All her Gifts

All her Gifts

A Story by GonnaSlapaPoe

When I was very small my mother gave me the gift to see happiness. I don't think she meant to (it was not her goal or intention), but when she held my small infant hand between her fingers and whispered my name with her lips kissing my cheek (like a prayer of awe-struck adoration for her new center) my closed, crying eyes felt the puff of her breath and opened to view a light too bright to be real. My first bold, terrifying, and exciting look at this world I'd been brought into.

That light dimmed but never faded, even as I learned to crawl towards it, call for it, get my legs under me and run for it. For a while it radiated around my mother; the center of my world, the most warm and safe place the universe could provide for me. As I got older, it beamed from all the new things I was gifted to witness: my first kitten, named Dog and than renamed Peanutbutter. The colorful book my mom perched on her knees, and read in a dramatic voice that made me giggle. The birds on our trees in the early morning, my mother telling me the names she'd given them and the smell of her daily coffee drafting through her bedroom. But it always remained most bright on her right shoulder, where I rested my head to take naps.

She'd always flinch when I went to relax there; she must have thought the light would burn me. It didn't, and I found my calm in the crook of her arm, bent around my body and taking my weight from me.

When I was bigger but still small, I lived through my first day without light. My mother didn't leave the house much; my auntie brought what we needed over and my mother paid her for her time with hugs and green slips of paper. But that day, she told me, we had to go outside. I told her I wanted to go to the park; where auntie took me when my mother needed a nap. She told me that we were going somewhere new.

The world is too big to only play at the park, she told me. And the backyard is so small. Let's go to the icecream shop.

It took me until my auntie's car stopped (and my mother's cold hand shook as she grasped for mine) to realized there was something wrong. Her right shoulder was not glowing, and she drew into herself everytime someone's eyes slid to her. She wouldn't let go of my hand.

They kept staring at her shoulder. As they should, I figured. That light was gone! Something was wrong.

A boy pointed and cried out in horror. His mother subdued him almost violently, drawing him to her like he'd strayed too close to something dangerous. Her shoulder, he cried. Her neck!

I looked where he pointed; other than the dimness, she looked as she always did. Her right shoulder did not match her left. It was reddened and warped, like the top of old candles. It worked fine, though. Nothing was wrong with it; that's how my mommy had been since our first meeting in that hospital room. Did that boy notice the dark cloud that was forming there? That greasy mist that weighed her down and kept her head from rising?

She bought me chocolate icecream with chocolate chunks on a chocolate-dipped waffle cone. She had orange sherbert in a little pink bowl, which I thought looked like the flowers on her favorite skirt (the one she only wore on my birthday). Pink is my favorite color, she told me. Orange is my second. I told her that my favorite color was green; it was the best color, hands down.

My mother cried that night. I didn't see it, but I heard it. Quiet sobs (nothing like the ones I heaved at every bloodied knee and lost stuffy) cracked through the wall between our rooms, as striking as thunder and as fragile as the pretty teacups she kept out of my reach. My mother could cry? I thought mommies didn't cry. But I remember a girl at school saying they did; over daddies, she said. They cry over daddies.

I was bigger and not that small when I realized my mother would never leave the house again. She hid there from other humans, in that tiny two bedroom hut, tending the vines in that shady bird-infested garden. I was becoming a young woman, then, and enjoyed the outdoors and the sun and my friends and the boys that left me letters in the cracks of my locker. I soaked up school, and the trip to and from. My home was a dark prison that fragile girl cowered in, with that f*****g shoulder that made my friends giggle behind my back. I stayed out from there as long as I could, slipping back to my bed when the sun was not around to entertain me, and cranked up my fan to rid my poster-ridden room of her perfume and coffee.

I was angry. There was no light in my world. I saw sparkles from time to time, in the eyes of my friends as we laughed and played, rough with each other and delicate with ourselves. Nothing but groping and shoving and yelling and hands lifting in sudden surrender (it's just a joke, girl, calm down). Hurt and confusion and the fear of being alone and being hated.

I was bigger and very small when my mother died. The birds did not come to the garden in the morning and everything smelled like dust. We buried her in that skirt that looked like flower-shaped sherbert. The coffee maker broke when I tried to run in. I dropped and shattered her perfume bottle. I looked for cracks and holes in the wall between our rooms, where she'd been trying to cry them down these last few years. Peanutbutter died that same week, refusing to eat as he waited to starve on her bed. I couldn't find that book in my room; had I thrown it out? It wouldn't have mattered. I didn't know how to read it right (no one did but her).

There was no light. The twinkles in my friend's eyes did not show anymore, as they grew bored and annoyed with my dark mood. I heard many clever jokes about how I was related to Batman in a new way. They showed such wit and superior emotional detachment (a mocking goodbye to a woman they'd always avoided like a wounded animal). It suited their understanding of her. I did not laugh, though, no matter how ironic their tone was.

She left everything to me. She would, wouldn't she? She'd never stop giving me things. She left me with an empty house with dead plants in the yard and lots of slips of green paper. And the gift to search every corner for a light I couldn't find anymore, nothing but a dull ache in the back of my eyes (a yearning memory).

I let my posters rot on the walls of my room and searched our attic for lights. I found dim flickers from old pictures (shoved in dusty boxes). The brightest (a warm glow) was one of a young girl that looked like my mom, but with matching shoulders that were slender and tan as she smiled at the camera, wrapped warmly in the arms a man that look a lot like me. The fading light there made my eyes burn, spilling ocean water down my cheeks to sting my wounded smile.

I took that picture and cradled it with me, and as I did it grew brighter and brighter. I thought I didn't cry. But I remember a girl that grew up here showing that I did; for mommies, she'd shown. I cry for mommies.

I was not bigger, but not small, either, when I found a dress with little orange flowers and green leaves floating on a pink background. I bought it, and a bottle of pink-tinted perfume and hazelnut coffee. I put it on, spraying the perfume on my wrists, behind my ears, and on my knees where I perched an old colorful book and tried to read it right on the concrete bench by her grave, stopping to sip from my warm daily cup. Birds landed on the trees and each of these details burned bright like I remembered it could, making that unmatched shoulder that hid my little face seem real again.

© 2012 GonnaSlapaPoe


Author's Note

GonnaSlapaPoe
Angst is like cake; sometimes you gotta indulge. Do you think I made it unbelievable, though? I want it to feel real.

My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register




Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Request Read Request
Add to Library My Library
Subscribe Subscribe


Stats

129 Views
Added on May 4, 2012
Last Updated on May 4, 2012
Tags: mother, daughter, love, hate, sad, family, regret, happiness

Author

GonnaSlapaPoe
GonnaSlapaPoe

FL



About
I draw/write comics, watch cartoons, and love animals. Not much else. more..