A Starting Point

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE- THE DAMN NINETEEN

Davies

After Wilson hit my mom, he was gone. He was being wanted by the police. I blacked out after the beating and woke up a day later in the hospital. He had bruises all over his body and everything on me hurt. Even breathing was painful. But, my heart stopped beating when the doctor said "I'm sorry".
My mother... Oh, God!
Many days catching being strangled, being punched... She was so weak.
He saw me being carried on Mister Mitchell's lap and thought my father had killed me.
Mr Mitchell said she heard the neighbor shout "the boy is dead", "call the police, he killed the boy"... And when Mr Mitchell's wife tried to get her out of the house, she grabbed a knife from the sink from the kitchen and...
She had drilled into my house. She had pierced it with a knife where she said I lived... Into her heart.
When it happened, I was only eight years old, but I remember the year after that, Charlie, a boy at school, said that everyone knew that she didn't die quickly.
He laughed.
I counted the seconds to blow his face.
I also remember that the day I received the news at the hospital, I didn't shed a single tear. I could not. If I did that, I would be accepting that she's gone. And even if I wanted to, they didn't come. I had that feeling, however, they didn't come.
At the hospital, I asked them to let me see my mother. The doctor refused because I was a child and when I said I didn't have time to say goodbye, I saw all pity on her face. Still, he didn't allow it.
The hospital was small and I knew she was close by.
I saw Mr. Mitchell sleeping in the armchair and on tiptoes, I left the room.
We didn't have a morgue in town. The hospital did not have the structure for one, as it was still under construction. Everyone who died stayed in a room until they took the body to the hospital in the neighboring city.
When Mr. Peterson died, our neighbor, I remember his wife saying to my mother, "He's in that damn room. Bloody nineteen! That's where everybody goes, and now it's my Pit's turn. I hate that one." number."
"The damn nineteen!"
That's where I would go.
The silence in the hall was extremely disturbing.
"Dead don't make noise, Davies. It's just your noisy mind. Scaredy! That's why Mom wouldn't let you watch horror movies."
Breathing, steps.
"The damn nineteen!"
I put my hand on the doorknob and stopped. The labored breathing, the sweat pouring down my face, the fear…all at once.
I took a breath and opened the door. There was a gurney in the corner of the wall and there was someone on top of it. It was my mother, covered by a sheet. I saw the profile of her face and her mouth, startlingly open.
Jesus Christ!
It felt like I was going to choke to death at any moment with that bad feeling.
I walked away and a nurse inside the room saw me. I didn't care and walked backwards, sitting next to the wall. I made a ball around myself.
"Come back to me, Mommy," I said. "Wake up, please... Please don't leave me."
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was so fast. The nurse lifted me up and I struggled. When he wrapped his hands around my waist, I screamed as loud as I could. I screamed until I lost my voice. Not like that, I cried. I hit him. I beat myself.
Two nurses were already holding me and the doctor was trying to calm me down.
They dragged me to the room and when I realized it, the doctor had applied something to me. I just know that my mind was lost in an infinite void, far away from the damn nineteen.
At my mom's funeral, I knew everyone was afraid I was going to freak out, it's just that my mind was so far away. My mind was at home, watching my mother cook.
In time, the bank put our house up for sale. It was like reality was trying to hit me in the face.
It was still difficult to communicate with anyone. I wasn't in the mood. In the bedroom at night, I asked God if she was okay. A despair invaded me and when I felt that sleep was coming, I thought it was God consoling me. My mother said it was like that. That where there was peace, there was God and then, when I calmed down, I thought it was God and so, I slept. The other day, I asked God to say hello to her. I had faith that He would send the message.
My mother always taught me to have faith. It was strange how a person like her, who only cried, had faith. I was a child, but I understood when she explained it to me. I just didn't know how long I would have this faith in me, because little by little, it was going.
It was difficult without her around. Death is not only cruel for those who go, it is cruel for those who stay too. Because you go through days where it feels like you're slowly dying. The lack that the other makes, corrodes your chest and the feeling that you will overcome, seems to be so far away.
I couldn't take it anymore. I still had the same feeling. The feeling of reliving everything vividly, every day. And even though Mr. Mitchell treated me well in his home, I distanced myself from him and his wife. None of them were my mother.
I promised myself that I would never be like my father. But, I was a Lewis and we hurt people.
“Poor women. You're another Lewis who was born to hurt them." That's what Kimberley's mother told me a few years ago. And I realized that she was right... I was a wretch, as she had said.
Oh, my God... And I'm only twelve.
And at the age of twelve, I felt sorry for my mother. Hurt that she never had the strength to leave with me and suddenly had all the strength to leave alone. And I was angry with myself for being weak and fainting. She thought I died because I was weak.
I had a heartache the size of the love I felt for her. And that weighed over a thousand tons on my body.