A Beautiful Kind of Hope (A Beautiful Kind of Series Book 1) Page 5

  I snap out of my thoughts and pay attention to my son. He tells me about this boy who keeps picking on him and asking why he doesn’t have a father and that makes me feel like calling his teacher even when I know how the conversation will end. The anger that I feel inside me is enough to snap someone’s neck. I inhale deeply trying to remind myself why he’s my son… Because my mother is unwell and doesn’t even remember me as her daughter.

  “Baby, look at me” he lifts his little face and beautiful brown eyes stare at mine. “Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re nothing just because you don’t have a dad in your life. Okay?” he nods.

  “But…” he starts saying and that smile of his spreads across his face. “You’re the best, mama.” He says kissing my cheek.

  “Oh, thank you.” I say kissing his forehead, “and you’re my favorite …” a kiss on his cheek, “main man.” Another kiss on his other cheek. “And Mama loves you to the moon and back.” Another kiss on the tip of his nose before pulling him into my arms and hugging him tightly making him squirm in my arms.

  “Mama,” he half laugh-yells squirming out of my arms and says my words back to me. “I love you to the moon and back,” and I laugh.

  “To the moon and back my main man,” I promise, making a cross sign across my heart.

  He lays his head on my chest and we stay like that as he watches his cartoons, talking about school and his teachers and the new girl who sits next to him in class who can’t stop herself from crying whenever her parents drop her off. He lifts his head and gazes at me with a probing look.

  “Mama, I don’t want a sister.” That has me looking at him in shock. God, I’m still a virgin and I need to have a man in my life first in order for that to happen but I go ahead and ask him why.

  “Why, baby?”

  “Because they cry all the time and they smell like orange.” That has me laughing out loud. God, this boy will kill me one day.

  “Not all of them,” I say but he doesn’t buy it. “Does mama smell like oranges?” I ask him. He sniffs on my clothes, then my hair before inhaling my neck.

  “No, you smell like you.” He says. “I would like to have a brother.” He mutters. He’s not going to drop this subject.

  “Okay,” I say because when that time comes, he’ll have to learn the truth that I’m not his mother but his sister, maybe then, he’ll want me to have a little girl but until then, he remains my baby.

  “Let’s go see big mama,” I say to him.

  He pulls himself up from my lap and jumps to the ground running towards my mother’s room. Boys will always be boys. Rough. I managed to get us a three-bedroom house since my mother needed to have her own room especially when she’s having one of her episodes where she can’t tell who we are, hiding her face from us because we’re strangers to her.

  I walk to her door and open it as Michael gets in first something flies over his head and hits me on my chest and my instincts kick in. I lift Michael and get him out of the room and take him to mine. He looks so scared and shaken up as he curls himself on my unmade bed. I yell for Nelly and when she comes to my room I leave her with Michael and head back to my mother’s room to find her throwing things everywhere, her bed is something else as she rips off the sheets. I don’t stop her, I let her be as I start humming one of the many songs that I sing to soothe her and finally she calms down after twenty minutes. She curls herself into the bed holding tightly to her pillow but when she looks at me, her eyes are empty and I know she has drifted further away from us, her eyes are empty and don’t recognize me anymore. She closes her eyes and falls asleep.

  I get out of her room and call her doctor explaining everything to him and that’s when he tells me that my mother’s condition is getting worse and I need to have her admitted before she does any more harm not just to us but to herself. The hardest part is having to hear those words from her doctor. I knew the day would come, for two years I hoped and prayed that the day would never come and I was okay if she never got to remember who I was no matter how painful it hurt. The pain in my chest is something I’d never wish on anyone.

  My mother, my best friend. She’s gone. Only a shell of her former self is what I’m left with. It hurts that she doesn’t even remember her own son.

  I clasp my chest and just cry as I go down on my knees letting it all out, feeling like my chest is going to burst with the pain and anguish fighting to stay calm. I fight to do the right thing. I fight to stay strong. I fight for my main man. I fight for my son because he needs me more than anything in this world.

  “I need to be strong for Michael,” I tell myself.