Happy Birthday to You

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Ezra, happy birthday to you-“

“Liz, stop, you’ll embarrass the kid.”

“Move! Let me finish, Brian… How old are you now? How old are you now..”

An uncontrollable smile lit up my face as I rewatched my mother's video to me from my birthday last year. A hand reached out and yanked my phone out of my hand. “What’s this?”

“Give it back!” I yelled.

“Your mom still sings you happy birthday?” the girl laughed.

“Give it back, Julia!”

“No,” she said, sticking out her tongue and rushing to the front of the classroom. “Guys look, Ezra’s mom sent him a video.”

While rushing towards her and my phone, my foot caught against a backpack on the floor making me fall face first against Anna Collins' chest.

“Ew! Move!” she screamed in disgust, pushing me to fall against the metal bar that attached the seat and desk behind me. I yelped as I felt a sharp pain rush up my spine.

My ears perked up at the sound of my mother’s voice playing from my phone. I looked up and there she was, my mother on my phone screen, smiling and bobbing her had from side to side to her own rhythm. With a grimace on his face my father elbowed her lightly, holding a bowl of chips in his hand. I could hear the sound of the 2020 World Cup game playing in the background. He was an avid Brazilian fan, dressed in his colours of green and yellow with the ugliest burgundy pants I’d ever seen. He could almost pass as a stop light. “You’ll embarrass the kid,” he said, poking an entire chip into his mouth while giving my mother a glare. He then quickly forced himself infront of the camera, blocking mom. With a smile full of potato chips, he whispered, “Happy birthday my boy.”

I looked around to see that everyone was laughing. With swollen anger and clenched fists, I hopped on top of a desk and sprinted over students’ heads to get to Julia. “Give me my phone!” I screamed before lunging at her, pushing both of us onto the floor, her head knocking against the blackboard chalkholder. I snatched my phone out of her hand but noticed she wouldn’t get up. She laid on the floor, writhing and twisting in paint, clutching her head.

“It hurts!” she shrieked. “My head! Owwww! It hurts!”

~*~

My father’s greeting for me was an angry slap across my face.

“Suspension?” he barked.

“Let me explain-“

Another slap.

“This is what I send you to school for, boy? I bring you up here from Jamaica and make sure to send you to the best school around this community and this is how you repay me? And all because of what? This damn phone!”

“Daddy, listen to me-"

“Give me this thing!” He grabbed my wrist with one hand, forcing the phone out with the other and in the blink of an eye, hurling it against the wall. Shattering, the phone fell in shards on the asphalt.

“Daddy!”

“When we get home you better prepare yourself,” he said as he grabbed me by the elbow, squeezing. “You think you can get away with this kind of behaviour under my roof?”

I whined as he continued to press into my elbow with his fingers that held the strength of a wrestler.

“Are you trying to disappoint your mother or something? After all she did for you-"

“Don’t bring mommy into this!”

“Why shouldn’t I? Lower your voice when you’re in my presence, boy!”

He used my elbow to force me nearer. We were almost sharing each other's breath now, and I was about this close to punching him and cursing him to leave me alone. I was this close to losing it. Before my intrusive thoughts could reign over my conscience, he pushed me roughly and I stumbled but caught myself just in time to regain my balance.

We stood there. Silent. He stared at me with a look I knew all too well while I stared at him with a look he should’ve recognized but was almost immune to at this point in our relationship.

“Get in the damn car and don’t test my patience.”

He turned to leave while I took a small step back.

“No,” I nearly whispered.

“I said get in the car!”

“No!” I screamed.

“Get in the car!” he screamed some more, grabbing after me again.

“No! Damn you!”

By the time he registered what I’d said and was finally chasing after me I was already halfway across the parking lot with my backpack swinging side to side, slowing me down. Yet still I ran.

“Ezra!” he called. “Don’t play with me! Get back here before I damage you!”

The security guard at the gate noticed the situation and attempted to close the gate but I pushed pass him. He stood in my path and tried to wrestle me back onto the premises. “Stop! Stop it if you don’t want to get hurt, young man!” Behind us, my father sped towards us in his brand new CRV and I knew better than to think he would stop. In a split second, while the security guard was distracted by the oncoming hazard, I finally broke free of his grip and threw him aside. I managed to slam one side of the gate closed which shocked my father into slamming down on the breaks, halting instantly. I didn’t wait to see whether he was okay or not. I simply didn’t care.

All I could hear in my head was my mother’s voice. Run, Ezra. Run!

I ran away as the adrenaline overcame me but before I knew it I was falling forward with my laughter. My laughter that slowly turned into tears which quickly became screams. They tell us at church that we have a choice. It’s either we choose heaven or we choose hell. So why wasn’t I granted that privilege? What made me so different? Because if this perpetual misery which I was forced into enduring was what they called life, I’d like to see what the real hell they speak of was like. After all, wasn’t this already a preview of that hell?

~*~

When my energy level got lower and I was tired of running from my worries, I walked. I walked and thought. Are the caretakers treating my mother nicely? Have they been feeding her the food she likes? I wonder if they’ve cleaned her off yet. They didn’t seem to do it as often these days since half the time I barely recognized her. I walked some more. I wonder if they keep her company in times when I can’t. I wonder if they talk to her. I bet she gets lonely sometimes when she has no one to speak with.

Suddenly my feet stopped. I found myself in front of a supermarket. Did she still like Hershey’s or had her situation made her forget what she used to crave day and night before she got sick? With a blurry vision from tears, swollen and drowsy eyes and feet sore from running, I found myself wandering between the aisles of the supermarket. Where did they usually keep sweets and chocolate?

A woman looked at me weird.

“What?” I snapped.

She glared at me. “Where are your manners? Your mother didn’t teach you any?” she sneered.

“It’s rude to stare so how about you set an example first. Deal?”

She continued to glare as she clutched her purse to her side and rushed off, cursing my apparent lack of manners some more.

A worker saw me and instantly came up to me. “Are you okay? Do you need something?”

“Do you have any chocolate? Hershey’s to be specific.”

“Of course we do. You passed them just as you were about to enter. We keep them at the cashier.”

Oh yes! I remember now. I remember the days when mom used to drive me home from school and we used to stop by this supermarket and I used to wonder why we never went anywhere beyond the cashier. Before mom’s sickness that is, of course.

“Thanks. They’re for my mother,” I told her but I doubt she cared, “she loves Hershey’s chocolate.”

“Really?” the worker said. I nodded. “She has good taste then. Buy her as much as she can’t manage,” she joked.

I laughed. “One is already too much. Thanks for your help.”

On my way out from the supermarket, a loud crack of thunder and a flash of lightning got me startled. No sooner than that did the rain start pouring and I was drenched from head to toe as I sprinted across the parking lot to get to the bus stop. I had to go visit mom. She hadn’t seen me in forever, not since I disappointed her with my incompetence. My incompetence to pick up on her illness beforehand instead of buying her Hershey’s chocolate, thinking that was how I should show my love. Now she can’t move or clean herself anymore. And it’s all my fault.

The bus squeaked to a stop, and I hurried on, finding a seat but immediately having to give it up to a pregnant woman. I hoped that soon-to-be mother would be in the right mind long enough to see her child graduate university and start their own family. I held on to the overhead bar, staring out the window as we made our way across the city. Trees turned into buildings and buildings turned into trees again yet my thoughts remained stagnant. I’m sorry, mom. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry. I was just sorry.

~*~

The bus squeaked to a stop again and I got off. On this side of the town, it was all sunshine and fresh breeze, the asphalt dry and untouched. They say the weather usually influences your mood but I why did I still feel like there was a dark cloud hovering over my head as I walked towards the entrance gate.

Over the Horizon, it read.

I walked pass the small security building that was left unoccupied and made my way towards the area where my mother was being kept. I could smell the grass as the wind gave me a whiff and for a split second my mind calmed and I felt refreshed. I loved the smell of freshly cut grass. But that was not enough to keep me at bay. It wasn’t enough to subdue the pain I felt in my heart for my mother every time I visited her. It wasn’t enough to destroy the guilt that consumed me every day from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep. If I managed to fall asleep that is.

But when I finally found her and my eyes began to water again, the relief I thought I would feel from seeing my mother again was instead devoured by grief. I fell to my knees at my mother’s feet and covered my face in my hands as I howled for my mother and my guilt towards her. I screamed and cried as I allowed myself to be sucked into this hell that I didn’t ask to be in. A hell that was once heaven when my mother was in it.

“In Loving Memory Of

Elizabeth Marcia McGurthy

May 12, 1984 – February 14, 2021

A beloved daughter, mother, granddaughter, aunt, niece and cousin

now resting safe and at peace.

Your love for us will never be forgotten.”

Yet still she was often forgotten. A cycle that occurred with every tombstone that was lined out here alongside my mother’s own. I doubt my father’s visits could even be counted on one hand since they were often replaced with a visit to the bar instead. During it all, everything I felt came back to the root which was my anger towards myself. I was the reason she was here. I was the reason she got sick with Type 2 Diabetes, continuously tempting her with chocolate when I wanted my way. I was the reasoned she suffered, for not recognizing her pain. I was the reason she got sick because not once did I not chose myself and my selfish teenage desires over her desires. I was the reason she was dead.

Yet here I was again, foolish. I was shoving her downfall in her face again with the very thing that led to her grave. Here I was giving her chocolate again because this was all I knew. This was all I remembered. When I couldn’t remember her face or her voice anymore, this aspect of her was what stuck with me. Because in all my years of begging her to succumb to my desires, I, in all my self-centeredness, never took a chance to get to know my own mother.

So, with the only thing I was sure of right here and now, I took out that one bar of Hershey’s dark chocolate that she oh so loved and tore the wrapper open. Breaking it in half, I now held two uneven pieces. I could never break it equally even if I tried. But it didn’t matter. Taking the smaller piece, I left the larger side in the wrapper, saying in a hoarse voice, “You always preferred the bigger piece.”

As I placed the chocolate against her tombstone, the sun came out from behind a few clouds and shined down on us. They’d cleaned her off. Even as a simple grey tombstone she shined brighter than anyone who dared enter her presence, proving how she was anything but simple. Amid all my inner turmoil and in the midst of this graveyard lined with lonely tombstones and as I felt the rush of grassy wind flying around my body, I smiled. And this time I allowed myself to forget, even if it was just for the moment, I allowed myself to forgot this hell and enter a new heaven where my mother existed once more.