Pretty Little Black Parade

Mama

Mama

It’s more than ten minutes before my mom finally comes up to my room. She takes one look at me and starts to cry, as expected. She’s trying to see my eyes – the one part of me that she actually remembers, but I’m doing everything possible not to have to look into hers. I open my arms as an invitation for a hug, but I have NO idea if she’ll except it. Turns out, she does. She falls into my arms and hugs me like she used to back when I was the son she loved. I don’t know how long we stay in this position, it’s defiantly the longest we’ve been in any form of contact in about three years. “I don’t want you to die,” She finally chokes into my neck. I squeeze her tighter and say the only thing I know to be true. “Mama we’re all gonna die. In fact, right now they’re building a coffin your size.”

She hits me for being to “gruesome,” something she claims I always am.

My mom and I were always close growing up, but we had some major differences. She was always overly religious. And she assumed since I was her offspring I had to be, too. But I had too many questions and not enough answers. None the less I had a relationship with God and that was enough for her. But then I left for collage, and started drinking a lot, having a lot of sex and taking a lot of drugs. Eventually it got too painful for me to lie to her about my entire life, specially when I lived so close to home and she loved to take me out to lunch and saw me high or hung over way too many times. I began to be open about my life, and she tried to accept it, but it soon became ‘too painful’ to watch me ‘ruin my life’ with such ‘sinful choices.’ I respected her beliefs and knew that if I had a kid wasting their life away on the crud I was doing, well, I’d say the same.

I can not blame her for leaving. I can’t blame anyone for leaving.

“You ain't no son of mine!” She yelled at me, standing in my messy dorm room years ago. “For what you’ve done there gonna find a place for you” She shakes her head, staring at a pile of Xanax from a friend of mine who sells all I could ever want in the form of pills. I don’t know what she was suggesting… jail? Rehab? Hell? Church? Who knows. She opened the door and sighed. “Just mind your manners when you go.” And left. I hadn’t seen her since then. Until now.

She stops crying and tuns on her mother instinct, fluffing my pillows, asking if I need anything and so on. “How do you feel today?”

“Good.” I lie to her. “How much did Wes tell you?”

“Everything.” She replies, which doesn’t help me out at all. How does SHE know what ‘everything’ is?

“Like what?” I try again.

“Like how you won’t do any more treatment or chemo.”

“It wasn’t working.” I reply.

“Maybe it wasn’t working because you didn’t want it to work.”

What she says may be true, but I wouldn’t admit it.

“I did want it to work.” I say. “Cancer isn’t curable.”

“You want to live?” She asks, staring into my eyes.

I look away.

She lets out a bit of a sniffle.

“What happened with Aria?” She asks. She must have just gotten the back story from Wes.

“Oh, mom.” I groan. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Tell me, Ezra.” She demands.

I haven’t even told my mom about the shooting. She didn’t need to know.