The rain was pitter-pattering lightly against the glass door, making it moan sadly like a long ago ghost. Trails of rain drops weaved strange patterns and unwritten words across the glass, like a strange force of nature pushing them to reveal the secret of the universe. I sat on the bottom stair in the far end of the foyer, clinging to the white, cracking, broken rail. And a woman who happened to be called mother sat before me.
My mother sat in a chair, her forehead pressed to the window. She seemed to be searching, longing for something far beyond her grasp. Her blue-green eyes blank and distant, she could no longer see the difference between reality and fiction. She wore nothing but a faded, hunter-green bathrobe; limp, dark, damp, blonde curls; and a small blanket that offered only comfort between its raggedy holes. My little brother was in bed sleeping, probably dreaming of a war against his Hot Wheels and new toy dump truck he’d gotten for his birthday.
My mom was a young thing; plump, beautiful, and at one point, so full of life. But the world has broken her, forced her into submission, and had beaten that lovely fire in her soul to not much more than a smoldering ember. My father had left her, in search of a more vitalic and sturdy soul; and in restitution offered in an amber shaded glass. I was left behind, forgotten like a misplaced earring or some token of past days. And I was forced to watch my family wither and die, giving no heed to letting life pull me asunder.
The latest installment of family I had was a man named Bill, a lowlife, a scum, and a boyfriend to my mother. I watched him beat her often, putting holes in our walls, and breaking things my mother once held dear. She relocated us, again and again. I lost friends, respect for my mother, and a love for life. Often, I cowered in fear, hiding under bridges or between flower hedges as Bill would seek me out. He told the families of my friends’, lie after lie after lie, until, I had no more.
But that is neither here nor now. Now, my mother is alone; with only me and my brother as company, and no paths or painted arrows on a direction in life. And here, my mother has slowly begun to erode her sanity. Instead, she chooses to sit here, rewriting her memories and history, trying to force my brother and me to forget. I resent her for it, trying to hide the truth, making my brother hate my father, and lying to us in a child’s voice.
“Don’t worry honey, it will all be better soon. You and I? We’ll make a kite, large enough and strong enough to carry us far from this terrible place. You’ll see! We’ll escape and be free…” Then her eyes would go hazy and she would be lost in thought, unable to see or hear me. Her diaries spoke in the voice of a mad woman; screaming of injustice in the stars and ecstasy in the darkest of lights. Her poems spoke of the skies, dreary and sad, mournful at their happiest. She took to staring at old, yellowing photographs and dreaming of times long ago.
I was but a child with no mother to speak of, only me, myself, my brother, and I. Alone, I taught him friendship with the outside world, I showed him our mother’s madness through the faces of our grandmothers and aunts and faces of girls at school. But he was steadfast to his mother, and she to him. And I was lost, forgotten again amongst her many other forgotten memories. Is it such surprise I left as soon as I was given a place to go?