Last Thoughts on My Mother:
A Bedtime Story
by
Jessie M. Adams
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Jessie M. Adams on Smashwords
Last Thoughts on My Mother:
A Bedtime Story
Copyright © 2011 by Jessie M. Adams
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Last Thoughts on My Mother:
A Bedtime Story
I never hated my mother, although it probably seemed like that at the time. She was a strong woman, and I admired her for that. She was beautiful too, something I often think she knew too well. She had this long blonde hair that would move every time she turned her head. I had the misfortune of inheriting my father’s thick, dry, brown hair not unlike the hair of a horse’s tail. She smoked cigarettes, Camel lights I think. And although most people think – and rightly so – that it is a filthy, disgusting habit, she somehow managed to look sophisticated when she smoked. She took long, meditative drags as if she had stepped straight off a 1940s movie set. That is how I remember her best.
It was in second grade that my teacher, the petite and well-meaning Miss Randall, told us all about the horrors of smoking. I remember the way her nose wrinkled as she insisted that from the smell of our clothing, she knew which ones of us had parents that smoked. After school that day I gathered up all the cigarettes that I could find and proceeded to break each one in half and drop it ceremoniously in with the garbage. When my mother came back she was furious, and my childish pleas to her sanity did nothing to assuage her anger. I cannot remember the rest of this encounter clearly, but I imagine I was punished.
In retrospect, I am not even sure how successful I was in my endeavors. I probably only succeeded in destroying one or two packs, but the mind has a way of exploding those moments which seem relevant, almost to the point that it borders on lying. Like any kid, I lied to my mother all the time, but I’m also a terrible liar. I screw up my face while simultaneously I manage to force my eyes nearly out of their sockets. Why anyone would believe me about anything, I cannot understand.
The lies I told my mother as a child were usually harmless. I would tell her my homework was done, or that I hadn’t stayed up all night reading. It was later as an adult that the lies I told seemed to grow exponentially. But that’s something else entirely. What I was thinking of, was the time she caught me in bed with my boyfriend. I was fourteen or fifteen, probably fifteen because it was late in my freshman year. We weren’t having sex, although we may have if she hadn’t come home. When it happened, I tried to lie at first, but of course the truth was obvious. When she caught me, she immediately assumed the worst. I mean, I would have thought the same thing probably. I don’t blame her for that… it’s just the way she started screaming at me. The whole memory sort of blurs together, but after he left I distinctly remember her sitting at the kitchen table drinking a rum and coke and smoking a cigarette -- waiting. The room was hazy and she just sat there in the center, veiled and angry. And as I tried to creep past -- I don’t remember where I was going -- she looked me full in the face and said, “What are you doing?” Just like that. “What are you doing?”
When I think about it now, that was the moment we could have fixed everything. I might have gone to the table and sat down. I might have talked to her. But I was fifteen, and I didn’t. Instead I went into my room and pulled a canvass duffle bag from its place under my bed where it had been since I turned thirteen -- just a little duffle bag with some clothes, a toothbrush, and three hundred dollars I’d saved up from baby-sitting. I grabbed that bag and I climbed out the window and I left.
But I was fifteen and I had nowhere to go. I just walked around for awhile, thinking about how rotten a lot I had, how terrible my mother was. She didn’t come looking for me. At the time I thought she didn’t even know I was gone. I thought she wouldn’t even care if I did leave. I don’t know why I thought that. She never gave me a reason to think so. I just thought it for some reason.
It’s weird to think about now. I wonder why I was so mad at her. She loved me. I’m sure of that…I know some people aren’t sure if their parents really love them, but I always knew she did. I wish now that I had been more supportive…or just easier on her at least, but I was a kid then. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, only that she was sad or something. I never thought of her as a person or anything. She was just my mother, you know? I don’t know, but I think probably most kids are like that. I know mine are anyway. They can’t imagine that I’m a person. I guess maybe it’s partly my fault. As a parent you put up a wall you know. You’re supposed to protect them from things, and inadvertently I think you shut yourself off from them in some ways. I mean not that you don’t love them, but just that you never let them really get to know you. I don’t know why that is.
I never knew my mother all that well. I knew little things about her like how she always listened to George Jones when she was feeling lonely, or how she really loved orange sherbet. Mostly though she just loomed in the background of my mind, like a bad dream you can’t get rid of. She never really told me what to do or anything. I mean sometimes she would sort of let me know she disapproved, but mostly she just kept her mouth shut and watched what I’d do next. It’s just that I can’t get all that mess out of my head. “What are you doing?” It’s just…I’m still really not sure. What am I doing? Anyway, I told you that story so that I could tell you what happened next.
My grandma heard all the noise I guess and found out I’d taken off. She started yelling at my mom and stuff, saying she shouldn’t let me do whatever I wanted. My mom screamed back that at least I had a little freedom which is more than she ever had…or something like that. I forget the exact way it went. I heard about it years later at a family dinner. It was my Grandma’s seventy-eighth birthday. Everyone was still together then. My husband, me, and our three girls. My mom. And Uncle Steve…I never saw him very much, but he came up for that party. I remember distinctly because he had been sober for three months. That was before he had his accident. A few weeks later he got drunk, I guess, and hit a family in a car. It was real tragic. Everyone was hurt except for him. I guess everyone made it, but he never did seem right again. He died a few years later due to “complications.” I’m not really sure what that means. His whole life seemed pretty complicated to me. Anyway, we were all at this party and for some reason we started talking about that night and I found out my grandma ripped my mother a new one and then came out looking for me. She looked for hours. I had never known about that.