Page 197 of Eternal
“I can make you a bowl if you want?” I offered quietly. “With some orange juice.”
Mom smiled faintly. “You’re sweet,” she said, brushing a hand weakly across the space between us, but she didn’t touch me. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me.”
l sat down next to her, setting the cereal on the floor.
“You love this song…” I said.
Mom’s eyes softened. “I do. Do you like it?”
“Yeah.”
I did. I didn’t understand half of it but whenever the song played it made funny things in my chest, like it was too full and too empty at the same time. It was strange, but I liked it.
Mom closed her eyes. “Music sometimes is loud enough to quiet it all.”
People you’ve been before that you don’t want around anymore…
“You look sick, mama…” I rested my head on my knees. “Is that why Alexei left? Because you’re sick?”
Her breath caught, her lip trembled, and she looked away. “He didn’t leave,” she said eventually. “He took Eren for a while, just till I get better.”
She didn’t sound angry, only tired.
“Why didn’t he take me too?”
A pause.
“Because you’re my baby,” she said, and this time she reached out and touched me, brushing my tangled hair back from my face. Mom made a safe face and she tried again, her hand trembled. “You said you’d help me remember how to feel okay, remember?”
“I’m trying… but you've been crying more.”
She gave a crooked smile. “Yeah, I know. That means it still hurts, that’s good, right?”
“I don’t like when youhurt.”
“I don’t like it either.”
We stayed like that for a while.Quiet.
Eventually, mom lay back on the carpet. The cigarette burned, and she started humming along with the radio. I just watched her, not sure if she was falling asleep or floating away, then she coughed, reached for the bottle beside her, and drank again.
“Don’t you ever trust men,” she muttered, eyes locked somewhere far away. “They lie, they leave, they don’t care.”
When she says things like that… I don’t know why I stayed.
“Love,” mom said, “love hurts more than anything. Sometimes it’s the kind of pain you don’t even know how to fight.”
I laid down against her, leaned my head against her shoulder, the cigarette smoke stinging my eyes. “Are you scared, mama?”
“Of what?”
“Being alone…”
She nodded and left her hand up in the air. “I am.”
Where I'm seeing you there with your hands in the air…
I wanted to tell her I was scared too, but I was too small, too tired. That sometimes being alone felt better than being with her when she was angry. I couldn’t tell her that, because she was still my mom, even if she smelled like sadness and sounded like violence.
