Mother

The Jack Daniel's bottle nearly slipped from Althea's numb fingers as her heels dug deep into the sodden ground. "I'm not sure which is worse. The fact that you are gone, or the fact that I didn't get to tell you to your face how you ruined me."

Today was supposed to be a day of celebration. It was a day that Althea had been waiting for since she was old enough to leave her broken home and live thousands of miles away from the toxic cloud that was her mother. She waited for the day she got her brother's call that the wicked witch was finally dead, and when he called last Tuesday morning to give her the news, Althea smiled.

But when she arrived to finally get her closure, to finally let the rest of the family know how much of a horrible human being this woman was, no one was there. The morning rain left the cemetery absent of any living souls, and no one was there to witness the speech Althea had prepared on her flight two days prior. No one was there to cry on her shoulder while she barely patted their backs or received the classic "I'm sorry for your loss" so she could respond with "I'm not." Now, it was all taken from her.

No one knew Mother like Althea did. They didn't know the physical and emotional damage she caused.

Mother always had a way about her. She was able to give that All-American housewife smile while holding the butcher knife close to your back, ready to strike you down the moment you disappointed her. While she had you distracted with one hand, she was beating Althea with the other. All Mother cared about was the long line of men that traveled out her bedroom door to the sidewalk rather than raising the children she brought into the world. Unfortunately, Althea was the firstborn and the only daughter. Althea took the limelight away from her mother, leaving Althea to be the first punching bag.

Althea let the amber liquid burn down her throat as she took another swig from the bottle and wiped the excess with the back of her hand. "And here, I didn't bring flowers. Pity. But then again, I'm the pitiful one. Right, Mother?"

Her brown eyes stared down at the white marble tombstone bearing Mother's name, and it made her sick to her stomach. The color white did not fit the woman who would grab Althea's hair and pull her to the ground while shoving insults in her face. White was meant for someone pure and full of light, not a person who was rotten with a soul darker than a black hole.

"Remember when you told me I was a fat whore at the bowling alley? All because you were frustrated and couldn't find your debit card. I was 12. I don't think I knew what a whore was back then," Althea laughed bitterly, shaking her head as if it was a funny memory.

However, the memory was anything but funny and still stung. The shocked look on the young woman's face, who was working the shoe counter, would forever be burned in Althea's mind. Althea felt embarrassed as the worker just stared at her, giving her a look of pity but never speaking up. That probably hurt the most. The fact that no one stood up for Althea crushed her soul.

The world around her kept spinning, but Althea was always stuck in place, on a never-ending carousel ride of lows and highs. Whenever there was a split moment of happiness, Mother always found a way to snuff out whatever fire was within Althea. It didn't matter if she did well in school or achieved the impossible because none of it was good enough to just be happy for Althea; it only mattered if it was enough to tell others how good of a mother she was.

Slowly, the cold rain dissipated, but nothing could stop the surging fire that pulsated through Althea's veins—not when she was so close to combusting.

"You've cut me down too many times to count. Telling me I would ruin my life and get pregnant before I graduated high school, that I was going to be a terrible mother someday, and that you couldn't stand to look at me. It's funny, and sometimes I can't stand to look at myself either. Because every time I look in the damn mirror, all I see is your fucking face!" Althea screamed, taking the neck of the liquor bottle and throwing it at the tombstone. She tossed it with such a force that she secretly hoped it would crack the stone. To her dismay, it stayed intact.

Her chest heaved with panic as Althea looked around in case anyone saw her, but she was still alone. The pounding in her heart slowed, and she stumbled while stepping back from the broken glass. She could blame her sudden clumsiness for the fresh, overturned dirt under her feet, but she knew better than that. If there was one thing that Mother taught Althea, it was never to put the blame on others, even though Mother did blame others all the time. The woman saw the world as the enemy, and everyone was out to get her. The delusion even extended to the point that she blamed Althea's non-existent father for getting a job!

Tears pricked the corners of Althea's brown eyes, which she shared with Mother, but it wasn't because she was sad. It was because Althea was hating herself for waiting so long to finally tell the miserable bitch just how much she loathed her. On the flight to the funeral, Althea wrote the speech she would say at the eulogy and finally got the justice she deserved. But not a single person came to the funeral.

Althea struggled to pull the crumpled-up notebook paper out of her jeans pocket and smoothed it with her hands. She stared down at the multiple words written in black ink, crossed out lines, and whole paragraphs written in margins because there was no more space left. Even though the page was full of words, Althea found herself speechless. For the first time in her life, she had the power to stand up for herself, but she still couldn't do it because the lingering fear that held onto her heart was still there. She feared that if she spoke out, the repercussions of a dead woman could still somehow hurt her.

"You don't control me anymore. I won't let you control me anymore," Althea breathed, taking her paper and ripping it up into a million pieces, allowing the storm's breeze to carry her unspoken words away.

"I will never forgive or forget what you did to me. The scars on my body will forever be a reminder that I survived and that I'm thriving, which probably pisses you off to no end. I want you to know that this will be the only time I'll be visiting, and once I leave here, I will never think of you again. I won't mourn you because you need to love someone to mourn them."

Slowly, Althea turned, crossing her arms over her chest to keep the sudden chill at bay. She returned to the gravel path, where a black Lexus awaited her and her personal driver, preparing for the drive back to the airport. Dark clouds swelled in the sky as thunder rolled around in the distance, but Althea never looked back to see how close the storm was. She didn't want to give Mother the accidental satisfaction that Althea was looking back just for her.