Finding Mother

Mother

She shone brighter than the sun.

My mother was a quiet breath of fresh air, a warm hug. She could be as soft as a feather pillow but when I got into trouble, my mother was a force to be reckoned with. "Guy Montag!" she would call out, "Get over here right this instant!" I knew that whenever she called, I was to come running over as fast as possible and sit down. "Do you know what you did?" my mother would say, "I absolutely will not stand for you to grow up and be like those little hooligans driving around outside." My five-year-old self would stare guiltily down at the floor murmuring "yes ma'am's" and "sorry's" by the bucketful before Mother would mischievously grin and say, "Enough of that. Let me tell you a story."

The stories she weaved were of far off lands called Middle-Earth, of forbidden lovers in a city called Verona, and of a lost little girl just trying to find her place in the ugly part of Chicago. I would lap these stories up and as soon as Mother was finished, I would look up and simply ask, "Why?" They never let me ask why in school so at the wise old age of three years old, I assumed that I could ask my Mother. But when I asked that question, her face took on a pale hue and she hurriedly shook her head saying, "If I ever hear that word out of you again Mister, I will never tell another story." So, I headed her words and ran off to play with the other kids in the neighborhood until my Father got home.

If Mother was an angel, Father was a demon. His slicked back black hair looked like smoke and the scent of kerosene clung to him like a second skin. He would barely look at Mother in greeting and whenever I would go to meet him at the door, Father would simply walk past me surrounded by a thick cloud of dust. But still, everyday I would wait for him at the door, hoping for a small sign of acknowledgement or even a head nod which I think I knew was never coming from the mighty Fireman which was my Father.

He was an emotionless machine but the only time he ever grew angry was when I stole his bright helmet with the numbers 451 engraved in bright red on the side. When he found me, his face grew to to look like the fires that he constantly lit and his hand began to raise. But before Father could hit me, Mother jumped in front and shouted, "No! Do not hurt my son!" Fathers hand stopped in shock. "Please just look inside yourself," Mother pleaded, "Just once look inside yourself. Would you truly hit your son?" And because I was five and had already forgotten my Mothers warning, I looked up and innocently asked, "Mother, why would Father hit me?"

It was all a blur after that. Strangers dressed in white and officers bearing cuffs stormed into the house and began to drag Mother away, her screams loud and frantic cutting through the air like so many sharp knives. I think I cried, but I can't remember. All I know is I then became the perfect son and it wasn't until twenty years later as I took the multitude of books out from their hiding place that this memory struck me. I wish I could react in a normal way to this memory, maybe cry for the naive boy who lost his Mother, or feel angry at the ignorant and emotionless Father. But most of all, I wish that these stories she told me weren't so full of inky lies.

"Well it doesn't seem like there was anything you could have done Guy." Granger said. "The government doesn't seem to discriminate against men or women when it comes to books." The rest of the men nodded along and Montag tilted his head in acknowledgement. "There was one more thing that I will never forget about that evening," Guy said. "The badges that all of the men wore were black and looked like the mechanical cobras used to pump a persons stomach." Granger froze and looked over at Guy. "That symbol was a basilisk and it would do you well to forget that you ever saw that symbol." Guy opened his mouth to ask why but before he could even taste the question, the men had moved onto another topic and all Guy could do was stare into the flames wondering who and what Basilisk was and why they took his mother away.