My Mother's Son: Chapter 14
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Two weeks have passed since the day that my innocence died.
Maybe that's a bit overdramatic a term, but it seems to fit. I was so naive about my mother, even after everything that I've been with through her. Not naive in the sense that I would defend her against her detractors, but naive in the sense that I still took her words at face value. When she told me that she was raped, I believed it. even though it went against everything that I hold dear, I believed her without a doubt. Besides, what kind of mother would lie about a thing like that? A kind like her, that's who. While lying on that bench after confronting her in the alley, I thought I was going to die. I had nothing left to live for. Any last once of faith in my mother was ripped from me like a child being abruptly weaned off a soother. Every last once of truth in my life was crushed, thrown aside. I was officially thrust into adulthood, lies, deceit and all. Lying in the bench, I considered suicide. I thought about jumping off the Jacques-Cartier bridge and sinking to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, only to be seen again when my bloated body washed up somewhere outside Trois-Rivières. Slitting my wrists followed by a nice, warm bath. Jumping from the Mt. Royal Observatory. Ending everything. But I didn't. Something stopped me. I just couldn't do it. I got up off that bunch, dusted myself off, and went home. No daring walks on the edge of the metro walkway, no attempts to jump into the Lachine canal. I just went home. I walked up the stairs and back into the building, not even aware of what I was doing. My only thoughts were off the nice warm couch that awaited me in the apartment. The comfortable blanket that had helped nurse me back to health. The lulling lights that streamed in the tinted window from across the street. Just being somewhere that I didn't have to think about anything at all. Throwing open the door of the apartment, I realized I was not alone. Looking to the living room, I realised why I didn't attempt to kill myself. It was not because of the warm couch, the comfortable blanket nor the lulling lights. It was because of who sat in the chair in one corner of the room: my guardian angel. My gaze fixed on her and only her, I finally realized what it was like to care for somebody else. To be cared for. To love. She, however, was not so entranced. "Where the hell were you?" she snarled in a not-so-polite manner. I didn't come up with a response. "I told you not to leave," she continues. "What if you had collapsed or something? You're not that strong." "I had some business," I try to close the subject. "Business? You can barely walk. What business could you possibly have?" "Some personal stuff." "Like your house, wife and kids?" she turns away. "If you're just fucking me around, there's the door, leave." "Trust me, I'm not fucking you around," I try to reassure her. "I have no wife, no kids, and definitely no home." "Then where were you?" "Finding out some truths about my past." "Couldn't it have waited?" "Not this truth." "What's so important that it couldn't have waited?" "Something like this." Temporarily putting her off, I took a seat on the sofa. At this point in my old home, I would storm off into my room in a huff. My mother would ignore me and start drinking, and I would consider suicide. But this wasn't my old home, I didn't want to commit suicide, and she wasn't my mother. "Okay," she continued. "I see we're getting now here with this. So why don't we return to this morning's line of questioning? Who was the guy who came to the door that day and what connection did you have with him?" I almost wanted to continue with the other line of questioning. But I knew that I had to give her something, even if it was a lie. "Was he your father?" "Don't ever say that," I became angry. "Don't ever say that." "So I've struck a cord." "One that you should never strike again," I warned her. "Maybe you'd just better let sleeping dogs lie." "If he wasn't your father," she ignored me. "Then who was he?" "A ghost from the past." "That you beat up." "Yes, one that I beat up." "Why did you beat him?" "We had a fight." "It must have been a pretty serious one by the looks of your condition." "You could say that." I was getting tired of her questions. After all I'd been through, the last thing I wanted to do was entertain the curiosities of a girl I hardly knew. But something made me stay in the hot seat, allowing her to fire away. "Who was the fight over?" "A woman." "Were you having an affair with his wife?" "Don't even suggest that," I laughed. "I'd have to kill myself." "He almost did that for you." "But not quite." "Was the fight about somebody in your family?" I knew I had to give her something. Maybe she'd be satiated with a morsel of information; maybe she'd stop bothering me. Maybe she'd hold me and tell me everything would be okay. My mother never did. "Yes," I replied. "It was over somebody in my finally." "Finally," she smiled. "Some progress." I grinned a tight smile, acknowledging the game she was determined to play. "Was it over your mother?" "Bingo." "Why was it over your mother?" "You're not getting it out of me that easily." "You and that guy had a fight over your mother," she tried to piece the clues together, "You couldn't return home after the fight. He's not your father. He must be your mother's boyfriend." "Score another one." "Not that I've gotten this far, will you fill in the rest for me," she walked to the coach and sat down, putting her arm around me. "I want to help you, but I can't if I don't know what the problem is." "Why do you want to help me?" "I care about you," she confessed. Her honesty struck a chord within. It was the first time somebody had admitted to "caring" about me in a long time. Thinking long and hard, I finally felt ready to "give" in. "You want to know the whole thing?" I challenged her. "If you deem me worthy enough to tell." "You're already the most caring person in my life, no deeming is necessary." "Then tell me everything." "Okay," I took a deep breath. "We had a fight over my mother, basically. He told me I was responsible for my mother's drunkenness, I brought up an insult towards his mother. He hit me, I hit him. Then he knocked me unconscious. The rest is a blur. I was told that I beat him against a table. I guess I blacked out and forgot it." I was lying to her. I knew I was lying to her. I was fully aware as I bashed Gary's head into the cheap table. There was no "blackout" about it. But I didn't want her to think I had that brutish force within me. For some reason, she still regarded me as an innocent, and I didn't want to taint that with some thought of attempted murder. "You blacked out?" "I must have. In the hospital later, my mother told me she walked in on me beating him. she said that she pushed me out into the hallway, where I feel over the railing." "And that's where I came in." "Thank god you came in," I gently caress her head. "You've saved me twice now." "What about the rest of it?" she demanded. "The rest of what?" "The story. That can't be all." "That's it." "You're lying to me." "How do you know that?" "Though I have only known you for a few days now, I feel like I know your soul," she became mystical. "I know you're leaving a lot out. I could tell by the tone of your voice." "I am leaving a lot out, you're right." "Don't leave anything out. I want to know it all." "Are you sure? You may not like me at all by the end of it." "There's nothing you could say that would make me stop loving you." And with that Freudian slip, I knew that I could tell her everything. It's the first time that some had ever told me that they loved me in a context that did not include a previous fight. Could it have been that this girl was developing feelings for me? It couldn't have been. I'm not a loveable person. And as I sat and explained everything to her, this became clear. What I've been through, what I am, it's pathetic, not loveable. What could make her love me? I started at the beginning, from my very first memories. As I spoke my way through all the years of pain and tears, she occasionally sighed, sniffled and gripped me tighter. Even through the parts that I thought would drive her away, she never faltered. Arms tightly wound around my cheat, she was there in a way that my mother never was. She loved me. But then came the tough part, the part I just didn't want to go through again: what had transpired in the alleyway that very afternoon. "So what happened today," she asked though a crackling voice. "Today?" I paused, taking a deep breath. "Today unravelled everything. Today I found out that my mother lied to me because she was embarrassed. My mother wasn't raped. She told me she was because she was embarrassed over how she got pregnant in the first place. She was embarrassed that she was a whore." Her grip didn't loosen. An encouraging sign. "She put it all on me. All of her embarrassment, all of her ignorance, everything. And the worse thing was, she didn't seen anything wrong with doing it. She didn't have any problem with driving her only child to attempt suicide. That's the kind of mother I have." And for all of that, she simply sighed, leaving me to wonder what she was thinking. If I were in her posotion, I'm not sure if I'd want anything else to do with myself. After the stories I had woven, I'd be fixated on the emotional baggage that I must be carrying. Gently, I'd suggest that it would be better for me to have some time to myself, then slip out the door, never to be seen again. But she doesn't tell me that I need time to myself. She doesn't slip out the door. She remained sitting, holding me. It was the most loved I'd had ever felt. "What are you thinking?" I asked. She doesn't say anything. Either she was stunned over my story, or was trying to come up with a meaningful response. "What do you feel about me now?" "After all of that," she breathed. "I know why you did what you did. I would have killed him, and her for that matter." While it was music to my ears to hear much malignant comments towards Gary and my mother, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I was waiting to hear "I love you even more now." Something, anything including the word "love." She continued, "It makes me think of my own past, and why I'm here." She piqued my curiosity. Was it possible that somebody else out there was suffering just like me in some parallel life? Had I finally met my soul mate? "You never did tell me who you are or where you come from," I ran my finger through her hair. "I don't even know you name." "I've been trying to remain anonymous in case you turned out to be a crazy maniac or something." "And now?" "I think I can trust you." "With your life." "My name is Evangeline, Evangeline Wile." "What for short?" "No nick names. You have to grow up with people who care about you before you can acquire a nickname." "Where do you come from?" "I'm from a small village in Nova Scotia;" she lowered her head into my lap. "A place called Paradise." I immediately was led to the though that an angel like could have only come from a place called Paradise, as sickeningly sweet as that may sound. But obviously for her it was a Paradise in name only. Which leads me wonder exactly what happened. "What have you been through?" "Too much to go into detail about," she quivered. "You got to give me something," I demanded. "I poured my heart out to you. You know everything." "I don't know everything. Nobody ever knows everything." "Maybe not, but you've come as close as anybody ever has." "Okay," she resigns. "I grew up in a little rusted old house on a farm. there were 7 of us, my parents, 4 girls and 3 boys." "It must have been hard to grow up with that many siblings." "It wasn't my brothers and sisters it was hard to grow up with." "What did your parents do to you?" "My dad, just about everything. My mom, nothing at all, and that's what hurts the most." "Well, what did your dad do to you?" "I remember," she sniffled. "The first time it happened. I don't know how old I was, but all I remember was my bedroom door opening and a shadow standing in the doorway. That shadow came in and touched me in places that shouldn't have been touched at that age. you see, my dad believed in hands on sexual education. He thought he was doing me a service by molesting me." I was left speechless. "He used to do it every night. He would sneak into my room and touch me. Put his fingers inside of me, tell me that I should have been enjoying it. It felt like an eternity before he would leave the room. the I could breathe easy again, until the next night. But I couldn't really breathe easy. I felt so dirty, so disgusting. I was doing things that I had promised myself I would never do. Every night I convinced myself that this was the night that I would absolutely refuse, curl up into a ball and scream. but I just couldn't get up the nerve. I threatened him. I told him to go to hell, that I w would tell mama. But he told me that if I told anybody, it would make me look like the dirty one. He told me that I was flirting with him, that I wanted it. He told me that was a sick little girl, and that he was trying to help me through it before something bad happened. He raped me and told me that it was my fault." At that moment she started to cry. "I was just a little girl. What choice did I have? I had no where to go. I had nobody to stand up for me." "I...I don't know what to say." "You're here for me, that's more than I've ever had." "Um," I struggled for words. "Why did you come here?" "I was running away," she wiped her cheeks. "I was running away from my past, trying to get as far away as I could. I'm still running today." "But you're hundred of miles away. You don't have to run anymore." "Distance means nothing when you can't get something out of your mind. I've changed my location, my hair colour, my eye colour, I've ran away in every physical aspect possible. But when something in etched in your mind, you have to keep running for the rest of your life. You can never get away from it." "Did you ever speak to your father again?" "I don't have to worry about that." "What do you mean?" "He's dead." "How?" "My mother did it. The one good thing she ever dead in her life." "So I take it you don't talk to her either." "She knew what he was doing to me. She fucking knew it. And she didn't do anything about it. She sat in her room, probably knitting those fuck-ugly sweaters she used to give us every Christmas. She hummed her way through it, pretending nothing was wrong. Pretending that she had the perfect big family that she always wanted. She may as well have disowned me." "How did she end up killing him?" "I guess her conscience got to be too much for her. One night just after I left she pulled out a gun and shot him in the head." "How did you feel about his death?" "Cheated." "Why? He can't hurt you anymore." "Yes he can. He got the easy way out. He's dead and rotting in the ground. I'm the one who has to live with what he did for the rest of my life. He went to heaven and I'm stuck here in hell." "If it's any consolation, I'd love to be stuck with you," I offered. She chuckled, "I want you to get out of her and run far. The last thing I want to do is drag somebody down with me." "You can't drag me down any further than I already am." "You haven't reached the bottom yet. Nobody does until they die." "Then let's wait for the bottom together." "I'd like that." "So would I." And with that I gently raised myself from the coach. Watching her wipe the tears from her face, I raised her into my arms and carried her off. Finally, somebody to suffer with, somebody to live with, and most importantly, somebody to love.
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