Mother

Thick snow coated the ground as I slept—this is where she found me. A nothing, a nobody, curled up into a ball. Snow freckled my hair and cheeks; I shivered in exhaustion. When she found me, she whispered love into my ear and kept me warm with her light hands, shielding me from the sick, sharp cold of the night.

When she recounts this story, we both laugh. It is a little ironic, isn’t it? Even though she protected me from the cold, she simultaneously brought it on all by herself. She was the cold and warmth of the world, and had the power to shut everything off, for me, if she wanted. But she didn’t want to, and so she never did.

I used to do as I was told. I was the image of usualness, of great-awesome-normal. I used tampons because I had to, smiled at men when they expected me to. But wear and tear is bound to happen, grow a little bit and see things for how they truly are and you’ll understand. Bits of my heart began chipping off like old ceramic until all that was left was a small bug—too many legs and beady eyes. As the bug stared up at me at night, I felt nothing but remorse and guilt. It whined, stranded in the middle of a dark green pond of goop where my heart used to be. This is when I knew I needed help. I called on her, not out of fear, but out of desperation. I was already regressing into bug form. What was next? An amoeba? A nothing,no one, nobody-girl? Every night I prayed to the moon and the stars and the universe above, begged and begging for her to save me. It took her a while to notice my sad whining, my pathetic grumblings. I was just a little bug, after all. Even words struggled to find their way out of my mouth. The louder I yelled the more feeble I seemed. My screams were akin to the incessant clicking of a pen, sort of irritating actually but at least I am self aware.

When she finally arrived, woke me up in the snow, held my small body in her big gaping hands, I could no longer speak human words. Instead, I told her with my eyes, I showed her what I had been and what I had become. She winced. Shook her head in regret. She told me that she could not promise inner peace or redemption. She said that she was only here because my shrill screams became enough to keep her awake at night and she couldn’t handle the migraines any longer.

Well, at least she showed up, I thought. And it was true, Mother was truly a miracle. The melancholic guilt suddenly felt a lot warmer, more doable when she was there. She walked me to school, told me I had a beautiful-sad energy that I should be proud of. I was soaked in warm misery, a comfort I had longed for.

One night, over a bowl of spaghetti on a strangely warm winter night, we were discussing my fate.

“I am not a lost cause,” I told her, twirling noodles around my fork, watching each one slither like a worm.

“You are not a lost cause,” she repeated, not a question or an answer.

Unsettled.

“It’s true,” I insisted, “You don’t believe me?”

“Is it really a matter of me believing you? Do you believe yourself, dear?” She tilted her head, smiling at the ice-y damp breeze, lightly touching my cheek through the wind. “And really,” she continued, “What is there to believe?”

I sloshed my fork around in the worm-like spaghetti. With a reassuring disappointment, something akin to misery, I knew I would be this way for a while.

“It is what it is.” She shrugged at me. I hated it when she shrugged, as if she didn’t know. As if the entire universe and the fate of it wasn’t in her hands, as if she couldn’t fix me if she really, really wanted to. I finished my worm bowl in silence, patting my pasta sauced mouth down with my sleeve. The silence had grown loud, only wind howling through the trees behind us.

“How will I know when you’re gone?” I cut in.

“Hm...” She paused, feigning thought. Mother didn’t need to think if she already knew everything. She was really beginning to agitate me. “Nobody’s ever asked me this before.” She paused again.

She liked to let me think we were equals, but I knew that she had seen much more than she would ever let on. I knew she had already seen so much more than I ever would in my entire lifetime. I could almost see her, sitting opposite to me on the bench. Legs crossed, head tilted, staring up at the clouds. As much as she was sitting in front of me, poised and all-knowing, she also wasn’t.

“I guess you won’t know.” She looked at me now, her eyes intimidated me. They were full of everything and nothing, all at once. I was envious.

I blinked at her a few times—I guess it made sense, she would come and go as she pleased. “I hope, someday, I can be as free as you, to roam and see the world.” I sighed, stupidly childish. I didn’t care. Mother wouldn’t judge me.

She cupped my cheek. “Oh, child. No, you don’t.” She smiled sympathetically. “But I do, I do. How do I learn to live like you? If you’d just tell me, even in riddle, maybe I could crack the code.” I was leaning forward on the table now, seething with need, the cold of the snow burning my hands.

“Every woman wishes she were another. Don’t feel envy for things you don’t understand.” She pulled my hat down further onto my head, and pinched my pink nose watching it go white. “You wish you could sift through time and space and nothingness, I wish I could put my bare feet on this earth and feel the grass between my toes. We are the same. Learn to love what you already have.”

I gaped at her, eyes wide. My breath, as I exhaled, made a cloud of fog between us. There was a gust of cold wind, sharp against my cheek, and suddenly she was gone. I was alone again, her smile etched into my eyes. I felt my stomach grumble and twist. I had eaten far, far too many worms. The bowl was almost as big as my head, I had eaten them all and... oh, God—

Knowing my fate, I turned around to face perfect white snow and threw up. I watched as I released all the pent up hatred, envy, regret, misery, worms and tomato sauce I had to offer. And though I wanted to,

I did not feel reborn.

I felt like the same old girl.

I sighed and began my walk home, feeling the snowflakes as they left me cold, wet kisses on my cheeks. The bottoms of my jeans were soaked, I shivered each time the denim met my calves. But I felt okay. I stopped walking for a moment, to take everything in. To look up at the sky. I felt more vomit, more bubbling, and keeled over to let it out. Purge me, please. Instead, all that came out was a hearty laugh. I had the funnies, I thought to myself. How strange. It really was never that serious, was it? I laughed again. At my stupidity, my outrage, and in the end at my succumbing to nothingness. I had created problems for myself when there were none—what the hell did I think I was meant to do with this inexplicable weight upon my shoulders?

Anastasia (she/her) is a first year creative writing student attending OCAD university. She gravitates towards themes of nostalgia and girlhood, depicting these narratives through creative nonfiction, speculative fiction, dark, satirical comedies and psychological fiction. She writes music as well and hopes to some day release some of her musical works to the public.