Mother's Name

The only time Mother ever disclosed something about who my real father was, we were moving from Seattle to New York. Mother was on the phone talking to Aunt Margaret about being afraid that I might find “it” during the move, and then she would be forced to talk to me about it. Mother packed the entire house by herself, she used to wait until I was in school, or out playing with friends to pack the boxes, label them, and even start putting them in in the moving truck she rented to drive across the country. When Mother was sleeping, I used to go to the garage and with surgical precision, go through the boxes searching for “it”, and then with eyes tired from searching in the dark go back to sleep empty handed. We left Seattle at the break of dawn on a Sunday. Mother had the whole trip planned; it took us a week to arrive in New York. She had created what she believed to be the best road trip playlists, and she had marked on Google Maps the places we had to see, and the places we needed to eat at. 

Mother and I both knew that eventually we would have to have the talk about my father, and we both knew that I was going to need more details than she had given me before. When I was four I asked about him, and she said he was an important man, that he was good, a true justice fighter. Mother and I stopped in a Motel on the road on the third night of our trip. While she was taking a shower, I went back to the truck and kept looking for “it”. In the back of the truck there were a couple of boxes labeled “fragile” that I was nervous to open. The first one of these boxes was as light as toilet paper, and when shaken produced no sign of anything fragile on the inside. I opened the box to find hundreds of newspaper articles all concerning crimes in New York; I looked through a couple of them trying to see if anything made any kind of sense but nothing seemed remotely familiar or relevant. 

The next night, while Mother was taking her nightly shower, I went back to the truck, and back to the newspaper articles. This time I decided I was going to organize them and find a system that would allow me to read every single one of them until I could understand why Mother was keeping them, but I didn’t manage to read them all nor to discover Mother’s reason to have them. On the last night of the trip, having gone through almost all the cutouts, deep in the box was a magazine, or what looked like a magazine inside a plastic bag that protected it. I took it out of the truck to see it more clearly, it was a comic book. Kept in its original bag, in perfect conditions. Mother could have never been a comic book nerd, this was the first comic book I had ever seen in real life, and I had heard Mother say a million times how ridiculous comic book inspired movies were. I grabbed my phone and took a photo of the cover, placed the comic book back in the box and covered it with the newspaper cutouts. 

Our first night in New York was quiet and cold. We were going to live in my grandfather’s old apartment, and that seemed to have a weird effect on Mother. I went to my room, which still had that light lilac color on the walls from when it was Mother’s room, and checked my photos. Batman and the Monster Men. It was a relatively new comic book, published when I was three, the same year Mother decided to leave New York with me and settle in Seattle. After some light googleling, one name jumped from the screen. Julie Madison. Mother’s name. 

The next morning Mother was in a rush to get me out of the house. She wanted to open the boxes and put everything in order and, according to her, I was going to bother her more than I could possibly help. I told Mother I was going to take a walk around the neighborhood, maybe try the route to school. But as soon as I left the house, I searched for a comic book store near me. I walked to the counter, a twenty-something young girl with a sleeve of tattoos, all comic book images, was reading a thick psychology book.

“Excuse me?”, I said, ashamed of how high my voice still is. 

“Yeah?”, even her voice was deeper than mine. 

“I’m looking for a comic book”, I wanted to swallow my own stupid words. “Batman”, I was sweating. “Batman and the Monster Men, do you have it?”

“Nah, sorry kid. New things come every week, so maybe come back and check it out again.” 

“Do you know what happens?”, I asked trying to see if I could get any more information before I had to come back next week again. 

“Well it’s the first post-crisis encounter of Batman and Strange”. She kept talking about villains, and crime bosses, and Gotham city, and a bunch of names and events she incorrectly believed meant anything to me. 

“What about Julie Madison?”

“The law student?”, she replied confused, as if this Julie Madison character wasn’t worth discussing about.

I don’t remember if I said thank you or goodbye before running outside the comic book store. I ran a couple of blocks before finding a bench to sit and catch my breath. Mother was a law student in New York but she never finished. I never knew exactly why Mother never finished, but she was now a paralegal. Aunt Margaret had found a paralegal job for Mother in a big law firm that paid well and would bring us back to New York to accompany her now that she was old. I went back home as I made a mental list of every detail Mother has ever told me about my father. Name? Not once. Place? She told me they met in New York. Job? Never, but she had mentioned a couple of times that he was a fighter for justice. 

I arrived home, went straight to my room and ordered Batman and the Monster Men, and Batman and the Mad Monk on Amazon. Mother’s credit card information was saved, she had ordered so much stuff lately for the move that I didn’t think she would have noticed. I went to the living room to find Aunt Margaret slurping a cup of scalding hot tea. Mother had run to the hardware store to buy some things to fix the old kitchen cupboards. I sat on the couch next to her determined to ask her about my father.

“Aunt Margaret?” 

“Yes Boy?”, She called me Boy because half of the time she couldn’t remember my name. 

“Did you and Grandpa always live in New York?” 

“Your mother was the first one of us to ever leave this city”, she said shaking her head.

“What did Grandpa do? I mean what was his job?” 

“Your grandfather was a great businessman, and a gentleman, he would have built an empire if not for those gangsters and hoodlums that–”

“Aunt Margaret!”, Mother yelled ending our conversation.

Mother asked me to go to my room, and a couple of minutes later she came in and told me that I shouldn’t be forcing Aunt Margaret to talk about grandpa Morgan since the topic made her anxious. She also yelled at me about using the Amazon account. I tried asking what a hoodlum was but Mother left before answering any of my questions. The comics arrived the next day. I read them in one sit and then reread them to make sure. Julie Madison’s character talked exactly how Mother talked, fancy and removed. Her father died just like Grandpa did. Norman Madison. Morgan Madison. They were not even trying to hide it. 

My father is Batman! 

The next morning I opened every single birthday card I have gotten over the years, broke my piggy bank, and even stole a couple of twenties from Aunt Margaret's wallet, she carries so much cash and never counts it, and went to the comic book store determined to buy every single Batman comic they had there since my birth in 2003. I went back home and studied them trying to find any other reference to Julie or Norman Madison, or anything that could lead me closer to knowing more about Batman, more about my father. Everytime Mother left the house I went through every single drawer, cupboard, and closet trying to find the box with the newspaper cutouts. I had to find the reason why Mother kept the Batman comic in the same box with all those articles. 

I found out there were about 800 Batman comics, and I had to have them all. I was putting together a map of every place in New York that was similar enough to a place in Gotham, and then overlaying them with every place Mother could have been in at any point of her life in New York. The tattoo-girl from the comic book store helped me get a summer job at a frozen yogurt shop, so I could afford buying the comics I needed. Every new comic I read felt like one step further to discovering who was my father behind the mask and millions of dollars in crime fighting gadgets. I even became friends with the regulars at the store, since I became a regular there too. One of them explained to me his fan theory that since Batman comics have been out for so long, Batman was not one man, but several men that took on the role of being the Batman of their generation. 

I had managed to buy close to a hundred comics when Mother started voicing her concern about my new found passion for those “things” as Mother called them. I couldn’t tell her that I knew she had one because I was afraid she would hide it somewhere outside of the house and then I could never find the box with the articles again. One afternoon as I was returning home from the comic book store, I found Mother talking to Aunt Margaret in whispers. She was complaining about my comics, but her voice was worried, I thought she might even cry. 

“He has made no friends since we moved here. He spends all day reading those things”.

“School has not started yet, I am sure he will forget the comics as soon as he meets kids his own age”, Aunt Margaret said trying to comfort Mother. 

“I should go back in time and forbid him from ever watching those ridiculous superhero movies, then maybe he–” Mother suddenly stopped talking and turned around as if she could feel that I was home. 

Knowing Mother I knew my time was running out. She was going to move the box or destroy it before I could find it. Mother decided she wanted to spend more time with me before school started, and decided that we were going to have dinner together every night, the two of us and Aunt Margaret. I used those dinners to ask Mother questions about those years in New York before I was born, before she decided to move to Seattle. As always she kept things vague and changed subjects as quickly as possible. Sometimes I used to dream that my father was any other superhero because then it would be easier to find him, it would be easier to find someone that had the ability to swim like a fish, or run at lightspeed, or  someone that wields a power ring. The piles of comics on the floor of my bedroom continued to grow. I had started reading comics published before my birth. The tattoo-girl helped me find places where they sold cheap used comics in not so good conditions. I bought a collection of some Detective Comics in really bad shape because any comic featuring Batman could be a clue. If Mother wasn’t going to give me the answers, I was going to find them on my own!

Mother invited a couple of friends over for one of our now-mandatory dinners. She referred to them as friends from another life, which is a phrase I had heard her say before when talking about her time in New York and at least once when referring to my father. These people didn’t seem to have anything in common with Mother. They told stories about their acting careers, but any time they tried to say something specific about Mother’s she would point with her forehead at me and they would all laugh their hearts out. Mother sent me to my room earlier as she and her friends stayed in the living room telling stories of this other life Mother had lived. I took the opportunity to go into Mother’s bedroom and look for the box. I finally found the box hidden inside another box, I was mad and proud of Mother and her ability to keep the newspaper cutouts hidden from me. They were all articles about the crimes of a Mangano family, and later of the trials against them. Some of these crimes and stories felt weirdly familiar; I took a pen from Mother’s nightstand and wrote Mangano on the back of my palm.

Back in my bedroom, I looked over dozens of comics trying to find something that could explain the cutouts. I went all the way back to Batman and the Monster Men, the same comic that had started this investigation. Salvatore Maroni. Maroni. Mangano. Maroni was a gangster, and a few clicks confirmed that the Maganos were one of the five families of the Italian-American Mafia in New York. Were they responsible for Grandpa’s death? Just like Sal Maroni was responsible for Norman Madison’s death in the comic? I ran out of my bedroom towards the living room, but I stopped soon before anyone could see me. Mother was raising a glass of dark red wine and I heard one of her friends calling her Princess. Mother was laughing like I have never seen her before. Just as much as I wanted to find the truth about who my father was, I wanted to know who Mother really was. I went back to my bedroom and looked through my comics one by one, reviewing my notes and the timelines I had drawn. 

I found the old Detective Comics sitting on a pile under the bed, they were so old and damaged I never even read them. I opened one randomly and there she was again, Julie Madison. Mother not as a law student but as an actress with quirky friends that laughed out loud. I had to write it down on my notes: Julie Madison first appearance was in the late 1930’s in Detective Comics #39, #41, and #49. Julie Madison’s stage name was Portia.

Portia... I hastily came out from under the bed with my notebook, and walked to the closet. Written in green on the timeline: Princess Portia. 1970’s. World’s Finest Comics. 

Mother is a time traveler!