Whatever Mother Says... by Wensley Clarkson Read Free Book Online Page B

few mouthfuls brought little response from her mother.
    “Don’t get that on the floor.” Theresa Knorr spat the words out with disgusted contempt.
    Suddenly the door to the kitchen burst open and stick-figured, blond Terry rushed in. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw that her mother was administering her daily dose of punishment to one of her five brothers and sisters.
    “Oh! I, uh … I didn’t mean…”
    Twelve years old, Terry Knorr looked from her sister Suesan to her mother, then slowly turned her gaze back to her sister with a look of recognition that verged on apathy. Her pallid face seemed to shrink.
    “Oh,” she repeated dully, taking an involuntary step backward.
    It was yet another cruel and twisted moment from within the four battered walls of the Knorr household, but it would remain etched in Terry’s memory for the rest of her troubled life.
    *   *   *
    A few weeks later—in June 1983—Theresa Knorr decided to give her two younger sons—Robert, fourteen, and Billy Bob, fifteen—some lessons in the art of corporal discipline.
    Terry recalls that Robert stood behind Suesan at the end of the hall of that comfortable detached home in Orangevale and held her arms back while his brother Billy Bob put on sinister-looking slim black leather bicycle gloves almost like a surgeon preparing for an operation. Theresa Knorr told her son that the gloves were essential for ensuring that no one could detect evidence of the beating Suesan was about to receive.
    Theresa Knorr was apparently unhappy because her daughter had not gained enough weight in the previous weeks. No female in that house was going to look prettier and younger than her. And all the devil talk was ringing in her ears.
    Then Theresa crashed her own clenched fist deep into her daughter’s stomach. The teenager flinched, but dared not utter a sound.
    Terry Knorr, having seen more in her short life than most people twice her age, stood behind her mother in the entrance to the main bedroom. Her other sister, Sheila, in the doorway of the bathroom, begged Theresa Knorr to stop.
    But neither the mother nor her sons took any notice. Then the two girls saw that their mother had something in her right hand, hanging limply down by the side of her enormous girth. It was a silver pistol with a black plastic handle; a small .22 derringer with a capacity of just two bullets. But one would be enough.
    Suesan screamed as she caught sight of that weapon, clutched in her mother’s pudgy, pink hands.
    Suddenly the whole scene faded to slow motion. Terry watched as her mom lifted her arm and pointed the gun at her sister.
    A pop like a champagne cork exploding was the only evidence that she had fired the gun straight at her daughter. The bullet entered underneath her left breast and went right through her rib cage before lodging itself in her back.
    Terry watched her sister grab her chest, gasp, then clutch the door frame of the bathroom before stumbling and then falling into the empty bathtub.
    An eerie silence enveloped the house for a few seconds as the full impact of what had just occurred sank into the minds of all those present.
    Theresa Knorr was the first one to snap out of that trance. She moved swiftly toward her injured daughter.
    Clinically, like the nurse she had once been, Theresa Knorr tried to rip the clothes off wounded Suesan. Then she pulled her daughter over the edge of the tub to examine the wound—her only concern was to see precisely where the bullet had entered the body.
    That night, Terry and Sheila scrubbed the floor where Suesan had been shot. They scrubbed the door frame where there were bloodstains. They scrubbed every inch of the bathroom apart from the tub where their sister still lay mortally wounded. Theresa Knorr did not have to tell them to do it. They just got on with the task at hand rather than face the wrath of their demonic mother.
    Often, the kids would be up until two or three in the morning scrubbing