Written under the pen name Anne Nona Moustafa
My mom had been drinking for as long as I can remember.
I remember her clutching a bottle of gin every morning before I went to school, and she would be clutching a different bottle as soon as I got home. She would greet me sleepily as she cooked my breakfast and I would find her sleeping on the couch as soon as I came home from school. I never had a single problem with her though; miraculously.
I wish I could say the same about how our neighbors perceived her. I saw people giving me sympathetic looks on my face while whispering with each other behind my back. I could almost hear them say, “Hello, Anne! Are you ok? If you need anything, please come to us.” Then I would feel them talking with each other and say, “There goes that poor child with a drunk mother with nobody to take care of her.”
Let me reiterate one fact: I never had problems with my mother. She took care of me, paid for my school tuition, worked at the local market selling vegetables with blood, sweat, and tears, and came home in time to cook me dinner.
I had a pretty good idea what her problem was: almost every night, she would pull out a shoebox of old family pictures and would look at them lovingly. I would see her smile at some of them as she flicked through the time-worn snapshots.
One particular photo, though, made her cry. She would look at the photo, caress it fondly, and then weep. When I was a little girl, I asked her who the boy was.
"My brother,” she said. “Your uncle. It was only the two of us. He was a tender, sweet little boy.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I miss him.”
I never dared ask anything beyond that.
She loved that bottle so much, and I wondered what the odds were of her having some liver disease. I have seen a baby picture of mine where she carried an infant me on her right arm while balancing a glass of clear liquid (which I assumed was not sparkling water) on her left hand.
I calculated. If she had been drinking for as long as I had been aware, that would be 22 years or more. She’s 52 now, and I bet her best-case scenario would be a weak liver. I am not a doctor, so I would not know. All I know is that I am worried enough to care.
I worked at a call center near where we lived, and my work tenure was enough to pay for me and my mom’s HMO. It was time to ask her to get a physical.
It was evening. I waited for her to get home from the market so that I could take her aside and tell her what we needed to do.
The door opened, and she came again with a bottle in her hand. She gave me a loving smile. “You’re still here?” She asked.
“Mom, I just got you signed up for our HMO, finally,” I said with a smile. “Let’s go have ourselves checked.”
“I don’t need that, Hun,” she said drunkenly. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” I looked at her eyes, nearly crossed-eyed. She opened the cabinet to pull out her old photo box again.
“Mom, you have to have yourself checked,” I said. “Honestly, I never saw a day when you never held a bottle in your hand. I just want to know that’s not killing you, and I won’t be burying you this early in my life.”
She looked into my eyes. “You won’t bury me yet,” she said. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong,g and you have to trust me on that. When have I ever let you down?”
I love my mother. I trust her, but she’s the only one I have now.
She agreed, and that next weekend, I had her scheduled for a physical. We spent an entire day at the clinic, my mom breezing through each test with tediousness. They took X-rays and drops of blood from her while I anxiously fiddled with my fingers.
I prepared myself for the worst. I imagined the doctor telling me that her liver was practically non-existent and that she had mere months to live. I primed myself for a life of solitude; a 22-year-old, heavily built, short little lady with slight pimple scars, living alone in a shack. I never had a boyfriend, and will live the rest of my years alone and forgotten; a grumpy old maid who reeked of soil in a little makeshift house with no food and no family. One day, neighbors will notice a faint odor coming from the house, kicking the door in to find my body in a state of slight decomposition.
Nobody will ever guess what the results of my mom’s tests were.
“For a 52-year-old, she’s quite healthy,” the doctor said. “Honestly, I’ve never seen test results like these before. I could mistake her for a 20-year-old athlete who regularly works out and eats healthy.
Mom looks at me with a wry smile. “See? Nothing wrong.” She stood up from the clinic chair, gave the doctor a wink, and walked out of the office.
I looked at the smiling doctor as he started to file the pieces of my Mom's test results away. "Doctor, wait," I said. "My Mom had been drinking all her life. I don't want to sound grim, but that's unbelievable!"
"I don't say this often to anybody, but your mom's in perfect shape. No heart irregularities, liver's 100% functioning, blood glucose in the normal range. Are you sure that's alcohol your mom's drinking?" He said in partial jest.
We went home with more questions in my mind than ever. Do not get me wrong, I am very happy for my mother, but her case is one for the books. Maybe we could make money by getting interviewed by health magazines so she can share the secret to staying healthy.
That is, if she would only tell anyone what that was.
Life went on then. I went to work by 11 pm and came home around 9 am. Downtown traffic is hell as usual. I came home to her clutching the familiar gin bottle... again, and the usual box of photos that she would lovingly stare at for an hour.
These people I never knew and met, strange as it may seem. I grew up knowing that it was just me and her. I never asked about who my father was because I never needed to know, and I was never asked or teased about it in school or anywhere. This was my normal.
My mother never had any close friends. Well, not that I knew of. I knew of the nice butcher she worked with in the market, who had his own family, and the boy who carried boxes of goods to and from the delivery truck. There was also that grumpy old lady who took the rent from her.
My mom is pretty. She was pretty now, and I could see that she was very pretty when she was younger. I am positive that she never had problems with men. She was tall, slim, and had attractive eyes. For someone who was 52 and drank a lot, she sure had a body build athletes would die for.
I was short and pudgy; I surely lost the gene pool sweepstakes.
Finally, of course, the photo of that little boy she would weep over came out. She placed it on the table beside the box and stood up. I was in the other corner of the house.
"I'm all out," she said while waving the empty gin bottle. "I'm just going to get a fresh one from the store. I'll be back."
A few minutes passed, and she’s still not back. I stood up, wondering where she was.
I walked over to the table to look at the box of photos she left lying there. I picked one up and looked at a portrait of a stern-looking old woman. “Grandmother,” I whispered.
I picked up another photo, this time of a young lady with a joyful smile. “Mother,” I said.
I picked up another photo, this time of a woman carrying an infant on her right arm while balancing a glass of clear liquid (which I assumed was not sparkling water) on her left hand. “Me,” I said.
I picked up the photos one by one. Some of these were me in my younger years, the latest of which was taken five years ago during a school program with me dancing.
I was pulling pictures out of the box so fast that I realized I was nearing the end. How come I never really knew who these people were?
Here was my mother’s life; in a box full of strangers. Somehow, sadly, I knew this was my life too.
At the bottom of the pile was a picture of a strikingly handsome man in a suit. At the lower right corner of the picture were the initials “D.L.” I looked into the photograph further and noticed his hypnotic, piercing black eyes. This photograph was calling to me from some mysterious, otherworldly dimension. I feel the man raising a hand toward me, beckoning me, summoning me to come and join him, wherever that was. I looked into his eyes again, and I saw where he wanted me. He smiled mischievously as his hand continued an inviting motion. Come, it said.
Wherever it was, I felt like going.
Mom swiftly snatched the photo away, and the mesmerizing force that beckoned me vanished in an instant.
“Are you ok?” she asked worriedly. “Why were you looking at these? I’ve explained to you who these people are numerous times!”
“I do not know what came over me,” I explained. “Not this photo, though. Who is that man?”
“Somebody who broke my heart. Nobody important that you need to know,” she exclaimed, as she commenced to put the pictures back into their familiar shoe box.
“Mother, you’re the only one I have, but sometimes I don’t understand you. These old pictures you cry over more than I do. You drink too much, and most of the time, I cannot talk to you properly. I want to talk to you! I want to know that I’m more important than these dead strangers in your photos.”
“How dare you!” She responded, crossed.
I looked at her in spite, struggling to prevent tears from rolling down my cheeks.
Mom covered her mouth and started to cry. She grabbed her bottle and shoebox and darted off into her room.
I raised my hands and just gave up.
I wondered what would happen if I moved out and left my mother. I would rent my own house, and live my own life. Ask friends to come over. Stay up late. Invite men over.
I knew this was not possible. I could never leave my Mom, and that was that.
I never spoke to her for weeks. She tried her best to be cordial, calling me out for lunch and dinner, smiling beguiled, acting concerned, and all that.
I regretted that I even got angry at her for the smallest things; it was childish of me. I had come to a point in my life where I was the one who needed to understand my mother and not the other way around. Sure she drank a lot, but strangely, it did not affect her body at all. This was a good thing!
The first thing I did after coming home from work was buy Tapsilog for our breakfast; I felt we both had had enough of this argument. I had not done this in a long time, and this time I was going to surprise her.
I came home with her lying on the floor with teensy drops of blood coming out of her nose and mouth; she had been coughing up blood.
Worried, I held her up and told her we were going to the doctor.
“There’s no need!” she said with a smile as she hopelessly wiped the droplets of blood from her nose. “This is nothing. I can handle this.”
“Mom, don’t do this again, please!” I exclaimed. I’m getting you to the doctor right now.”
“No!” she retorted. “You have to trust me. I said I can handle this.” She broke my hold and started to walk over to the cabinet to grab her box full of photographs.
“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked. “Not that, no! We need to go to a doctor,” I said as I tried to take her precious box away from her.
She held the box in her right arm tightly and raised a finger. “Anna, stop. This is where I draw the line. Now leave me alone and let me do my thing. You’re old enough. IT’S TIME YOU SHOULD KNOW.”
Mom grabbed a handful of pictures from the box with a shaky hand and dropped them on the floor. She grabbed another handful and dropped them again until the box was empty, except for another smaller red velvet box.
“Whatever you see now, I hope it never leaves this room. This is for my safety, and most of all, you. I love you so much, dear Anna.” She opened the velvet box slowly to unveil a rock that was as small as my thumbnail, and its glowing brilliance was the brightest in a galaxy of a thousand stars.
“You wanted to know my secret, well, here it is,” she said as she put the stone in her mouth.
She shouted out the name that I had not heard in a long time; the name that people called out when they needed help; the name that villains shrieked out in terror, and the name that I heard in tales of old. It was the name of power. It was the name of a legend.
Blinding flashes of light came over the both of us. Lightning and thunder crashed; storms raged and time stood still for a moment. Smoke rose and a wonderful scent emanated. I was blinded for a moment, but as soon as I was able to see again, there she was.
A beautiful woman stood right in front of me. She had long flowing hair. Bands of gold and steel adorned her wrists. She wore a comfortable armor of crimson that covered her chest adorned with stars from where she came, and most of her beautiful skin was unabashedly bare. A flowing piece of gold cloth was attached from the buckle of her belt down to her knees, and upon her head was a headdress decked with golden wings.
I realized now why she was never sick. All she needed to do was swallow her magical stone and call out her name, and her body regenerated when she turned back to her normal self.
She looked at me with loving eyes; the questions already in my mind had yet again been doubled, and the most important of these would be will my questions finally be answered this time?
I always knew my mother was prettier than I, and now I know more than that. Now I know for sure that my mom truly is someone special.
