Deprived

Chapter16

She had twenty minutes to read the memoir before curfew, when all devices would be shut down.

Chapter 1

Strength in Trying Times

Early one morning, when I was eight years old, I heard a gut-wrenching scream that woke me from sleep. It was still dark outside, and I looked over to my brother lying next to me, but he was fast asleep. I quieted myself and heard a moan. It came through the wall, from my mother's bedroom. She had been sick a long time, and the doctor sent her home from the hospital because there was nothing else they could do for her.

I pulled the covers off, gently rolled out of bed, and tiptoed to my mother's room. Her bedroom door was ajar. I saw my aunt tending to my mother, who was rolling and groaning on her bed.

I tried to stay quiet, I didn't want to disturb her, but my breathing was so heavy and suffocating that it attracted my aunt's attention. She told me to come in.

"She doesn't have much longer. I called Dr. Paul, and he's coming right over."

Dr. Paul was in love with my mother, and if my mother had said yes to his marriage proposal even in her state, he would have been my new dad. But my mother turned him down twice.

"It wouldn't be fair to you." I heard her telling him one time. "I don't have much time. You'll find somebody new soon enough and fall in love."

As I think back on that time. I wished my mother would have been selfish and married, Dr. Paul, then my brother and I wouldn't have been orphans, and we would have had a much brighter future.

As I stood near my mother's bed, Aunt Milly, by my side, I kept gazing at a spot two inches below my mother's chin. I stared at one of the purple flowers printed on the bedsheet. I couldn't look at her ghostly, deathly-white face and not cry. Her eyes sank all the way to the back of her head, it seemed, she had sunken cheeks, and her once-talked-about high cheekbones looked razor-sharp. A blue headscarf was tied on her head. I am ashamed to admit that my sick mother gave me nightmares and, I preferred not to see her. There were many times I prayed for God to take her away and save me from all that misery. I was afraid of my own mother.

Yet, when she reached out to me in all her pain, I held her cold, withered hand, a sliver of life still coursing through her body.

"Be good, my beautiful Benny" she said. "Where's Charlie?"

I started to leave, but Aunt Millie went to get my brother Charlie instead.

My mother tried to stifle the pain, but moments came when it was so unbearable that it jerked her body into seizures, and groans broke from her mouth.

When my brother came in and saw her, he started to cry. I knew why. Because she looked worse than she had the night before.

Maize couldn't help but see her own brother Liam lying on his sickbed. She continued reading.

I tried to quiet Charlie because I saw how it was upsetting my mother, but the more I patted his back and told him it would be okay, the more he cried, and so I let him be.

When I finally looked up at my mother's face, she was staring at the ceiling.

"Hold on, baby... Dr. Paul is on the way," said Aunt Milly to my mother.

But she kept staring at the ceiling and wouldn't stop. Her hands went limp in mine.

Aunt Milly put her ear to my mother's chest, listened for a moment, and then started to cry.