Letters from my mother [Short Story]

Letters from my mother

Me and my papa lived in a flat above a cafe that had been in our family for generations. It was a little rundown place on the corner of a busy junction, so the sounds of frantic traffic and the smell of fuel always floated through my open bedroom window.

Papa liked to ask me if I hated living there, if I hated the bedsheets that smelt of coffee or the rowdy 7am customers, or the constant chatter seeping up through the floorboards, or the way my hair always smelt like panini cheese, or the way there was always crossaint crumbs in my school books.

In truth, I did hate it, I did hate that I had to help out on weekends, that it wasn't a cool enough place to hang out with the few friends I had, that I always had Grandpa snoring on his backside on the camp bed in the living room. But I always told Papa no, that I loved it and that I didn't want to move away. My aunts always said he'd cut down forests and move mountains for me.

It was much nicer in the evenings, in that slow moving, quiet time when nobody was in a rush, or busy, when it had just turned seven, and everyone decided to get a cup of tea, a warm blanket, and settle in front of telly. We'd sit there, dinners on our laps, until Grandpa fell asleep again, and it was dark outside.

Then, Papa would start telling me stories about my mum. I always called her that, in my head, because I never met her. I didn't like calling her Ma, because it felt common, and it felt country, like a housewife from Southern USA, who'd had 15 children and spent her days washing clothes. Mum was special.

Papa's voice would get all dreamy, his voice losing all the sharp edges and lumps, and it would remind me of the singer he once was.

-

On the evening of my thirteenth birthday, he told me about when Mum and him met in the park.

All his friends were smoking cigarettes and eating soggy chips, talking about girls in their class, in that crude, vulgar way young adult men often did. They were barely grown, spindly arms and legs, slowly fading acne scars, and a side-eyed sneer that made girls walk faster at night. Papa said he only hung out with them because he had no friends all through secondary, and college.

Mum was sitting under a tree alone, not too far from them. She was sketching, the noise of graphite on paper barely audible over chatter, her hair flopping over her face in a rose curtain. She had pale hands, shaking and blue and smudged with paint.

Papa was standing awkwardly, hovering beside a bench with his 'mates', not wanting to smoke, because he hadn't done it before, and his own Dad said no. His hands were shaking too, from the cold and his constant nerves, he remembered, and he had his music book tucked under his arm.

Mum came up to him, like an angel with black eyeliner and pink dip-dyed hair, slowly going flat in the drizzle. She'd noticed him, standing away from the group, his hair dark and curly, silent in a jumper someone twice his age would wear.

She tried talking, and when Papa didn't respond, she carried on, sighing pretty things about crystals and cats and art degrees and split up parents and boyfriends who'd try to propose to her in Italy, but she'd never say yes, because they weren't right, and they never listened when she said she wanted kids.

Then Mum went silent, staring at Papa with her eyes like polished balls of emerald. It was unerving, and Papa was anxious, so Papa began to sing for her, out of shock, or just pure awkwardness, he couldn't remember. But Mum blushed, not because of the cold, and told him he was sincere, and a good listener, and kissed him.

I never thought of it as a love story, but they must have fallen in love, at some point. They got married 3 months later. Mum must've loved the wedding, in a pale lacy dress, with wildflowers in her hair. Then, a year later, I came along, all sudden and swift and special that Papa used to tell me that the angels took Mum to compensate.