Blackness of Night

I used to be afraid of the dark.

But let’s be honest here, who hasn’t been. It’s like an empty, black vacuum that surrounds you, suffocating you. You tiptoe through it, afraid that if you disturb the eerie silence, a hand will reach out and cover your mouth as they drag you away.

We’re humans, naturally afraid of the unknown. The darkness makes us feel vulnerable.

At least… it made me feel vulnerable.

I would run to my mum’s room, crying and sobbing because I didn’t want to be in my dark, empty bedroom all by myself. I would find her standing out on the balcony. From inside, I could only see the faint outline of her figure, and the red end of her cigarette – where smoke curled and tangled off it, briefly arranging themselves in patterns before spreading out too far to reach each other.

I knew that mum tried to quit multiple times. Sometimes, when she picked me up from school, she would be chewing a monstrous wad of gum which probably drew more stares to her than smoking did. But nonetheless, she never broke the habit.

It wasn’t her fault. Even when I was too little to really understand, she appeared to have the weight of the entire world resting on her shoulders.

I would creep outside, where the cicadas were still bellowing their song, and the night air was sticky and thick.

“Come here, hon,” She dropped her cigarette and crushed it with her heel. She would lift me onto her lap, pointing at the stars. “Look at them, Mina,” she said.

“What?” I asked, still shaking, mum’s arms around me easing the fear slightly. I still didn’t fancy the dark.

“The stars, Min,” she replied. “Are they not beautiful?”

I turned a reluctant head towards them. I had never really paid attention to the stars before. Funny since I always loved drawing them in the sketchbook that mum bought me for Christmas.

They sparkled in the night sky, like miniscule diamonds. Sprinkled across the darkness, but they were so perfectly aligned, as though someone had pressed their forefinger against them, and gently arranged it.

“They’re so bright,” I said.

“Can you see stars during the day?” mum asked. I shook my head. “Exactly, they only come out at night time, when everything is dark. Only in the blackness of the night can they shine. Without darkness, there would be no light.”

My young mind only half-understood that. The night air had begun to make me drowsy, so I curled up against mum’s chest, breathing in her sweet scent of vanilla and honey.

“When you are afraid, Mina, look to the stars,” mum said. “They will guide you to safety.”

I had already fallen asleep by then, but my mind had remembered those words, and I held them to me like a prayer that had been whispered.

When I became older, mum and I grew apart. Perhaps, it was just a teenager thing. But she worked long hours, and didn’t come home until night had fallen. Then I found out that it wasn’t because she was working, but because she was seeing somebody.

I never knew my dad. Mum became pregnant with me when she was twenty from a one night stand. She had dropped out of school, given up everything to take care of me. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realised all she had sacrificed.

But I was young then, naïve. It had been me and her my entire life. I had begun to think that it was always going to be that way. That her world was always going to revolve around me, that there wouldn’t be anything else to pull her out of orbit in the little universe that we had.

I was wrong though, like I so often was back then. She was happy with this man. But she didn’t want me to know about him. Maybe with this man, she could live some alternate reality where I didn’t exist. Where she hadn’t become pregnant. Where she finished her studies and became a successful lawyer. That her life hadn’t been ruined by a one night stand that had landed her in a cage.

It made me bitter and angry that I couldn’t be what she wanted. I was a teenager who had landed herself in drinking and smoking. And mum knew none of it.

My life was a constant darkness and cycle of addiction that I couldn’t break out of. Isn’t there that saying, everyone is born an addict. I learnt that darkness didn’t always have to be physical. It didn’t always have to be real. But it was real enough inside of me.

I was like a ticking time bomb. Sooner or later, my minutes were going to run out. I was going to explode and shatter everything around me.

“Mina, talk to me,” mum said one day. “You’ve been so quiet recently.” She had more wrinkles now, and her once sleek black hair was streaked through with grey. She was still wistful and beautiful to me.

“I have to go,” I said. She never calls me Min anymore, I thought.

“It’s Saturday,” she said.

“I have to meet up with friends,” I said. “School project.” I don’t know when I had become so adept at lying. It just came to me as naturally as breathing.

“I think we need to talk,” mum said.

“We can talk after,” I said. Then I was out the door.

We didn’t have that talk. After became never. I kept disappearing, avoiding her, until she died. She had died in her sleep. Her heart just stopped. And that was it.

That night when I lay down in my bed. I couldn’t stop thinking, what if this was my last night? What if this was the last time I was looking at these ceilings?

Had that been what mum thought? Or had she just entered into dreams, unaware. Let the darkness take her, not knowing it was her last.

That night after she died, I walked out of my bedroom onto the balcony. There was the faint smell of cigarette smoke, and a dash of vanilla and honey. I could feel her presence there. The night air was cold and unforgiving. Unlike, that hot sticky night years ago.

It was so, so dark.

Only in the blackness of the night can they shine. Without darkness, there would be no light.

I looked up at the stars again. They hadn’t changed. They still twinkled and sparkled like the world hadn’t changed. They were a constant in the everchanging world. I could almost feel mum’s arms around me.

And whenever it is dark, she is there like the stars.

A light in my darkness.

And I wasn’t afraid anymore.