In Annette Kuhn’s, Family Secrets, “Secrets haunt our memory-stories, giving them pattern and shape” (Kuhn 2). For me, the secrets that haunt my memory-stories can be viewed explicitly in the photograph above. This family photo depicts my mother, father, and brother. It was displayed prominently on my dresser when I was a little girl. I remember standing before the mirror watching my long hair get violently (and painfully) brushed and braided by my mother. I would fidget from discomfort, only to be hit on the head with the backside of a wooden brush. “Ouch!” I would scream. “Stand still,” she would yell back in broken English. “But, mom…,” I would reply in a whining tone, until she would tug my hair harder. This was our daily ritual. I would whine, she would yell obscenities at me, and then it would be over. Every now and then I would glance at this photograph from my peripheral vision that was swaying back and forth from the violent tugging and pulling of my hair. This family photograph, the one that bears no trace of my existence made me internally brew with anger without knowing quite why. One day (I cannot now recall why) but my adolescent anger manifested itself outwardly and I broke the frame and glass partition of the photograph. I devilishly took a pair of scissors from my dresser drawer and excavated with great care, an outline of a mustache on my mother’s face. With each dig into the paper I derived pleasure. It wasn’t my finest artistic moment, I admit, but as a child it was the only artistic form of expression I could achieve. After mutilating the image of my mother, I saw to it that the entire photograph was crumbled in the palm of my small seven year old hands. I had ruined it! I was pleased with myself. That is of course, until I got the beating of my life. I haven’t been particularly fond of belts ever since. For some reason though, I have a memory of drawing horns on my brother’s head. As I look at the image now, there is no trace of it. It must be memory’s trickery, because I could have sworn I had done it. Perhaps it was another photograph, because I distinctively remember drawing horns. Kuhn explains that memory work “[...] is potentially interminable: at every turn, as further questions are raised, there is always something else to look into” (Kuhn 6). Of course it is easier to piece together a narrative of my past as I stand distanced from the 7 year old girl I once was, but it is interesting to see how others responded to the blight on my childhood record. My brother is a master at Photoshop and photo restoration, in fact, when
you look at the image in its restored state, it is better than real life! It seems as though my brother produced an image of the past that was a fulfillment of a wish. When you look at both of our parents (now deceased) you do not see the mustache or the crumpled edges. Instead, here we have a past that is a reflection of luminous perfection. This, however, is not my remembrance of the past, mine is one that is torn and mutilated with no signs of my existence.
