Mother Dearest

Content warning: mental health, death

“Where I come from we mourn the ones who have managed to stay alive past 21.”

“I understand,” Eivora says, “tell me more.”

“How can you understand?”

The white walls around us shine so bright I have to squint. 

“I’ve had patients who feel the same way.”

“Yeah, okay” I say, and refuse to say anymore. 

She keeps on whining, asking me questions. My eyes hurt so I close them. I lean back into my chair. Yesterday we were drawing. I’d like to do some more drawing. 

“Leila,” she says, “please talk to me.”

“Can we draw instead?”

“We can draw later. Right now I’d like to try and get to know you better. I find it unbelievable that you’ve been here for two months and we haven’t had a proper conversation.”

“Oh,” I say, “two months.”

I don’t say anything else. I want to go back to my room. My room here is much nicer than the one I used to have. I’ve been allowed to stick a singular poster on the walls. I chose a spaceman traveling on what Eivora told me was the tube from a stall on our weekly trip to the market. 

We go back and forth. She tries to talk to me, trying to get me to open up, and I ask if I can have sauce on my pasta for my dinner. She says of course, and I smile. She keeps on speaking, but all I can think about is that despite everything, I have been lucky enough to have sauce on my pasta the last two months. I’m liking my roll so I ask if I can have another poster. 

“Leila please we’ve spoken about this. It was already hard for me to approve the first one.”

“Oh,” I say and go to my room. 

Before I go up the stairs I watch her get up and move the armchair back an inch to where it was before. 

I like my room because she can’t get in there. There is a piece of paper on my desk which has some letters. I can’t read it. I’m embarrassed because I’m nearly 13 years old but I still can’t read. Back at home only the super smart people knew how to read. I practice my smiles in front of the mirror, which covers the whole back of my door, which has some sort of mechanics to keep it shut at all times. I’m not sure how it works. I know I have to be happy. 

By the rhythm of the steps on the corridor outside my door, I know Peter has been asked to go talk to Eivora. Peter is weird. I like him because he likes drawing. He reminds me of my sister Demira back at home who lived next door. I don’t know how, they are very different people. Maybe I don’t remember Demira much. She died when I was ten, got taken away by some nurses and then never came back. I think Peter is weird because he comes from a different building than me, on the other side of town. I think they were allowed to eat chicken once a week there. We don’t really hang out anyway.

I was cold. Huddled next to the radiator I knew had no heat because we hadn’t had electricity for the past two weeks. But I stayed there, my back against it, my head in my hands. My brother Alvin, living two doors away from me, turned 21 a few weeks before. A man came to ask him questions the next day, he was wearing an all white suit with a black tie, belt and shoes. I only heard loud shouting. I just saw him, sitting at the window, half my back against the wall, the other half hanging in midair, risking falling just so I could see out of my window. I saw the same man in the white suit come out of a back entrance. Two people followed him, carrying Alvin. He was still alive. I could see him blink. He stayed in the snow, not moving. Then he collapsed. Then I started crying. 

The door is opened by Mother. She has her “baby you can tell me anything,” eyes. I recoil from them. Try to get as close to the radiator as possible. Her right hand is holding a carton cup full of pills. She sits down, putting her left hand beside her so that she doesn’t look menacing but such that the tip of her knife is visible behind her. “Mother would like to show you love,” she always says, “but naughty behavior must be punished.”

She hands me the cup. I look inside. Pills. 

“Are they so I can sleep?”

“Yes, honey.”

They’re all different colors. I question it. 

“Don’t you worry about that my love. You know I would never do anything to hurt you.” She pushes the knife back. I can still see the tip, just not the rest. “I have noticed a few dips in your morale these past few days, these will help you. I called your doctor this morning and she said it was ok.”

Pasta with sauce again. I’m always given these things called vegetables on the side but I don’t trust them. They’re weird. Different colors, different shapes and textures so I don’t eat them. Eivora wants me to try new food but it scares me.

I sit on the couch again. I’ve moved it back a bit by jumping on it and I know it annoys her but she’s patient enough to move it back after I’ve left. 

“Do you remember what happened before you left home?” she asks. 

“I don’t remember much. Just that one day I woke up and Mother was sick. We had to stay out of the important business, which meant staying in our rooms.”

I’ve realized I’ve spoken more than I usually do. So has Eivora. I don’t know what happened. I think I’m in a good mood, the pasta was good. Eating is nice, I especially like it when I have three meals. Although sometimes I am worried I will get fat because back home they said one meal a day was enough.

“It’ll take some time before you do. I think it will be good for you to try remembering on your own.”

I want to ask why but that would lead us to getting closer and I don’t want that so I ask if I can draw. 

“No,” she says. “Right now we’re having a conversation and then Mark will come and you will have a reading lesson.”

“Oh,” I say. 

“Can we turn back to the conversation?”

The silence I set isn’t working, she is going to wait for me to answer before speaking again. This might become a problem. I decide to speak a bit more before it turns against me. 

“Ok.”

“You’ve been here a few weeks, I think I may have started gathering an idea of what your childhood was like, what home means to you. So now I would like to pass on to you and your feelings if that’s ok?”

It’s not. “Ok.”

“Well, how are you feeling?”

“When?”

“Here,” she says. “Away from home.”

“Ok.”

“Would you like to elaborate?”

“What do you mean elaborate?”

“Tell me more about your feelings. We can only start to heal when you let me in.”

“Ok.”

“So would you like to expand?”

“I’m not ready?” I say, but with too much uncertainty for Eivora to believe me. 

“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” she asks. 

“I don’t trust you.”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t shown you love me.”

“I understand. Did you trust Mother?”

“Yes.”

“Did you cry when she died?”

I nod. 

“Would you cry if I die?”

I shake my head. 

“I understand. I will work on it. Go to your room, you can draw until Mark comes for your lesson.”

My sister, Freya, stole a cigarette once. The man with the white suit with the black belt, shoes and tie had come into our residence. He had to bless the newest born once they turned three years old. Freya had been wandering at that time, she told me. She found his suit jacket and shirt on a hangar in the communal closet which was shared by three people and took one out. She came to show me and some other siblings straight afterwards. 

“Do you want to share it?” she said.

She only got hesitant answers. We all knew that if we were caught, not even smoking the cigarette, but having it, or even knowing of its existence we would be in deep trouble. Smoking it… I wouldn’t want to think about it.

I immediately told Freya that I wasn’t going to have any but I couldn’t stop being curious. I’d go up to her. “Hey, you haven’t smoked that cigarette yet have you?”

She’d give me these gleamy eyes and pull out the crumbled cigarette out of her jacket pocket just enough for me to see. 

She kept it in her pocket for two weeks. Saving it. We all lost interest, knew she wasn’t brave enough to smoke it, and that it would probably end up in the toilet or thrown out of the slither the window opens up into. But then she smoked it. She ran up to me, after our weekly hour playing outside. She told me she had sneaked away and smoked it in the outside toilets, which was really just a broken down shed with a hole in the ground. I believed her immediately. She carried the scent that Mother always, and all of the elders for that matter. She seemed very rowdy and jumpy. I think she was proud of herself for finally having been able to do something she set her mind to. 

Later on that day I was sitting in the common room when Mother came to get her. From inside her room I could then hear shouting.

“How could you have been so stupid?”

“But you smoke it too,” Freya would squeal, afraid to talk.

“Do not make the same mistakes I do,” Mother shouted. “I am doing my best to provide a good life for you but how can I do it if you break the rules?”

Mother then told us she died due to the effects of the cigarette. 

Everyday I feel more comfortable. It’s weird. I don’t remember how I got here but I remember sitting down on the sofa. Eivora sat in front, always wearing her silk white blouse when she’s on her detective therapist's pretend game. She gave me pasta with sauce and chicken and vegetables I didn’t eat but I appreciated the thought. I remember thinking she was sweet. But then I kicked myself, because she wasn’t sweet, because she wasn’t Mother. It’s as though I forget I’m not supposed to like her by nature. 

I’ve had to catch myself saying too much in our speaking sessions. She's been nice to me, she gave me another poster as a surprise and then even though we had gone to the market for food two days earlier, we went back and she let me choose three posters and one music record she called vinyls. It’s this huge black circle which, when turning a needle on it, plays music. I didn’t really know anyone so we spent some time listening to them. Plus, I’m running out of things to say when I don’t want to answer a question. If I just say “Oh,” she’ll try and ask me about what I’m thinking, if I don’t reply, then she won’t speak either and it’ll be too weird to continue and if I say I want to draw she will stop our session and lie on the floor and draws with me. She doesn’t stay long, but I appreciate her trying. 

It’s weird that I’m enjoying myself. I’ve spent a few hours in my room by now. I tried to take my mind off it at first, but now I just want to know. I start crying. I had asked Eivora what happened to Mother at the end of our sessions today. I figured that since I was asking a question this time then I had to be extra helpful, so I was. All she said instead was “Do you want to get ice-cream?” I had said no, and asked again, and every time my question was avoided until the last time where she lost it and said, firmly, “Stop! It is not your place to ask questions!”

Now there’s a knock at my door and I’m disturbed from my feeling sad. 

“Go away,” I say. 

“I’m sorry, Leila. We’ve been getting close and I messed up. Let me in, I think it’s only right for me to tell you.’

So reluctantly I let her in. 

“Do you remember Mother getting sick?” she says. 

I don’t remember what time it was, just my shoulder getting shook and the man with the white suit and black shoes belt and tie standing over me. He asked me to walk with him, he wasn’t telling me anything. I was scared and on the verge of tears. I didn’t know the time because we didn’t have clocks inside (Mother said it was so we didn't preoccupy ourselves with time when we had all of it in the world) but I knew it was very late. 

The man took me into Mother’s room. There she was. On the bed. I had never seen her room. It was about twenty times the size of mine, counters full of jewelry, racks full of bright clothing all over the place. It’s weird because I had never seen her wear anything apart from black. The bedside table had packs and packs of medicine I didn’t know the use of. She asked me to sit down next to the bed.

“You know you’re the most important person in my life, Taina,” she said. 

And I replied, “I’m Leila.”

“You’re the most important person in my life, Leila,” she said. 

Her gaze was empty. I was scared. Trembling. She asked me to lie with her. 

“Everything I’ve done has been for you, my…” she trailed off. 

“My what?”

“My daughter.”

Then she passed out and I was stuck sleeping in the dark. I asked the man in the suit to take me back to my room and I only had to give him a kiss for him to do it. 

I woke up with Eivora patting my back. I was crying and screaming, and I could tell she was on the verge of passing out just for being in a space which wasn’t dominated by herself, especially since my room was so small and I had been sweating during the night. 

“Are you ok?”

I’m still crying.

I try to speak but end up saying nothing apart from a trail of mutterings. She sits down on the floor against the wall and waits patiently for me to finish.

“I remember.”

“When she got sick?”

“Yes, Mother was sick, but she didn’t die because of it.”

“Do you know why she died?”

“She was killed.”

I’m tearing up. I ask Eivora if she can lie beside me. She is reluctant but I manage to convince her. 

“Do you remember who she was killed by?”

“Police.”

“Do you know why?”

I shake my head. 

“Would you like to know why?” she asks.

I say I would.

“This is not going to be easy. She was running an illegal, do you understand what illegal means?”

I say no. 

“It means the law doesn’t permit it. And it is punished by the government and the police.”

“Oh,” I say. 

“She was running an illegal hospital for experiments. The woman you call mother used to be a doctor. I’m not sure how, the details weren’t released to the public or to me by the fostering agency, but she got fired. So she set up her private hospitals where they would get orphans as subjects. That is what you are. Your parents, your biological parents, couldn’t take care of you, and that is why she took you. Just like everyone else there. You were all mice in her sick little experiment. She was killed by the police stopping it.”

I’m crying. I don’t know what to feel. If what she says is true then it’s horrible, and I don’t see why she would be lying. The police did come and there were gunshots and then they came to see us and they said we were safe now and then I stayed in a house and then I came here and then we spent a few months where I thought Eivora was the devil and then I was sad because I thought I loved her more than Mother and now Mother was evil so should I be happy?

So I ask the only question I can think of. “Are you my mother now?”