His Love

Chapter Two: The Fall

When my mother was nine, her father cheated on her mother too, but he'd been cheating on her for years. Everyone knew, even her mother but she wouldn't say anything. My grandmother was very quiet, or so I've been told. Always looking the other way, never participating in gossip. But she didn't have drinking problems or depression. She never seemed to have any problems at all, other than her cheating husband of course.

My mother always said she wouldn't be like that, quiet I mean. She had promised herself when she was a little girl that, no matter what, she's never look the other way. I never knew any of this about my mother though. Not until the day she died, I stayed by her side the entire time, until her frail body coughed and she sputtered her last breath "No one will ever love you."

June 24th started out as any other day at my mother's house. I was woke up at 5 am and cleaned, polished, and cooked. She woke up by 10 am, when all this was finished, she slipped off her robe and I bathed her. She doesn't make me touch her this time, she didn't the last few times either. She says as I get older my hands get filthier, she doesn't want filthy hands on her. When I was a boy I had to touch her, touch her because she was sad, touch her because she was broken. "Your innocent hands wipe away the whispers of sad." She'd say as she moved my 6 year old hand to her breast.

After her bath she'd get dressed and eat lunch, then watch her soaps while I polished her nails. These are how our visits usually went, until June 24th when she fell down the stairs. It was an accident. It was an accident because she deserved it. It was an accident because I couldn't touch her anymore, couldn't look at her anymore without remembering the hands. Her hands, sometimes the hands of the men she took home, my favorite teachers hands when I was twelve because I was teasing him in class.

She left the house in my name, and after her funeral I felt numb, like nothing was ever going to change. Then I got a call, a call full of love and hope. Jennifer called, Jen from the café. Jen Jen Jen. She said she heard of my mother's passing and that maybe we could go out tonight. The world stopped spinning and I knew that everything was going to be alright.