My feet froze as my ears strained to hear. It couldn’t be, could it?
It was a woman.
And the voice was familiar. As familiar to me as breathing.
It was a voice that I hadn’t heard in a long time, but it was a voice that I recognized so well. My heart was beating so fucking loud that I thought that the walls were shaking around me.
Sweat beaded my skin as I dropped my bag on the floor. I wondered if I was dreaming, or if I was having a fucking nightmare. I’d recalled the conversation that I had with Carlton when he told me that he had killed his own brother. That had surely been a nightmare? This had to be a nightmare. That would explain why I thought that I heard my mom in Hawk’s library.
There was no fucking way she was in there, but as I drew closer to the library, I could see that she was lying on the sofa as if she was in a therapy session, and he was seated on his antique leather chair. I knew the chair had been a present from Stephanie, one that he cherished with all his heart. He was relaxed, talking to her, until his voice calm to a halt when he saw me standing by the door way. I knew I must have looked like I’d been caught in the rain, my spikey hair was flat, my shirt was sticking to my body, and I was hot. I was sure that I looked like a tomato that had just been washed up on shore.
Hawk relaxed and smiled, but she was completely unaware of my presence and she continued to rant about something. I couldn’t understand her properly because I could hear voice but she was speaking a different language. Her fur coat, still draped over her body, looked as if the animal was killed while she was trying to put it on. It was stained, filthy, and the stench that made me cough was even worse as I drew closer to her, because I thought that my eyes were deceiving me from afar. The dress that she was wearing looked worn out and torn. There was nothing familiar about her apart from the voice even if it was in an unrecognizable language. Not the smudged make-up or even the hair cut that looked as if someone had done it with their eyes half open. There was nothing that would make me think that she was our mom until she stopped talking in whatever language she was using and stopped to look at me. She blinked, and then tried to sit up, but then fell on the floor. I could have helped her up or even said something, but I was speechless.
Hawk took out one hand to help her, and then she put all her weight on him as he helped her up. I looked at her, as I would a stranger. I was still trying to find the words to speak.
She grabbed me, maybe because as soon as Hawk helped her up, she’d completely lost her balance.
“Aren’t you going to give your mom a kiss?” She asked with her stained black, and yellow teeth.
I couldn’t find the words to express how I was feeling at this moment. She smelled so bad that I had no choice but to kiss her on the cheek and push her as far away from me as quickly as possible.
“When…”
Hawk interrupted me, and said, “Three days ago. She came here on Friday night.”
Friday. Today’s Monday, and if I hadn’t gone to the library then I wouldn’t have known that she was here. I didn’t even know where Hawk spent Christmas let alone New Year’s. The family didn’t start and stop at Hawk. He had cousins, nieces, and nephews, that he kept in touch with, but they never came to visit him here. Not at all. That stopped the moment Stephanie died. If he wanted to see his extended family, then he would always go to visit them, and not the other way around. Why didn’t he tell me that she was here? Or maybe he’d told Trent? There were so many questions, but I couldn’t ask any of them while I was looking at the former beauty who had turned into a filthy hag that I couldn’t believe was my mother.
I nodded because I was lost for words. What do you say to a woman who’d not only abandoned you but then sits around for three days, and still hadn’t bothered to tell you that she’s back? A woman that had abandoned us for years, yet there she was, in stinking living color. My stomach knotted as a new thought occurred to me. Would I have known that she was there at all if I hadn’t walked up unannounced? There was nothing to say to her, really. Nothing.
I knew that if Trent was here, he’d run into her arms, and kiss her as if she was the best mom in the world. It was ironic, Dad wanted forgiveness, and Trent wouldn’t give it to him. Mom couldn’t care less about us, and yet, Trent would run into her arms without any hesitation. I told myself that everything happens for a reason. I came to look for Hawk for guidance but I didn’t care about that anymore as I sat down across the room from her. I continued to look at Mom, wondering if I should call Trent now or wait until later.
She started talking in that language again and I decided that I would call him now. He would have to come, and witness what I’d just seen, and part of me was curious if he would prove me right, and run into her arms of if he would do what I was tempted to do right now, and run out of here. I’d just pretend that I didn’t know that she was here. Ignorance was bliss, and I could pretend that I had not seen my mother in her current state of…neglect. I didn’t want to know that she’d become this hag that she was now. Her ignoring us and pretending that we didn’t exist would seem worth it if she’d continued to look like a rose, not a corpse flower.
I decided to get up and go outside the room to call Trent. I didn’t mince words when he picked up the phone.
“Trent.”
“James, where you at? Vicki, and I are in the library, we wanted you to come too. But we didn’t see you in the hallway,” he said with a hint of concern. I knew he could probably hear that I wasn’t my normal self and that had set off alarm bells for him..
I shook my head, “Never mind all that. Just come to the library at the house. We need to talk.”
“You ok?” He didn’t wait for me to answer but instead said, “Sure, Vicki, and I will be there in…”
What the fuck? Are they joined at the hip?
“No, I never said Vicki. You need to come here now. If I wanted Vicki here too then I would have said you and Vicki. I didn’t. I said that you should come here now.”
I lost my temper, he didn’t deserve that, but he needed to stop thinking with his dick, and just for once think with his head.
“Fuck! Don’t lose your cool. What’s the emergency?”
I was losing my patience, and regretting calling him in the first place, he wasn’t listening to a word that I was saying, and then it dawned on me like a bolt of lightning that Trent could actually be in love. Trent never usually studied without a little push like when he got a bad grade or if I reminded him about the need to study. No, he was doing this on his own and with Vicki. I’d misjudged his relationship with her, but I couldn’t think about that right now. I had to get him here so he could get over this woman once, and for all. Mom wasn’t worth his love let alone mine.
“I’m on my way, you don’t need to act like a dick.”
He hung up, and part of me wanted to apologize, to let him know what was waiting for him in the library, but I couldn’t. I was outside the library door hovering, and watching as Mom spoke, and Hawk simply smiled, and nodded as if he understood every word that she was saying, and I was curious about why he seemed bemused by it all. I wasn’t curious enough to ask him. I had a feeling that my conversation with Trent would be the last words that would leave my mouth today.