Mare intra me est
the sea is within me
* * *
The day the doctors declared that there was no more cancer in my blood, was also the day that I turned eleven.
Mama celebrated, cheering and throwing a small party in my room. The only other person I knew who would come was Heidi. Several of the nurses, doctors, and staff, stopped by to celebrate with mama.
I wasn't sure if it was real. I'm not sure why they so easily accepted this news. I had been fighting for so long, that suddenly stopping left me dazed and confused. I didn't know where to put my turmoil and lost emotions. I didn't know how to pour out my grief.
I think Heidi saw this in me. I felt ashamed that I clung to sickness because it was the only identity I had ever known.
A woman came into my room the next day. She talked to me in the most soothing voice, letting me pour my worries and troubles to her. A counselor, is what Heidi told me. I liked talking to the woman. I knew it was because I had never been able to freely converse with others. I had been trapped in a room, chained to the bed with my wires, and greedy for the company of whomever felt like coming to see me.
I had always craved conversation. Watching tv shows and movies, my dream at one point had been to have the biggest family I could. To have more children than I could count so that my world was able to expand and grow. I think it's why I had wandered around the hospital at night. I had wanted someone, anyone, to see me. To know my name and use it.
Petra was good at her job. Sometimes I thought she was too good. I had never been one to hold back what I was feeling, or to hide the truth, but I always felt embarrassed at the confessions I told her after she was gone.
I heard her talking to mama outside my door. Telling mama that I was better, and should be outside in the real world with other kids.
It had made mama upset. In the past I hated mama being upset, but now I couldn't understand the reason for her tears. I couldn't understand her fears of losing me when that had already happened.
"She won't let me go outside," I stared out the window, trying to remember what the sensation of grass between my toes felt like. I couldn't recall ever doing something like that.
Heidi's hand soothes down my head.
With the stop of the treatment, and my declaration of wellness, I was hoping that my hair would begin to grow back. I would grow it, and never ever cut it. I would become like Rapunzel and have it wrapped around my neck like a scarf. Maybe I would use it to escape this place.
"She is worried about you," Heidi said.
I've been able to detect people's emotions from an early age. It helped when trying to understand the mood of the doctors and nurses whenever they delivered news to me. I knew from this long practice and training, that Heidi was upset. She was upset at mama.
Mama was slowly turning into a villain in my eyes.
I could understand now the anger Conrad felt when he first saw her. I had been sad at his hate, but now, I wish I could take back time and yell at her with him.
"I want to leave," I whispered to Heidi. I wanted to go. Away from this hell. I never wanted to step foot in a hospital ever again.
I see Heidi's jaw tense. See the flare of emotion in her eyes. Her hand comes to rest on my shoulder.
The next day, I am discharged.
Mama doesn't seem to know what to do with me. Her apartment in the city is overwhelming. It's suffocating to be surrounded by noise and people and to have so much color and explosion. I think, if mama had done a better job of introducing me to her world, I would have loved it.
I would have loved the city and its noises, and the people who each carried their own story.
But when you are thrown into a land that is unfamiliar, you begin to crave the comfort of what you have always known.
I could tell neither of us were happy. Mama was a butterfly. She wanted to fly to others and have them look at the color of her wings. She wanted to be stared at, and loved. Mama and I both craved the same things, but we went about getting them in different ways.
A month after I had first arrived, she threw a party and told me to not leave my room. I had asked her why? Why was I not allowed to go to the party?
"Honey," she leaned forward, her eyes etched with worry and panic, "darling, people are not used to seeing children who look like you. I don't want them to stare and be rude."
Ashamed.
She was ashamed of me.
I stayed in my room that night, listening to the noises of laughter and talking, and other strange things that I didn't understand. I wanted to be with them, but I was scared. Mama's words had scared me. I knew I didn't look like a normal child. I still resembled a skeleton, and had no hair. I was slowly starting to grow, and get stronger, but I suspected it would be years before the effect of the treatment began to go away.
I don't want to be here.
I sat on the floor, my legs pressed to my chest as I laid my head down, blocking out the baren room that I saw. The four white walls seemed to travel with me, haunting and unable to let me go.
That next day, I ventured out of my room, staring at the chaos. People were asleep on the floor, broken glass littered around them. I saw spilt sugar on the table, with several noses covered in it.
I scanned the room, trying to find mama. Tiptoeing around the fallen, I made my way to the back, wondering if she would be in her own bed.
I wasn't prepared for the sight of mama with no clothes. I wasn't prepared to see her laying on top of someone I didn't know.
I must have made a noise. I can't remember the noise. A scream, crying, panicked breaths?. Something that made mama open her eyes and stare directly at me. Slowly she looked around the room, her eyes closing again as if she wanted to block the sight of me out.
"Baby, go back to your room."
I wanted to listen. I had always listened to mama. I wanted mama to be happy, because I had gone through the first years of my life thinking I was the source of her unhappiness.
"Mama..." I had never thought of myself as a child. I had seen too much pain to have the thought process that was normal for children. But in that moment my voice reminded me of a child's. Lost and broken, like when they couldn't find their way in the store and spoke that one word over and over again, knowing eventually their hero would recognize they were being called. Knowing they would be saved.
Her face hardens, eyes becoming angry.
"Do as you're told, Ares. I told you to not leave your room. Go back."
The man under mama stirs, a slow groan leaving him. Panic flashes across mama's face as she stands and quickly walks to me. She takes my arm, pulling me out of the room and closing the door.
"Who was that man mama?" I whisper the words to her, not wanting the other strange people to hear us.
"Ares, please," she's holding my shoulder, shaking her head, "please go back to your room."
I do as I'm told.
I step over the bodies, over the discarded clothes. The sugar that is spilt everywhere. A piece of glass gets in my foot and I watch in a detached way as the blood drops create a path showing proof of my disobedience.
* * *
It occurred to me later that mama has never taken care of me. I spent the majority of my time in hospitals. Strangers took care of her child, and eventually, I think mama forgot how to be a mama.
Later that day as a cleaning service is taking care of the wreckage, she comes to my room.
"Baby, I'm sorry you had to see that," she wraps me in her arms. I wonder what the me of two years ago would think of this scene. Of seeing mama finally putting her arms around us and holding us without us asking.
"I want to leave."
Mama pulls away, staring at me. I look back at her, meeting her gaze.
"I don't want to be here. I don't want to be with you, mama."
The truth begins to pour out of me. Broken. I'm broken and now the shadows were seeping out, wanting to be exposed.
"I don't want to be with someone who is ashamed of me. I don't want to have a mama that looks at me only when I'm sick. I want a mama who loves me. I want a mama that would tell strangers to leave before asking that of their daughter."
I thought tears would come, but they don't. They come for mama though. They always came for mama when she needed them.
"Baby-,"
"Send me to school." I thought of the solution during the night, as I heard strange noises and words I wish could be forgotten. "I want to learn. I'll stay at the school. I'll be there. And you can stay here mama."
She hesitates. I'm not sure why. I see the relief already on her face. Anger licks up my spine, slow drops that have fallen through the years that are now starting to fester.
This woman should know better than to anger the God of war.
"Okay," she said.
Would a real mama say that? Would a real mama agree so easily with their daughter? To let their child take on the role of parent and accept it?
I don't know. I think of Rose, and the interactions we had. I don't think that's how a real mama would have reacted. But mine accepts it.
Mine let's me go.
*waves*