My Mother's Son
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I find a comfortable position on my bed where I firmly entrench myself.
I watch the door in deep concentration, preparing for the onslaught
that
will occur in the next few minutes.
"Her worst can't be that bad," I try to convince myself, although deep inside I know that her worst can be severe. Her worst has sent me to the street in emotional pieces. Her worst has damaged my life to the point of irreconcilability. But then again, her best has also hurt me for it is only as good as many other people's worst. Probably not purposely, but hopelessly by nature. I really do not want to listen to her and I'll probably just block her out. Maybe if I give the appearance that I'm comprehending what she's saying, she'll leave me alone. But after spending last night on the street, I'm tired and temperamental and may just smack her. Anything is possible. She enters the room with a sombre face, accompanied by her ever-slouching posture. She looks more run down than she ever has. For some reason that encourages me. Maybe I have finally broken her down to the point of no return. Now to finish her off. "You look well." She has no reply. She silently seats herself beside me, then releases a huge sigh. Not of relief, but of exhaustion. It is the sigh that I have been waiting my whole life for. “Why?” she asks in a rhetorical manner. I haven't an answer. Instead I simply shrug. She elaborates, "Why did you do that out there?" "Do what?" "Don't even try that. You’re not stupid. You know what you did, you planned what you did and you executed the plan perfectly. Now you play stupid? Don't even try it." "Play stupid?" I patronize. "I can't play stupid around here because even if I did, I would still look smarter than you. Not only would I make myself look bad, I’d make you look worse." "Worse than you made me look out there? Somehow I just can't buy into that." "I didn't make you look bad. You did look bad, but it wasn't my fault." "Don't do this to me," she slides further down the bed, away from me. "You know, I'm finding it almost impossible to like you, let alone love you." “So?” my mental defences spring into action. "And yet it means nothing to you," she continues. "You don't need my love, not even my friendship. That's what scares me. You show no feeling towards me at all." I become cynical, "Do you have a point?" "See, you're doing it right now. You’ve just become so accustomed to doing it that it’s second nature. You don’t even realize it." "Of course I know that I'm doing it," I admit. "I'd have to be an idiot not to." "That doesn't surprise me. It may have a year ago, but it doesn't anymore. You've changed so much that I don't even know you anymore." "You never knew me," I snap. "Your interests have always lied in your man." "You're such a little prick," she breaks. "I've taken my life into my own hands and I know where I'm going. I'm not proud of the past, but I'm not apologizing for it. I may not have taken care of myself very well, but I always made sure that you had what you needed." "TLC? Never. Food? Whenever you were ambitious enough to make a box of macaroni or a sandwich. The other times I had to steal money out of your purse for take-out." "You make everything sound so bad. We had happy times too. Sure, everything wasn't sugar and spice, but it wasn't the inferno that you've made it out to be." "Sure it was. You just weren't sober enough to see life as it really was." "Like I said, I'm not going to apologize for the past. I can only learn from it move on. That's why I'm marring Gary. Things are only going to get better from now on." “Improve?” I continue to be cynical. "Yeah, improve," she smiles. "If you call marring Gary an improvement, I'd hate to see a deprovement." "That's not even a word," she nit-picks, "Why can't you just admit that life will be better once I'm married?" "It's an anomaly for your life to get better." "If you think that way, your life won't improve. But I'm not thinking that way anymore and I never will again. That part of my life has passed. I feel new again, freed from the past and that’s the way I’m going to act.” "You'll never be free from your past," I digress. "Every time you look into my eyes, your past will be there, staring you down. I'll remind you for eternity of what was and will probably be. You'll never convince me that your life will get better. As long as you're arrogant of your past, you‘ll never move on." "You're wrong," she calmly disagrees. "And you're a slut!" With that word, an eternal hush falls over the room. I feel the need to shake her violently, but I must resist. If I were to do it, it would be a fatal mistake for the last of my sanity would die with the move. The silence is overwhelming. To escape from it, I reach for an old telephone directory that lies on my nightstand. I aimlessly flip through it, hoping that, through some magical force, I will be sucked into it. “How can you pass judgement on me?” she becomes angry. "You don't know." I say nothing. “Tell me!” she grabs the directory and mercilessly throws it across the room. I immediately jump off the bed and stand in place, silently awaiting her next move. "Can you even face me? " I slowly struggle to think of the word that I need to use. The world turns dark and inconclusive as I try to gain a sense of stability. Almost dizzy, I finally know what to say "All of my life," I become calm. "I've lived one mishap after another, so many that I don't continue to count," a single tear falls. "All of my mishaps have had one common factor." I turn to her, “You.” My voice becomes very cryptic, “Every time I try to move you're there to build a wall to block my passage. Every time I try to think, you're there. You've built walls in my mind. I've always thought of myself as being invincible to another person doing that, or doing it myself for that matter. I thought that I was invincible,“ I laugh. “You’re the only one who has managed to do it.” I feel her presence closing in on me. In an instant, her hand is on my shoulder. I step forward to break the forthcoming wall. "No, not this time. You won’t do it to me again. You'll try, but you'll never succeed. You won't fuck with me ever again." She says nothing. “Sit down,” I order. “I’m not finished.” She obeys. “Were you embarrassed of your mother?” I bombard. “Did you have a deathly fear of letting anyone meet her? No, you didn’t. You never had a reason to be embarrassed or to be in fear. Your mother didn't sleep with anything with a nickel." My head bows in sorrow, "I can't do this. I just can't. I feel as if I’m just a body and a soul. My soul floats above my body, controlling its moves, but abandoning it in times of hurt and sorrow. I wish I knew what I did in a past life to deserve you. I don't know anymore, I've run out of answers. Sometimes I wish that eighteen years ago, when you couldn’t remember which one the father was, you would have just aborted me.” "Don't ever talk that way," she warns. "Why not? Is 'abortion' a sacred word? At least that's one thing that we can say for you, you've always used and effective spermicidal jelly." She is silenced once again. "I would have been better off aborted. Now I'd be one with the earth again, free, no walls. What have I got here that can compete with that? I'm shackled. Even if I was to break free, the walls are so high that I could never hope to scale them. They'll only get higher and higher and I'll never be free. Really, my life has ended. To continue living would be to die, but to die would be to live." Her silence is prolonged. I suddenly turn and become violent, "Do you have any answers for me? What do I have here?" “No,” she sighs. “No I don‘t. The answers you need you'll have to discover on your own. You have to learn first hand.” "Don't pretend to be my friend and confidant. You’re not and you never will be. The damage has been done, you can’t turn back now.” "You're exaggerating." "No I’m not. If you could just open your eyes to the reality, you'd see that you've exhausted your life. In the process you've done the same to mine.” "That's bullshit and you know it. I don't even know why you're on this, this..," she struggles to find the appropriate word. "...well, whatever it is. I'm happy today and you're not going to ruin it for me no matter how hard you try. If you could just see, you'd be happy too. I know you'd be happy. You just have to open your eyes and see the past as just that, the past. Let's make this our year to be happy." I react doubtfully, "Don't even try to lay that on me. You and I both know that this will be just like any other year," I pause to reflect. "Tell me dear mother, do you like being beat by him?” "That's nothing for you to be concerned about.” "Yes it is. It's as much my concern as it is yours. I can't sleep at night knowing that you're probably getting the beating of your life in the next room.” "That's a lie. It doesn’t happen that often. And he doesn't mean to, it's just that life hasn't always been easy for him," she sighs. "His father died when he was only young and he has never really healed from it." "You can believe that, that is if you can believe that," I pause. "Tell me, can you still look in the mirror? Or, better yet, is Gary better in bed than the johns before him." She doesn’t respond. "Tell me mother, does he keep you warm at night? Does he? "Does he keep you warm at night like my father couldn't?" "Don't.” "Why can't you tell me," I frivolously yell at her. “Why can’t you answer me?” "Stop this.” “Did you even know his name, or was he just someone that you picked that you picked up from the strip joint?” As she lowers her head and covers her face, her crying continues to grow louder. I feel no remorse for my words whatsoever. In fact, I feel it rather inevitable that this should happen. The pressure that has built up between us must be released and this seemed the most opportune time to do it. Besides, she isn’t really suffering pain for she is immune to it. Her years of hard living have created this immunity which is more effective than a tetanus shot. Her crying is merely a physical reaction, one that should not be taken seriously. Even though she tries her hardest to make one believe that she is emotionally hurt, she's not for her emotions are long dormant, much like her morality. I continue to drill, "Did you even know where you were? How you got there? Or were you just so hard up for money that nothing else mattered?” She mumbles inaudibly. "What did you say? Were you agreeing with me?" She looks to me and slowly breathes, "I was raped." I am silenced. My body quickly grows cold as I lose all sense of mental direction. I don‘t know what to say. I have never thought that my mother could say something so profound that I could be rendered speechless. In fact, I would have earlier laughed at the notion. However, she has managed to do just that. With nothing apparent left to say, I exit the room, leaving her to cry, think, and revel in her accomplishment. I enter the bathroom and immediately open the medicine cabinet. On the third shelf down sits my mother's prescription sleeping pills. Without thinking, I pick up the bottle. As I tip it over, many pills spill out onto my hand. I put them into my mouth, turn on the faucet and take a potentially fatal drink. I drop the bottle and walk back to the bedroom. My mother is gone. I lay down to await my destiny.
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