Laura's Legacy [Short Story]

Dearest Mama.

Dearest Mama, you held the strand of my birth for nine months; ones you claim were the most dreadful ones of your damned being.

I thank you for nurturing me into the living and breathing compilation of skin and bone that I was, the debutant day of my existence, from the frail sliver of life when I merely existed within you to the soft skinned 'bundle of joy' other mothers would call their newly made creation.

I thank god or whatever the force above, for allowing my germination in the wine and cigarette filled bag within you.

Dearest Mama, I must say I did love you for the first two years of my living. I would sense warm breathe on my skin during bath time and a kiss on my forehead during bed time, which at present I can only hope your body was watching at the least.

I started to grow, nail polish and Stella were my obsessions. You would return home when Bonnie and Clyde commenced their forbidden duties. I questioned the subjects of your late coming and you would reply, "the Diner needed extra help, I think I can buy that new bike for you next week," but my new bike never came next week and so did you.

When you did, the men with badges brought you in. Aunt Daisy held my hand as I watched you drag to the couch.

I grew more, boys, cigarettes, parties and Stella were my appeals. You came home at devil's hours and Satan was surely asleep. I questioned your late income and you replied, "I don't know where I come from, I just don't know of another way to live," and so I watched you drag to the couch.

A few weeks passed, drugs were introduced, Stella ran away and I was alone. I came home after school, and witnessed you, on the god forbidden couch, syringe in hand, the pale of yellow oozing from its spiteful tip. Heroine was our common ground. "I'm no prostitute, I live with my partners," you said to the men with badges, when they hunted you that night, and dumped me in the house of unknowns.

Dearest Mama, how I wished you would come to take me back home, how I longed for your calloused eyes, how I thought upon what became of you. I thought I saw you, once, in our usual Ice Cream place and you were gone, like a burned out flame, before a fractious second could pass.

Dearest Mama, you must know that I still do think about you, even if there is not much to recall. I did love you for two years of my helpless being, a love lost in damned actions, a stir of whiskey and wine, a tornado of rejection and lone.