I don’t want her to be here, witnessing my most vulnerable side. The emotions that used to rage within me so long ago, the tears and laughter I shed are supposed to be gone, held within me so no one could creep inside my heart again.
But how could I not be hurt, feel so much at one time?
Her breathing comes closer, until it pushes against my neck, the hairs wafting in the tiny draft. The inward-outward movements can be heard even louder now that my tears fall silently. My stomach involuntarily racks from time to time and I begin to doubt she is still there, but for the fact that I can feel her neutral mood and hear her breathing.
Something begins to change in the air. Electricity starts a spark and suddenly I feel a white elephant take shape and realize it is coming from my mother. Where there was only indifference, uncaring coldness, now grows a foreign awareness.
It is so slight at first that I barely catch it, but being super attuned to Mother’s moods for so many years, I feel its voracity flourish until it is so strong, I can barely fathom it. Love, what I feel is perfect, unadulterated love and I am amazed.
Her breathing changes, hitching as she comes closer. Warmth spreads outward from her fingers and her sentiments into me as she clutches my hand, gently caressing it. My own breath is taken from me, my lungs along with the rest of me unable to comprehend this change and unable to move or to react.
My head seems to rotate of its own accord and I find myself gazing up into her light blue eyes, her beautiful ghost eyes. I never fully realized just how exquisite her eyes are, how much like mine they are, until I feel her love towards me and am able to return it in a rather vulnerable and shaky box.
I slowly reach out to her, hesitating, trying to ascertain her reaction, ready to pull back at any wavering in her demeanor. But she never changes, and she doesn’t move. My fingers caress her face, and a film of water grows in her eyes.
She closes them, and her mood changes into—pleasure, an uncorrupted feeling I have never felt from her before.
“Mother,” I call my voice breaking.
She opens her eyes, close to the edge of a tear escaping. She nods, maybe too emotional to speak from what I can feel from her.
“Mother” I whisper, “what are you doing here?”
She pulls her hand back but doesn’t get up from her sitting position on my bed. Her mood reeks now of uncertainty and I don’t want this moment to pass, to never come again.
“Mother, I love you.”
Looking for her reaction, I wait, moments passing.
“Oh Asha,” she suddenly says, breaking the silence in the room.
Her frame moves closer to me and she unwittingly pushes her longer legs out onto my bed, falling into a comfortable pose. Her hands snake around my waist and I am so shocked my breathing stops again.
“Asha, Asha, Asha, am I such a bad person that my own daughter wonders at my loving actions?” She exclaims, waving her hand in the air.
It is almost as though I am in a dream and this new person is actually a robot who has replaced my own mother, and I must wake up. So I pinch myself and cry out from the pain, fully realizing that I am in reality.
She scans my face, her tiny worry lines crinkling. I finally manage to find my voice.
“It’s, just, uh, I have never been one to wonder if you have loved me because we have been so caught up in-in,” Think!, I scream to my brain, “in so many activities over the years.”
Yes, lie, that was good, I think and mentally pat myself on the back.
If she notices my stuttering, she makes no mention of it, continuing.
“Asha, did I ever tell you how I came to name you? Oh, no, it was not your father’s wish to name you Asha, but I fought him on it and won, obviously,” she says, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips while her eyes gaze into the far off distance, remembering a distant memory.
I don’t deign to interrupt, not knowing how long this reality will last. I want to relish it, prolonging this bonding time, and maybe even learn some family history which I have always wondered at.
She smiles widely now, a gleam beginning in her eye until she turns her head to me and crinkles her nose. I never knew my mother’s face could twist this way but I like it.
Laughing she carries on, her hands clapping her face like she is school girl again, “I was once young, younger than 27, yes I know how hard it is to believe, “she remarks as she looks at my wondering gaze.
“I have always thought that you and I are more alike than I or you ever realized. One example of this is your rebellious nature. Now I know we never talk about it, but right now I feel so, so, I don’t know, unbarred, I guess that I must tell you this, so that you won’t go into your life as naïve as me.” She says, throwing her arm in the air, excited.
Then she peers down at me, her face serious again, and my heart almost skips a beat as I think the other side of her is back and she’ll understand that she has made a grievous mistake in talking to me so freely, or showing love.
“However, we all know that will not be the case for you, in a way. Moving on,” her head turns to the mahogany red walls of my room and she relaxes, her mood changing into one of comfort.
“When I was young, about your age, actually, I was considered very pretty, beautiful even, more so than people try to allude to now and I had many suitors. My family thought it was healthy for their children to go through the act of courtship even though it was all pretend because we all were betrothed to total strangers anyways.
However they somehow thought it was good to understand give and take, gain and loss that we all experienced every time we gained a new admirer or lost them to their own betrothals to other perfect strangers.
One day, I was walking down the street not paying attention to where I was going and when I look up finally from whatever girlish musings I gave myself to at that moment, I realized I was in a part of town I had never been before, much like where you found yourself. It was of the same caliber, a filthy mucky area where dirty, unkempt people milled about. I don’t think it was to the point of destitution, but it was not the kind of place a girl of, ahem, my station strolled.”
My eyes never leave her face and I notice how her mouth moves, her dainty lips pronouncing each syllable so perfectly. No wonder I could never imitate her, she was so refined.
“Well, you can imagine my horror at what I had done, so I tried to call my father’s chauffer, but that area must not have had a tower because I couldn’t get a signal for the life of me. Looking around, I saw tha some people were staring at me, and I tried to keep to the shadows, not wanting anyone to notice a girl dressed up nicely, having just come from school roaming around their houses.
I wasn’t sure if they thought I was lost or some charity worker, but they seemed to leave me alone. But, one man, and I’ll never forget his bushy eyebrows, because that has always been a pet peeve of mine, course facial features, I mean come on, a little wax would do wonders right!” She guffaws, inciting a giggle from me.
As her pleasure heightens, I allow my body to relax a little more into her embrace and completeness emanates from my emotional reserves.
“So this man with unkempt eyebrows begins to follow me. By this time it is late, my stomach is growling and I’m thinking I might be um, you know, molested. So I run away from him, completely losing all track of where I had even been from one street to the next and I hear thundering footsteps behind me, so I run faster and then I’m embraced by this form of a disgusting stench.
It’s coming from all his orifices and you don’t even want to know what his hand smelled like when he puts it over my mouth, but I almost throw up, it’s so bad. I’m about to faint when I suddenly am let go and I turn my head in time to see this young man,” as she talks about him, I instantly know this must be the man from the picture.
Her speech has become softer and gentler, longing almost.
“A young man that grabs the bushy eyed man and does violence against him, and I am now afraid of this newcomer when I see his muscles ripple as he pushes his fist into the older man’s jaw and how fast he kicks his leg up into the older man’s, um, groin area. After the stinky man runs away, this newcomer turns to me and I see the gentlest eyes afire from his recent endeavors. All I can think is how I will ever be able to marry a stranger when the most perfect specimen is in front of me.”
She looks at me, trying to gauge my reaction, but I keep a neutral face, and she continues.
“Well, now here I am talking too much. The moral of my long winded history and story, which has quite gotten off track, is that I fell in love with that man and we had so, so many good times together. But like all other suitors who had come and gone before him, he had to as well. This is where my rebellious nature which I have apparently given to you came into play.
I disobeyed my parents and ran away with him, intending to elope, but he stopped me, tricked me and told me to go back, to live my privileged life, and then he left me with a kiss and a broken heart. I never forgot him, in all these years, his gentle eyes sometimes haunt my dreams and when this happens do you know what I think about?” She asks, turning towards me, gazing into my eyes. I shake my head, transfixed by her look.
“I think about you, my beautiful daughter named for the hope I had when I ran away, and the most secret of wishes that one day we would find each other. Oh yes,” she murmurs, in response to my questioning look, “You are named in his ancient Bengali language and I would never change you or your beautiful name, no matter how unique it is in this world.”
“But,” I intercede, “What about father, do you not—love him?”
She gazes towards my walls again, thinking and I feel her mood change, become ambiguous.
“I,” she falters, “I do love your father, but in a different way. I would never let anyone come between us, but he will never have the first love of my heart. I tell you this because of all you have been through, and all you will go through, I want you to know, love changes. It contracts just as the tides of the ocean, a slave to moon, with love a slave to a person’s heart.
Maybe you once loved someone, but it can change in time and you will love again. This is not as unsettling as going through life unhappy and alone. And I would never wish poverty on you, which is something I would surely have had if I had stayed with my young man. Marriage is strained enough and to add financial instability or class warfare to it would break it.
I leave you with these things to ponder, and know this—I love you too Asha, I always have and always will no matter your actions, no matter how I may receive you in our daily lives. I do this for your betterment in society and life for when you are older and your father and I have gone to the eternal rest.”
So many thoughts race through my head as my body becomes frigid when she moves herself away from me and crawls off the bed. She shakes herself, removing imaginary dust and I know that we will not speak again so informally.
I can feel my heartbreaking in a different way as she rearranges her clothing and pads out of the room, her soft footsteps on my carpet. I grieve for the loss of my real mother, the deep one that let herself be excavated if even for an hour.
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Hope you all liked it! Sorry I was kind of late updating, but here it is! I promise to update again by the end of this week if not sooner. And as always, thanks for reading, commenting and voting, you guys are the best!
Music that inspired this piece: Death Cab for Cutie, Coldplay, The Killers, Keane, The Fray, A Fine Frenzy, plus many others that I have already listed before :)