That Little Hamburger Shop

Chapter 1- The Mere Hamburger Shop.

Father first opened his shop in Texas, Houston. A mere Hamburger shop, it was, set next to a busy road- getting showered with hot dust each time one of the cars rumbled past. Father ran it on his own, no help needed, earning a good load of money. He sold his speciality hamburgers cheap, filled to the brim with tomato ketchup and hearty lashings of cheese, a wedge of juicy meat and oozes of salad to cool down people's parched throats. Sold 25p per hamburger, he did, each day working his butt off and he sold 10p a carton of apple juice- he did everything cheap.

So when he met Ma Jac, everything changed. She was firm and set in her ways, like a bull. She wasn't a sort to be changed over eternity and time, whatever you said to her; headstrong to the bone and interfering to the depths of her beating soul. It was just the way she was, but however much me as a person tried to rub off on her, it didn't work, it didn't. I did try-but she raised the prices straight away of Father's hamburger shop...twisting our lives obscurely. Father was good friends with everyone in the great town, middle sized and covered with sun covering its deepest lairs. The deep south was RUN by Father- and he did his best to keep his people happy. He understood, he lived his life with them- and knew how poor some people were. The Hamburger Shop was true to himself; utmostly fair!

''Get down 'ere Lisbeth! Get down 'ere Hank! Your little dog Petie needs a pee...not on my poppies; please no!!'' Ma, Jac, could be heard from miles, you know. Father was resting as he no longer had anything to do in the log cabin downstairs, where his precious hamburgers stood, right in the centre of the log table, his original pride of joy. (Now Jac (oh, Ma doesn't like me calling her by her first name!) had re-furbished it and decorated it with pop-art artwork, big jugs full with onions and strips of celery ready to be piled onto the fresh hamburgers.) But now, because of the high prices, nobody stepped one foot inside. They had developed a phobia of The Hamburger Shop, it was almost as if my Ma had a power to tug money out of our regulars pockets, right in front of my Pa's eyes and mine. 'Nothing to do now, Father would say, I'm not the owner no more!' I felt sorry, I sure did, but nothing could change Jac's opinion- you can't twist someone's mind to your own appeal. Unfortunatley.

Ma (which is what I call her-note that I call my real birth mother, well, Mother) had full control over our once peaceful lives. Now it seemed, she had control over the sun, she was so powerful, you know? ''Jac, you can just calm it for a bit, ya' know!'' Father would plead when she got angry at poor Petie- our Yorkshire Terrier. Then again, Ma got angry a lot of things, whether Father (or Pa. I call him either) cried a little in rememberence of Mother, or even if he put the seed of the poppy in the wrong place in the soil, by a centimetre.

''Wimp tears, and low brain power!'' Ma would thunder and knock his head, like it was a little wooden door. ''Hallo? Any brain in there that's going to be put to use!?''

Most days she went too far, and reduced Father and me to sobbing because of her unfairness, but in the Carribean, where she originally lived, they had different rules and regulations. Me and Pa had been used to having 'relaxing' days, where we simply sat and remembered Mother and tried to push all the bad things out of our mind. Most of our Carribean friends were extremely jolly and kind, but Ma...well. She had to keep on going and didn't ever let us relax. ''LAZY! Come on, get that blood pumping round yer' body!'' she'd shout, ''Don't just sit there in this Texas heat!''

We were used to her outbursts and her little changes in our way of living, but her latest exploit changed our lives and made us upset to the very core, I mean, it just ripped our precious memories of Mother to shreds, ya' know? Ya'll will soon find out why...

Since I was born, into the friendly town of Houston, our cow, Bessie became a firm and regular part of our lives. Her shaply body and unique patches of utter blackness; they were imprinted into my mind. Father's mind. And my real, beautiful, Mother's mind- before that wonderful cow was tugged out. Because my mother died of 'natural causes.'

The doctors never explained fully, because they couldn't be bothered to find out, I know that. And now it seemed strange, because Jac had known my old Mother as a dear friend, and yet she was now my new mother...it felt so strange! Even Bessie felt the horrendous pain of knowing my birth mother would never come back. No matter what bloomin' actions we took, or what words we spoke- nothing could drag her back to her home-town of Texas.

So my new Ma (I have to call her that or an argument will start, you know) made a big mistake by planting poppies. Doesn't seem bad in the slightest when you think about it, but it was right where mother's special Everlasting Daffodils stood. Me and my Father had sincerely promised, until the ends of time and eternity, that nothing other than Everlasting Daffodils would planted in that one, important plot. And now, Ma had changed all of that!

As my new 'fresh from the beaches of the Carribean' mother ripped my original mothers daffodils up, replacing them with colour-filled, blinding poppies, it felt like my heart was being ripped out too. My old mother was black, so no-one could blame me, 'sweet, old Lisbeth' of being racist. It's just that...Ma was being so unfair- she was tearing my last memoirs of my mother into old, shredded pieces of nothing.

 That was 5 years ago...