The Last Thing I Said to My Mother

Some secrets aren’t hidden. They‘re just quiet.

I stayed up late every night for a week writing that story. Laying on my bed with a yellow spiral notebook, a stack of notecards, and my favorite pen, yellow with little butterflies printed all over it.

That was the week I decided I wanted to be a writer. I was in 6th grade and had to write a short story for English class. My bed was in the corner of my room, and I liked to lay at the foot of my bed and stare out the window that overlooked the street in front of the house when I worked.

It was December. One night it rained, not uncommon in Phoenix for that time of year, but rare enough that I still remember it twenty some years later. I loved when it would rain in Arizona. Late summer is monsoon season. It would pour for twenty minutes and then clear up like nothing happened. But December rains were nice. Quiet, gentle and steady. Sometimes during those rains I would crack the window open to let in the cool air.

It was six pages when I was done. Handwritten on loose leaf paper and stapled at the corner. A story about a momma coyote and her pup in the desert.

A couple days later we got it back from the teacher and I was so excited to see my grade. Before she handed them out, the teacher did the unthinkable. She read mine, JUST MINE, to the class out loud. She said it was the best sixth grade short story she had ever read in the whole time she had been teaching!

She handed it back to me. A+!

“A” Plus Exclamation Point!

I was so proud of myself and could not wait to get back home to show it to my mom. When I got off the bus, I noticed Aunt Judy’s car in the street.

Oh My God even better!

I was going to be able to show my story to Mom and Aunt Judy! Judy didn’t live very far away so she was over a lot. She was “the cool aunt”, younger than my mom and didn’t have kids of her own.

I showed it to them and I remember they were impressed, and my enthusiasm was rubbing off on them.

“Oh yes, it’s that Irish in us. You got that storyteller gene in you from your grandpa.” I remember Judy saying.

Aunt Judy read it aloud right there in the kitchen while I sat next to my mom, her arm around me and a huge smile on my face.

The next morning I went downstairs and my story was still sitting on the table. Crumbs and slop all over the place. Brown stains and drink rings all over my story. She used it as a coaster for her Rum and Cokes.

Missed call on my phone. It was Mom and she left a voicemail, asking me to call her back.

OMG. What now?

I called her back.

She wanted to borrow money. Two hundred dollars. For rent. Only for a week. She didn’t want to get dinged with a late fee again.

I was 24 now. Going to college part time and waiting tables at a Tex-Mex restaurant. Trying to build something resembling a happy normal life. For the first time I lived in a dwelling that wouldn’t be considered a shithole, albeit barely.

Two hundred dollars.

Any idea how many plates of burritos I would have to serve to make that two hundred dollars?

I would have to serve 120 plates of burritos to make 200 dollars.

And the money wasn’t for rent. The money was because she spent the rent money on booze. The money was for booze that had already been drunk.

Her voice got a little louder.

My voice got a little more tense.

I was 24.

But at that moment, I was 12 years old and staring at my story ruined with Rum and Coke stains.

“You’re such a selfish bitch!” I shouted into the phone and hung up.

That was the last thing I said to her. Mom died nine months later. My brother Mike called to tell me. Him and my mom were close. I think it was the Irish again. I got the storyteller gene. He and mom got the drinking gene.

He filled me in with the details as best he could. She had pneumonia. There would be a funeral. That was really all he had to day.

A few days later I saw the obituary. Aunt Judy wrote it.

Loving mother, survived by her three children, James, Michael, and Jonatha.

Preceded in death by her parents and an infant daughter.

and an infant daughter.

and an infant daughter?

and an infant daughter?

What?

What infant daughter?

I went to the funeral. Judy filled me in later. She told me all she knew, but it still didn’t answer the question.

Why?

Why was it a secret?

It was about two years before she met my dad. She had another boyfriend. She got pregnant. The baby was born still.

Stillborn.

That was the first time I had heard it said, “born still.”

I had an older sister. A sister whose entire life was less than a single breath. But I had a sister. I have a sister.

It wasn’t exactly a secret. But it was also something that wasn’t ever talked about.

Was that the burden she had been carrying this whole time? Was that why she was sad so often? Was that why she was drunk so often? Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t someone else tell me?

I thought my mother was just an alcoholic.

A selfish woman doing selfish things.

A woman who ruined my story and asked for money she’d already poured down her throat.

I judged her so harshly. I had no idea the burden she was carrying. No idea what kind of grief was eating at her.

Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash