Free There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me by Brooke Shields

not even realize it until the moment when the congregation stood up. We all stood up, as did my mom, except she began to start vigorously clapping. She must have thought she was at the theatre and tried to cover it up by pretending she was brushing dust or lint off various articles of her clothing. It was a scene worthy of a Lucille Ball sketch and we would retell it for decades. It just seemed funny then.
    But at some point, her drinking stopped being funny. One day when I was in third grade my mom and I were walking to school and chatting. I remember thinking that I wished I knew my mother only in the mornings. She was never drunk before school. She may have been hungover but I never knew it. I realized she never drank before school, but, come 3:00, I knew I’d find her in an altered state. It became inevitable that when school was out and she came to pick me up, she’d have the look in her now slightly glassy eyes. I needed only to see the dryness of her lips to know she had been drinking.
    Once at night, soon after detecting her pattern, I blurted out how I felt. I don’t remember her response, but even when I declared in anger how I wished I knew her only in the mornings, her behavior had not altered. I can’t imagine having an addiction so powerful that a comment like this from a child would leave me unchanged.
    If Mom wasn’t at home for some reason and I had been at a friend’s apartment, I knew where to find her. There was a bar at Seventy-Third and First Avenue on the northwest side of the street called Finnegans Wake. I could either locate her there or farther down Third Avenue at an Italian restaurant called Piccolo Mondo. It was always such a physical relief to see her that I began overlooking the fact that she was on her way to being drunk, if not already there. Usually either I convinced her to come home or we sometimes had some food and then returned home to watch some TV. Mom was rarely violent, and itwould probably have been easier for me to admit to her disease if I was ever physically abused.

    My particular abuse was much more subtle and created a longer-lasting impact. Because every time Mom drank, she left me. I was not able to articulate this until years later and only after a great deal of soul-searching and therapy. I felt abandoned by her when she drank, but as long as I wasn’t hurt and she was accounted for and alive, I could justify that everything was all right. Never really knowing what I was going to come home to established a constant underlying sense of anxiety in my gut. I remained unrealistically optimistic that every day would be different. Mom would keep her promise and not get drunk at that birthday or that particular function.
    More and more, I began to understand the blueprint of my mother’s drinking on a deeper level. I remember not knowing how to complain to her about it. I always felt taken care of and deeply loved and she had not yet become as verbally abusive as she would in years to come. I tried to find ways to show her that her drinking was becoming an issue. It started off subtly: I would suggest Mom just drink ginger ale with me at dinner, for example, or I’d say, “Hey, Mama, maybe you don’t have to drink tonight. And we can watch a movie.” She assured me it was all fine and then simply did as she pleased. Sometimes she was smart enough to curb it for a while, and then when I had seemingly relaxed a bit, she’d resume more heavily.
    Mom was never one to enjoy decorating the Christmas tree. One particular Christmas Eve, after going to midnight Mass and a local diner that served alcohol, we came home. I needed to finish decorating, and while I was focused on the tree, Mom must have fallen asleep. When I turned to ask her what she thought, she responded only by snoring. She basically passed out on the couch, and at that moment I immediately saw a way to show her she had a problem. I chose not to awaken her. It was a risk I had to take. It all had to do with