Fifty Minutes with
my Mother’s Shrink
Jeremy Schnotala
116
My mother doesn’t know I’m here, sitting in her shrink’s office, one last
try to save the relationship she ended two years ago when I told her I was
queer. “You are not a lesbian, Jessie. Just stop it,” she said, like I was a
teenager again and just biting my nails or dying my hair a color she didn’t
like. When it sunk in, she crumpled to the floor. We haven’t spoken since.
I look around the office. It’s obvious shrink might be too honorable a word
for this man she visits every Tuesday in the church basement after her Bible
study just up the stairs. I wonder if he even has a license. I don’t see one
hanging on the wall. Not even a printout from an online course. Regard-
less, he’s charging me $84.00 for fifty minutes. I could buy new pair of
Chaco’s or a one-hour massage or a week’s worth of groceries at Aldo with
$84.00, I think. But I’m trying to save the relationship. Suddenly save the
relationship sounds like something an elderly person would say. I try to
make myself comfortable like the church secretary said when she pointed
down the hallway. “The door with the multi-colored cross on it, dear,” she
said. “He’ll be there in just a moment.” I’m sure this is the way of counsel-
ors, even though I’ve never spoken to one in my whole life. Some power
grab in the wait. I can play the game, I think. His office used to be a Sun-
day school classroom. I can tell because of the clutter pushed off to one
corner—a stack of dingy, white Bibles; a plastic, see-through tub of Noah’s
Ark toys; a felt board with a Moses missing a leg; and a stack of twelve red
wooden chairs that each have the name of a disciple on them. Even a Judas.
Behind the junk, there’s a faded mural on the wall that reads “Jesus Loves
the Little Children” in faded, hand-painted letters. Underneath it, there’s
a crowd of little kids around a Jesus holding a dark-skinned child in his
white arms. Of course he is, I think.