Jeanne Dielman
with
No Redemptive
Violence
—
Sylvia Math
TOWARDS THE END, I FINALLY had a confidante. Not a very good friend, really, but someone I could be honest with, and there was some solace in that. Our daughters went to the same Montessori school, a small one in a townhouse in Williamsburg, with a backyard. The girls also went to the same nearby ballet school, once a week. They adored each other.
There were years beforehand wherein this little girl’s mom and I fronted to each other that everything was fine. It’s not that hard to keep your “mom friends” at arm’s length. And pretty much none of them are your friend and everybody knows that, goes along in as-if-ness. You need your child to have playmates, so you need those relationships with other moms to be superficial on purpose. Nobody pries or gets too deep; it’s not about you.
One summer day when the girls were three, I was with S at McCarren pool. Some of my most treasured memories of early motherhood are at this pool. How S clung to me in the water, especially the deep end. The deep end of deepening trust. I will not leave you. At the same time, I want you to be free. The tension in using dependency to nurture liberation. How her tiny body couldn’t thermoregulate as quickly or efficiently as my larger adult one. I had it down to a quick efficient science; opening the locker to get our clothes with one arm while holding her shivering body close to me with my other arm, her balanced on my hip. I am here. I will keep you warm. The amount of time you are going to be shivering is only going to be seconds. I will carry you home in the Ergo and a car service, never subtracting my body heat from your body even for a moment until you are warm again. You are going to be a great swimmer. I can tell. I know it, I know it.
That summer afternoon though, we ran into her Montessori and Ballet friend, B. And B’s dad, not mom. B’s dad wanted to get a bottle of wine and take the kids to his loft for a playdate, after the pool. At his fancy loft, B’s mom was home. There was conflict in the air; an unfinished fight. I took the girls to B’s bedroom, where they played dress-up. We could all hear B’s parents fighting. Then the slamming door, when they left to go fight somewhere else. They never came back, either. It got dark. At dinnertime, I called a car service and took the girls to my apartment. B’s mom appeared at my house in the dawn hours, a sobbing wreck. She poured out the fragments of her story in the disjointed PTSD style of someone subjected to psychological abuse for a few years. It’s okay. I understand. I made her some toast. If everything sucks, and someone is really upset, I really believe that toast will help. I fling toast at the void and never fill it, only add some toast, I think. When we went outside to take the girls to school, her Mercedes was gone. She was sure her husband had taken it. I called the tow yard, and we took the girls to school in a car service. The Mercedes was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard tow compound, and after we retrieved it, we sat in it chainsmoking and talking until it was time to pick up the girls.
There were some good times. She was a redhead and a daredevil driver, and we blasted Fleetwood Mac on the BQE, taking the girls places. In a way, I think she tried to warn me about the fickle and tenuous friendship available to us then, in our circumstances; the impossibility of any real solidarity. “Being victims together” isn’t a basis for a friendship. We were like prisoners chained to the same wall—we understood each other but were powerless to help. She told me, “You should watch Big Little Lies.” Not: we should watch it. You should watch it. I watched it. Late at night in sultry humidity. Bit by bit, with the windows open, luxuriating in fictive escapism and syrupy July air. It didn’t exactly apply. Maybe the vicious social networks. The abuser didn’t mirror hers or mine. There was a disturbing eroticism, not present in either of our marriages. The Nicole Kidman character’s abuser was sexy all in black in the homicidal finale. Same erotic pull for the women all banding together to shove him off a balcony. We didn’t have any of that. It was much uglier and much more boring. Jeanne Dielman with no redemptive violence. We sat in her Mercedes and smoked. We raced on the highway to DUMBO, Spotify cranked. We drank wine from our kids’ Disney princess water bottles as we sat in the back of their ballet class… strangers who talked too much, revealed too much to each other on a flight from JFK to Orly after too many free first class drinks and wanted to forget it, once we checked in wherever with the asshole husbands we couldn’t leave, not yet anyway.
Her husband and his lawyer included a video of her in their divorce filing. That she had to respond to in a reply motion. The video was of her crying and saying she wanted to die. You can hear the husband coldly trying to get her to state this more audibly. “I’m sorry, what did you say? Could you repeat that? You’re crying so much it’s hard to hear what you’re saying.” He was… recording you on purpose and wanted to save it to use against you later, I said in horror. At least he never hit me, she said, offended. Victim hauteur. Hitting is déclassé. I understood the assault on personhood of prolonged abuse; why she would cling to an absurd self-protective superiority.
There isn’t anything you can say after watching a video of your friend crying and saying she wants to die, while her husband icily entices her to make better evidence he can stash and weaponize later. There’s nothing to say; any shred of a word is an insult. I should have asked for her car keys and run him over. •
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Sylvia Math fled California for NYC, and has work in Hobart, X-R-A-Y, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Burial, and others. She's editing her memoir “Looks Bad on Paper,” and working on a novel called “Future Murder Victim.”
Twitter | Bluesky | Instagram
There were years beforehand wherein this little girl’s mom and I fronted to each other that everything was fine. It’s not that hard to keep your “mom friends” at arm’s length. And pretty much none of them are your friend and everybody knows that, goes along in as-if-ness. You need your child to have playmates, so you need those relationships with other moms to be superficial on purpose. Nobody pries or gets too deep; it’s not about you.
One summer day when the girls were three, I was with S at McCarren pool. Some of my most treasured memories of early motherhood are at this pool. How S clung to me in the water, especially the deep end. The deep end of deepening trust. I will not leave you. At the same time, I want you to be free. The tension in using dependency to nurture liberation. How her tiny body couldn’t thermoregulate as quickly or efficiently as my larger adult one. I had it down to a quick efficient science; opening the locker to get our clothes with one arm while holding her shivering body close to me with my other arm, her balanced on my hip. I am here. I will keep you warm. The amount of time you are going to be shivering is only going to be seconds. I will carry you home in the Ergo and a car service, never subtracting my body heat from your body even for a moment until you are warm again. You are going to be a great swimmer. I can tell. I know it, I know it.
That summer afternoon though, we ran into her Montessori and Ballet friend, B. And B’s dad, not mom. B’s dad wanted to get a bottle of wine and take the kids to his loft for a playdate, after the pool. At his fancy loft, B’s mom was home. There was conflict in the air; an unfinished fight. I took the girls to B’s bedroom, where they played dress-up. We could all hear B’s parents fighting. Then the slamming door, when they left to go fight somewhere else. They never came back, either. It got dark. At dinnertime, I called a car service and took the girls to my apartment. B’s mom appeared at my house in the dawn hours, a sobbing wreck. She poured out the fragments of her story in the disjointed PTSD style of someone subjected to psychological abuse for a few years. It’s okay. I understand. I made her some toast. If everything sucks, and someone is really upset, I really believe that toast will help. I fling toast at the void and never fill it, only add some toast, I think. When we went outside to take the girls to school, her Mercedes was gone. She was sure her husband had taken it. I called the tow yard, and we took the girls to school in a car service. The Mercedes was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard tow compound, and after we retrieved it, we sat in it chainsmoking and talking until it was time to pick up the girls.
There were some good times. She was a redhead and a daredevil driver, and we blasted Fleetwood Mac on the BQE, taking the girls places. In a way, I think she tried to warn me about the fickle and tenuous friendship available to us then, in our circumstances; the impossibility of any real solidarity. “Being victims together” isn’t a basis for a friendship. We were like prisoners chained to the same wall—we understood each other but were powerless to help. She told me, “You should watch Big Little Lies.” Not: we should watch it. You should watch it. I watched it. Late at night in sultry humidity. Bit by bit, with the windows open, luxuriating in fictive escapism and syrupy July air. It didn’t exactly apply. Maybe the vicious social networks. The abuser didn’t mirror hers or mine. There was a disturbing eroticism, not present in either of our marriages. The Nicole Kidman character’s abuser was sexy all in black in the homicidal finale. Same erotic pull for the women all banding together to shove him off a balcony. We didn’t have any of that. It was much uglier and much more boring. Jeanne Dielman with no redemptive violence. We sat in her Mercedes and smoked. We raced on the highway to DUMBO, Spotify cranked. We drank wine from our kids’ Disney princess water bottles as we sat in the back of their ballet class… strangers who talked too much, revealed too much to each other on a flight from JFK to Orly after too many free first class drinks and wanted to forget it, once we checked in wherever with the asshole husbands we couldn’t leave, not yet anyway.
Her husband and his lawyer included a video of her in their divorce filing. That she had to respond to in a reply motion. The video was of her crying and saying she wanted to die. You can hear the husband coldly trying to get her to state this more audibly. “I’m sorry, what did you say? Could you repeat that? You’re crying so much it’s hard to hear what you’re saying.” He was… recording you on purpose and wanted to save it to use against you later, I said in horror. At least he never hit me, she said, offended. Victim hauteur. Hitting is déclassé. I understood the assault on personhood of prolonged abuse; why she would cling to an absurd self-protective superiority.
There isn’t anything you can say after watching a video of your friend crying and saying she wants to die, while her husband icily entices her to make better evidence he can stash and weaponize later. There’s nothing to say; any shred of a word is an insult. I should have asked for her car keys and run him over. •
Sylvia Math fled California for NYC, and has work in Hobart, X-R-A-Y, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Burial, and others. She's editing her memoir “Looks Bad on Paper,” and working on a novel called “Future Murder Victim.”
Twitter | Bluesky | Instagram