"That is bad word," Rita says, when I ask her how to say stepmother in Italian. "We no use." She shakes her head, then raises her index finger and shakes that at me, too.

"Bad? How so?" I ask. My stepmother is coming to visit my husband and me in the Italian village where we've spent much of the last year and I'm wondering how to introduce her to people.

Rita doesn't answer -- a couple has just come in the front door and she rushes over to seat them. My husband and I are perched along the bar of our favorite eatery. He turns to me and says, "Just introduce her as your mom. It'll be easier."

The idea makes me uncomfortable. I have a mother. Still, it's tempting. My stepmother is a young 60, pretty, with clear green eyes and a well-put-together wardrobe.


My mother wears ratty knee-length sweaters year-round, cuts her own hair, and wears a full-face motorcycle helmet while riding one of her rusty three-speed bicycles down the middle of her Minneapolis street -- a street that's usually cluttered with at least two of her junk-packed clunker cars.

At ten years old, I used to stare out the window of my elementary school: with dread in one direction, where I could see my mother's crumbling house, and with longing the other way, at my dad and my stepmom's freshly painted home with an emerald lawn and a picket fence as straight as a perfect set of teeth.

We'd recently abolished the one-week-with-mom, one-week-with-dad schedule and now I was living with my dad and stepmom fulltime. But still, I'd spend an evening or two a week at my mother's: cleaning, organizing, and dispensing advice on everything from nutrition to dating. During the summers I weeded and replanted her front garden, trying to get the outside of the house in decent shape so the kids at school wouldn't guess at the mess inside.

Even three decades later and thousands of miles away, the thought of being associated with my stepmother's genes rather than my mother's is enticing. But I can't do it. It's disrespectful. So I ask another Italian friend for the word and when my stepmother arrives, I introduce her as my matrigna. And no one cares.

Which doesn't surprise me. After all, contrary to what Rita might think, having a stepmother is not unusual -- it's certainly nothing that should be kept hidden. I've got a secret that's far worse than that, one that only my husband knows. My real secret is this: my mother is a compulsive hoarder.

I'm the opposite of her: I save nothing. I've given away stereos, televisions, vintage loveseats, bookcases. I can't find my diploma from graduate school and I have a feeling it ended up in the garbage during one of my purges. It's exciting to throw things into the recycling bin or the garbage, to bring a bag of clothes to Housing Works, the thrift shop down the block. I get a thrill each time I discard something.

My secret is the one thing I hang onto.

But then my mother is diagnosed with colon cancer and she wants to put her house -- her gruesome, hoarded house -- in my name, in case her medical expenses exceed her insurance. I use that as leverage to force her to let me clean again. Her cancer is cured easily, but during the cleanout I contract a seemingly endless case of scabies from a pillow my mother purchased second-hand. Other than my immediate family, who are also infected, I tell no one about the scabies. Now I have two secrets.

During this time, one of my best friends gives birth. She wants me to visit, but I can't risk passing on the parasitic mite to a newborn. I consider telling my friend that I have a cold, but I've already used that excuse many times. I'm sick of lying. Finally, I tell her the truth, using the more innocuous sounding "pack rat," and the vague "skin condition." As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I feel lighter. Invigorated. It's the same thrill I get when I toss something out.

And just like when I introduced my matrigna in Italy, no judgment comes. My friend simply says, "I'm sorry, that sounds awful," and her kindness gives me the courage to say it again, in coming weeks and months, and more explicitly.

To my pleasant surprise, each time I tell someone about my mother's hoarding, people are empathetic: "My sister is the same way," or "My grandfather was like that," or "There was a lady like that down the street when I was a kid." Others ask questions; nearly everyone wants to better understand the disorder. If only I'd known at ten, lurking in the hallway of my elementary school, what I know now: All our secrets are the same.


Jessie Sholl is the author of the new book, "Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding."







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