“He did not linger long enough for me to squash him
completely into myself….”
The above is not, unfortunately, a sentence from a soft core porn novel. It is an
excerpt from a New York Times essay in which a mother describes her obsessive,
jealous, and blind love for her nine-year-old son. Thanks to Jezebel for
directing me to this gem of a Modern Love piece.
The only thing creepier than the essay’s title—“The Tiny
Hand that Robs the Cradle”—is the fact that this tiny hand belongs to a third
grader who has a crush on the author’s son. Somebody call a family therapist,
stat.
Kate Krautkramer is a teacher at her son Sarvis’ school. When
she learns that one of his classmates has scrawled “I ‘heart’ Sarvis” in the bathroom
stall, she completely loses her mind. In hopes of discovering the identity of
this “little vixen” who was so unforgivably bold as to publicly proclaim an interest in her little boy, the jealous
mother turns first to the principal, then to her son’s female classmates, who
all “acted innocent in their double braids tied with impossibly pink ribbons.”
With no leads, Krautkramer takes to using the bathroom stall
with the Sarvis graffiti every single day. She leans her body against her son’s
name and traces the heart with her hand. She comforts herself with the thought
that “Graffiti Girl,” as Kautkramer derisively terms her son’s classmate, “didn’t
know Sarvis the way I knew Sarvis, no matter what the bathroom wall proclaimed.” But she also torments herself with thoughts of one of Sarvis’s nine-year-old peers “turning
her 18-inch hips just so for the very first time, or taking a try at batting
her lashes.”
I understand that there is irony at work in this essay. Yet
no amount of irony can take away the extreme mortification the author’s
son will have to withstand for the rest of his life, now that his mother has
publicly confessed not only to having Oedipal urges that would make Freud blush, but
also to being clinically insane.
Besides, the irony frequently gives way to disturbingly
honest reflection: “I knew it was only an innocent crush, yet I truly lamented
that some little girl was pushing my boy into a vaguely sexual consciousness.” Actually, neither Sarvis nor his classmate are displaying any "sexual consciousness." They’re just
kids. The mother is the one who sexualizes youth by referring to the girls’ “tiny
blue jeans and frilly tops,” and by describing Sarvis’s hair as “brown ringlets”
that “hung in heart-stopping whorls down his neck.”
If Kautkramer’s goal is to make sure that her son never marries
(or goes on a date), mission accomplished. No girl in her right mind would ever
put up with this woman as a mother-in-law.
Photo: New York Times
