The night shifts take me away to the days I lived in the present because I knew of nothing else- too young. I recall taking a shower at age ten and still having assistance from my father, not too much, but some. Of course, I was turning older so viewer discretion provided. But my sister was also young, and my brother was in existent so who the hell was I? The water was not loud enough to beat down my mother’s screaming voice as she chugged down pills in numbers I was too late to count. My mom? Wait, was she my mom? Nude, with a towel barely wrapped around my body, I stumbled out the bathtub, in a house gradually oozing with mold. I did not know where to search because the voice seemed to come from everywhere now, voices everywhere, screaming everywhere. I stood in the hallway staring at my mother’s back view and my father’s side view. I could make out his hand, probably stretching deep into her throat, pulling out the pills, leading to her survival. Of course, what about his long awaited son in her womb? The background voices consisted of people so useless, my sister so helpless, and my old bird fluttering around in a cage, so rapid. Everything was so rapid. My heartbeat was so rapid.
Did I belong on the park hill with my mother and her brother after she survived? Maybe, beside my father, even though he did not give a shit about her pain. Beside my sister because she probably felt the closest way to my own emotions- I belonged in her boat? What about the bird bones still banging against the cage, so confined?
I would ask her why but my mother said she was just joking. She was just kidding with my sister and I, regardless of all the nights she cried in our palms year by year, leading to the birth of my brother. I ask him why and he said he did not know of her pain, regardless of the countless times I wrote letters at age seven communicating messages on her behalf.
Forgotten enough to be remembered…