a woman scorned

Feb 26, 2024

I am thirteen when my mother picks up an artichoke and throws it at the wall. It is half-eaten, the fuzzy heart soft and exposed. She picks it up off her plate from where she sits at the head of the table. Or maybe she isn’t sitting because she is getting more milk out of the fridge, more butter for us to dip the leaves in. Our demands suffocate the room.

My brother, sisters, and I watch as the artichoke soars through the air and splatters on the red wallpaper. The silence that follows is louder than her scream. Streaks of butter rain down and drip onto the floor, where a puddle forms. Later, the dog will try to lick it.

For weeks after, my mother scrapes the dried artichoke from the wall. The event becomes something of family lore, revised and expanded over the years, shared with dinner guests for a good laugh about mom rage. “Remember when Mom lost it and threw an artichoke at the wall?” Even she laughs.

But there is also something more sobering in her voice, if you listen for it. Maybe I hear it because I’m growing older and watching the women around me navigate motherhood with all of its complexities.

Or perhaps I hear it because I know the exasperation that comes from being a woman trying to bury her anger. I, too, have learned to laugh at the times my rage has slipped through the cracks of a carefully composed demeanor, one so many women are familiar with, mothers and non-mothers alike.

What else is there to do when you're at the end of your rope, with no outlet in sight, raising four young kids alone while your husband works all day? What else is there to do when you’re a woman told to soften your scream, to temper your anger? It’s not a big deal. Just relax. Calm down. Until one night, you snap.

The first time I remember my rage slipping out was at the Orlando International Airport. It was during the holidays, and the terminal was humming with Christmas music and frantic travelers. I was living in London for grad school, and my husband and I were on our way back. I was sick and running a fever when our international flight was canceled. There was one other flight headed to London, leaving in an hour, and so we were rebooked.

Everything seemed to be working out; we just needed to hurry back through security to collect our bags from the now-canceled flight and re-check them with our new airline. My husband and I decided to split up—he’d grab the bags while I’d stand in line at the baggage counter. But by the time I was next in line, he wasn’t back yet. I could see him waiting at the end of the terminal, the carousel spinning with other travelers’ luggage. With only forty minutes until our flight departure, I began the check-in process, handing over our passports and new flight information.

The attendant asked me to pay for the bags. “Oh, but we already paid when we first checked them?” I added a question mark and raised my voice an octave like I know how to do when talking to men, trying to sound as small and submissive as possible.

When you’ve been taught to doubt your voice and presence, when you’ve learned how to make yourself small in the shadows of your male counterparts, it costs immense energy to assert yourself. The eye-rolls and sighs become routine. You learn to script your words for fear of “talking too long” or “not making sense.” When your name is called, you muster up a soft demeanor in hopes that you will come across as the kindest woman in the world. Perhaps if you are extra accommodating in your tone and body language—read: non-threatening—you will increase your chances of being heard and seen.

The man shook his head in annoyance at my question, claiming it wasn’t his problem and I needed to pay again. “My husband is over there grabbing the bags,” I pointed, willing him over to help me. “I’m so so sorry for the inconvenience, but I don’t understand why, since you are partners with the other airline and they rebooked us, shouldn’t they have noted that we already paid? Can you call them? We have a few bags since we’re traveling internationally and we don’t have the money to pay again—”

I could feel my fever breaking, and I began to sweat through my jean jacket. I was eating my words, rambling, my cheeks growing warmer. I felt stupid, like I wasn’t making any sense. He wasn’t hearing me because he didn’t want to listen to me. Why would he? He’d probably argued with passengers ten times already in the last hour. Customer service can be awful. I’ve dealt with entitled guests and waited on too many rude tables; you become jaded. I get it. He was annoyed, and I was sick. I wanted to get home, and he likely did too. But he just shook his head again, repeating that I needed to pay for the bags.

Had I not been sick and worried we would be sleeping in the airport, I may have had more space to remain calm. But built-up rage eventually needs an outlet, and there is also only so much patience a woman has, patience that we’ve learned is required of us when we’re called a dumb bitch while crossing a crosswalk; patience needed when the two men drinking beers, both twice your age, whistle at you in broad daylight, and undress you with their eyes; patience when the world tells you an angry woman is an unhinged woman; patience when your anger, no matter how righteous, is considered an overreaction.

Sometimes, you pick up an artichoke and throw it at a wall. You’re not actually mad about the artichoke or your children fighting over a salt shaker. It’s the many moments in which you were not allowed to feel what you needed to feel. The anger compounds, like Jenga blocks, before the final tipping weight. It eventually topples, and it is not quiet when it does.

I started yelling. I left my body for a moment as the rage escaped me, then circled back and enveloped me whole. The kind words weren’t working, and so I told the airline attendant how I really felt—that I thought he was mean and rude and I would be filing a formal complaint and his airline sucks. I used the word sucks. I’m grateful no one pulled their cell phone out to record me. TikTok wasn’t around yet. It was a full-blown tantrum without profanities because, even then, an inkling of my conditioning for how to be soft-spoken remained.

When my husband arrived with our bags, I watched the scene shift. I stood in the shadow as this exchange happened, small and enraged. The attendant decided we didn’t need to pay after all and that he would waive the fee for him, my husband, “this one time.” He said it with a smile and even upgraded our seats as a courtesy for our flight troubles because, apparently, he was in a better mood now that my husband had arrived.

After that day, I noticed the rage more often. I couldn’t push it back down. I found myself angry a lot, yelling at strange moments, never at people, but in the quiet of my mind, in the pages of my journal. Anger was bleeding out of me for reasons I couldn’t understand.

“I think I’m really angry,” I told my husband one night as we watched tv. I couldn’t focus on the show. Instead, my mind was spinning with all of the times I’d been made to feel small or stupid simply because I’m a woman. More than this, I was angry that I wasn’t allowed to be angry. Not without consequences. And not like a man who is excused for his outbursts or, more often, respected. His anger signals passion and confidence. His rage makes sense.

It’s been five years since that day in the Orlando International Airport, and I still struggle to express my anger. I haven’t figured it out yet. I admire other women who can be so open and unashamed when they feel rage, but it’s still hard for me.

Like right now, in the wake of Alabama’s IVF rulings. All week long, I’ve found myself oscillating between anger and grief, and then back again. But I don’t know what to do with these feelings. I don’t know how to channel them into change or productivity. All I know is I feel defeated and furious. I want to scream, but where?

I guess some internal change is evident. Historically, I would have pushed these feelings down and kept my anger private. Now I write about it. Go to the gym. Talk with my therapist. Read every news article I can. Ask my IVF clinic about how we can help. I am trying to process the chaos, as best I can—and it’s just one of many atrocities to be outraged over.

I believe righteous rage, especially when felt and expressed by the people who’ve been harmed and their allies, can inspire action and motivate change. Rage demands answers and accountability, especially when coming up against injustice. I want to believe rage is productive. I want to see the fruits of a woman’s anger expressed, finally, after years of keeping her lips pursed. I guess the question I’m left with is: how?

How do we express the anger without being seen as “crazy”? How do we raise our voices without being silenced again and again? Can our rage benefit anyone? Do we just accept that we’ll be dismissed and called angry women until something changes?

I want to believe a woman scorned is a woman seen. But I just don’t know.

Feelings Not Aside

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