There wasn’t much she could do anymore and nothing she could say. Her voice weighed down by the shame and blood in her head, roaring along to the rhythm of her frantic heartbeat.
Her eyes darted from the oak brown table between them and the wheezing cuckoo clock hanging precariously on the wall behind her. The half-full Minnie Mouse coffee mug sat where she left it, untouched since it had been set down in front of her.
Fixating on the object for a moment, she imagined her fingers tentatively brushing the handle. She itched to unclasp her hands, to stretch them across the gulf that separated them, but she found restraint. She remembered how the rot would characteristically spread, seep from her and crawl up her spine. It would trickle down her throat and nestle itself right next to her heart, living eternally in the only thing she had left.
Her hands stayed in her lap, picking at her fingernails.
“Mom.”
Keeping her eyes on her fingers, she noticed how different they looked for the first time.
She used to hold her daughter with these hands, braid her hair, bathe her and now they were a map of borrowed time. Veins raised, like tributaries, under skin she never remembered being this thin. Skin that crept around uneven nails, some of which were bitten down to the quick. Others were jagged, her mouth’s assault abandoned amidst a moment of anxiety.
Her hands encased each other with a trembling quickness. It wasn’t a gesture of the prayers she had long since given up on or even the peace she chased each time she walked into a chemist. It was an act of desperation, a weak defence against the chaos of her undoing. She had to keep it together for five more minutes.
She hadn’t even heard her. Well, she definitely had but that wasn’t the point.
This moment was too real to be a product of ‘one time’ occurrence. A ‘one-time thing,’ that started desperately and so long ago. The memories were obscured by fretfulness and desperation, sweat and yearning. A sickness that threatened to creep up the back of her neck as despair and regret bubbled into wanton desire.
“You need to look at me.”
She was gentle when she spoke, always.
Dragging her eyes across the space, she first noticed the way she was sat, back stiff, looking so much like her father, hair tucked behind her ears and that same weary tilt of the head. Her own eyes stared back at her, a sadistic feedback loop of shame and disgust. She registered then that she hadn’t looked into those eyes in months, not properly. A vain part of her wondered what she looked like to her now.
The feeling of need clawed at her back, causing such discomfort that she shifted in her seat. As she fidgeted and kept her gaze straight, her voice spoke again.
“Mom, please. What is this this?”
Her face was half-illuminated in late afternoon light; her eyes raked over the bills on the table. They lay there, spread open with an accusatory glare – each page had her daughter’s name scrawled tauntingly at the top.
You’ve done a very bad thing.
“Mom, you took out credit, in my name, you stole from me...” She paused, a wry laugh blooming from her chest, “…I literally have nothing, and you still stole that from me.”
Voice brittle, each syllable was like the crack of a whip. She was bored of the ‘ignore it and it might go away,’ game; instead, she allowed the words to settle into the space between them. She wondered if she knew she could see it – how weak and small her mother had become.
‘How do I pay for this, what do I do? Please what do I do Mom? I can’t –‘
Her only baby was afraid. Of her?
‘I didn’t think you’d find out baby,’ softly and half-broken. Like the words were being prised out of her. She tried to do what mothers did for once, ‘I thought I could…’
The words stumbled over each other as they left her. ‘I thought maybe I could fix it before you ever knew. They don’t – they don’t even mean anything my love, just paper. I can put it right baby don’t cry, I can, I can try and put it right and fix this. I’m your Mom I’ll fix this baby, you know me, you know –‘
“Sit down. What are you doing? Sit. Down!”
She was standing?
Stopping to breathe, she saw it. Scraps of black, red, white all catching the light as they fluttered to the ground, confetti celebrating a life no one could possibly want. The jagged pieces of paper were strewn across the table, the floor, her lap.
She was just starting now, face flushed, chest heaving with ragged breaths….
‘ What even are you?’ the words spat in her direction painting her the shame she had become so accustomed to feeling. She knew exactly what she was. She knew as she stood there, hands still hovering uselessly in the air, fingers smudged with ink from ruined pages.
She knew as she wanted so much to tell her how she loved her – loved her before she even took her first breath. Yet, the words clung to the inside of her mouth because of just how little she wanted to say sorry. She wasn’t sorry because she adored every moment of being high, feeling everything and being everywhere that wasn’t here, now or herself.
This was it; she was exactly this, nothing more, nothing less.
She knew she deserved a whole mother, who was stronger than her worst weakness. She wasn’t sure she could be that person anymore. She questioned if she was ever that person.
‘ What was it for?’
They lingered momentarily in the feigned blissful ignorance that had filled the room, knowing they both knew what that they knew yet no turned to speak, so they played the game instead.
You are my best friend
You’ve broken everything
I will spend every moment I have left pushing myself against the space between us
I want nothing to do with you
Nothing I ever do will mean more to me than sharing this life with you
I truly hope this doesn’t kill you
Ignore it and it’ll go away.
and that’s exactly what she did.
She watched her turn her squared shoulders and walk away without another word. The clack of her heels echoing further from the kitchen, closer to the front door until they disappeared.