the early days of Mom’s illness, Annie and the Leavitt family made me feel totally at home whenever I had to stay over.
    Annie was a biology teacher and easily one of the most knowledgeable people on the topic of all things in existence. Any bug, bird, rock, cloud, bone, leaf, she would know its name, origin, purpose, and, in most cases, an historical anecdote about it. A true Anglophile, she was also a badass gardener, and kept a girly mass of flowers growing in all directions in her sunny backyard all spring and summer.
    Annie taught at Fay, the grade school down the way from St. Mark’s. Fay was a fancy boarding school that went up to ninth grade. My brothers and I went there for awhile but, for some reason, we