Mother's Day
This is what I think would happen if things kept going the way they seem to be with Mia and her daughter Isabella. Just so you know, I dislike Mia. A lot. It probably shows. You'll find out… Enjoy!
~//
I don't know my mother.
No, I wasn't adopted. She didn't leave me on some street corner to die. I just… don't know her. Not really.
She had me when she was fourteen, because she was a slut. I know that sounds harsh, but like I said, I don't know her. We never talked about it. All I know is that she was way too young, and every time I hear Grandma talk about it, that's all I can think of. Slut.
Slut.
Slut.
I live with Grandma. When I was a kid, I used to live with Mom and Grandma. But my mother left a long time ago.
I'm kind of starting to hope she never comes back.
She'll send me stuff sometimes. Christmas, birthdays. Stupid cards with twenty dollar bills inside, sometimes a shirt or two that I'd never be caught dead in and are usually the wrong size because she doesn't know me, either. They're just consolation prizes. Pretend-I-care-about-you gifts. I-still-think-about-you-gifts. Grandma says it's the thought that counts.
Yeah, maybe. But not when those thoughts are really God knows where, all because she misses being a wannabe celebrity.
I have a scrapbook in my room. There are pictures of my mother and me in it. Most of them are from when I was really little. A few when I was seven or eight. Since then, it's mostly been pictures through the mail, with Grandma writing little updates on the back. Izzy made the basketball team/won an essay contest/misses you very much.
My favorite pictures are from France, because god, I hated France. Those pictures remind me of why she doesn't deserve any pity. They took me away from all my friends and put me in this French-English school where the teacher yelled and the kids laughed because I didn't understand the difference between feminine and masculine words, and how could a word have a gender anyway? We lived in this little apartment, probably worse than our house back home, and I was never allowed outside because Grandma was afraid we'd get lost. Mom was never home. She was always off at modeling gigs and after-parties. Pretty soon, Grandma was struggling to pay the damn French electric bill, and Mom just kept saying it's coming, it's coming, I promise… It never came. Finally Grandma said screw you, daughter. I'll go raise your child for you bitch and packed up the stupid French books and me and hopped on a plane back to the Great White North.
Well, not exactly. But that might as well have been how it all went down.
We still don't know what she did with the money. I bet I can guess:
She wasted it on all those fancy clothes and drinks for all her fake friends. That money was her ticket to get into all the cool clubs with all the right people. And if she had to snort a few lines or eff a few guys (maybe even girls, what do I know?) to get into the pretty people's good graces, who cares? Who cares about the family she ripped apart and abandoned? The limelight gives off a much better glow than the one underneath my ladybug lampshade. I guess she got her priorities screwed, because I always thought my light would be at least a bit more inviting, if not mean more.
Of course, it didn't all happen so fast. She came home five months later, bloodshot eyes hidden underneath dark shades, decked out in (sheek) baggy clothes so Grandma couldn't see her size 00 (Anorexic? Meth? Guess I'll never know) frame. By then, I was seven, and I knew this woman – twenty something, reeking of alcohol, popping coffee and mints like there was no tomorrow – was my mother.
Except she wasn't. She was some parasite who had taken over my mother's body. As young as I was, I could still remember her from when I had a (almost) normal childhood. She would always pick me up from school with a big smile on her face, smelling like flowers. She read me books every night and tucked me in, and tried to give me a daddy (the first one died – the second one said he had better things to do). She threw me birthday parties and bought me ice cream while we played in the park. Even though she had that algebra quiz tomorrow, or that chemistry paper to write, or that cheerleading practice to go to, she was always there.
Then the modeling started, fast forward three years, and we have this: The body that claimed she was my mother wore too much eye liner. She hogged the bathroom and slept in till noon, then left at five to find the nearest party with the cheapest drinks. When she picked up modeling jobs, she'd be gone for days. Upon return, she'd slap the leftover cash from her almost-already-used-up paycheck on the counter. Grandma had to work two jobs because of her lack of contribution, and I learned what it was like to get made fun of because my clothes were from the thrift store and I couldn't afford the newest hair clips. Those little girls bit into me with their razor sharp fangs and never let go. I got used to the taste of iron in my mouth and sitting alone at the lunch table.
My mother would cry because I refused to give her a kiss goodnight (when she was around) and I only called her "Mia" to her face. She slapped me when I found the cocaine stashed in her purse, and apologized and cried and slapped me again when I asked about her food diary and the scratches on her knuckles. After a while I stopped talking to her. She didn't show up for my birthday party, and I gave Grandma a card for Mother's Day instead of her. Soon enough, I taught myself to shut down whenever she was there, whenever I even thought about her. I forced myself to bite my tongue and say I didn't care. If she didn't love me, then I wouldn't love her.
On a cold day in October, she packed up her things and left. She never came back. Since then, she's sent us little notes from New York or California, or wherever the heck she is. Grandma writes back for me, forges my signature at the bottom. She says if she didn't, my mother might just loose it. I think Grandma needs to wake up, because I'm pretty sure Mia 'lost it' (whatever 'it' is) a long time ago.
After she left, Dad started coming around for a while. Nothing serious. He'd give Grandma some money from his job, say hi to me, offer to take me places. Sometimes I went with him. He'd take me to the playground down the street or to the museum across town. He liked to talk to me about basketball. We never mentioned the missing unit of our trio, or the fact that this wasn't the way it was suppose to be.
He never talked about taking me off Grandma's hands, or us living together, like a fraction of a real family. Once I asked him about it, and he only made excuses. His job wasn't very stable, he could barely afford to feed himself, excuses, excuses. I asked him about Mom, too. Why he thought she left. He said she was sick of being the responsible one, and he was too much of an idiot to fill her shoes. End of story.
The truth? They were too afraid to grow up. Both of them. They wanted to live in the fairytale world of rainbows and bunnies, invincibility, and recklessness. They took a chance at growing up the minute the two idiots decided to sleep together. They should've grown up the minute she found out she was pregnant. Dad jumped ship, because high school with a diaper bag instead of beer was no fun. Mom got halfway there, tried to be a model and saw the past five years she had wasted, the best years of her life (and of mine), and followed Dad right on overboard. The pulled me into the raging sea with them, unintentionally I suppose, turning my life upside down and smashing words like home and family and love to pieces.
Dad doesn't visit anymore. He got a job in Alberta, or Vancouver, or maybe he's in Yukon mining for gold. I've gotten used to the fact that none of my questions will ever be answered.
Unlike Mom, Dad doesn't send money. He doesn't send anything anymore. He gets the fact that he screwed up and it's useless to pretend that he actually wants to fix it. In a way, I'm thankful. At least he's decent enough to stop lying. At least he's accepted his fate, unlike her. Mom hangs on by the skin of her teeth, only because both of her hands are full with "more important things" (like a failed modeling career, white powder, and the fastest way to loose ten pounds), throwing up empty promises like it can ever change anything. She just can't accept the fact that she's lost me. She's lost all of us, and there's no coming back.
You can't turn around once you decide you don't want to be lost anymore. She's given me too many false hopes, and so from where I'm standing, she deserves the bed she's made.
Mothers who are not mothers just don't get their daughters back, unless she is fool enough to unlock the door. I've watched her walk away too many times for me to ever even crack a window. I may still be a fool, but I will learn from my past.
She didn't want me enough to stick around. That's the bottom line. She was always more important. Her life was number one. I was the pest who reminded her of everything she lost.
She wanted to rid herself of past imperfections. She wanted to escape reality, to shed the skin that latched onto her the moment the condom broke. I will do the same. After all, like mother, like daughter.
Time to lock her out and run like hell.
~//
You like it? Well, in any case, Happy Mother's Day!