When She Loved She

Margret's mother had no tolerance for tomboyism.
She made a decisive point of applying strong discipline whenever she caught her daughter playing football, wearing pants, or signing up for the army national guard.

Margret didn't really mind her mother's aversion.
She kind of thought her mother was boring.
And she couldn't speak English...or any language for that matter.
(She was mute)

Margret's mother's strong sense of tradition tended to go mostly unnoticed considering that she could do little more to promote it than grunt herself into a ruby-cheeked fluster. And this caused her to look more than usual unappealing. A fact that made her constant social rejection at PTA meetings anything but mysterious.

Margret did her best to steer clear of her mother's watchful eye whenever she dressed in the morning or left on a Saturday afternoon with a pigskin under her arm. But on the odd occasions when her attempts were unsuccessful, Margret simply sat and observed her mother chastising the living daylights out of her via a series of sharp inhales and phlegmy expulsions of hot air.

One Sunday afternoon, following just such a mother-daughter arrest, Margret found herself sitting on the counter in the kitchen nursing a glass of lemonade and playing audience to yet another wordless critique. Only this time she had had about enough.
Her mother's facial flare-up was reaching a wheezy crescendo when, on some unfamiliar impulse, Margret flung the contents of her glass into her mother's face.

Margret's mother sizzled like a freshly quenched flame.
Her redness instantly receded and her once-bulging, bloodshot eyes shrunk back to their normal diameter.
An ice cube resting on her shoulder slid carelessly down the front of her now sopping apron.

Margret looked at her mother and then at the empty glass in her hand and then back at her mother. She couldn't decide whether she ought to be afraid or devout.
But while she thought about her mother made the decision for her.

THWACK!

Margret's mother's swing was completely unexpected.
Margret flew from the counter top preceded by most of her teeth.