Mine had a hard edge to it, rough and threadbare almost completely
in ruins. It sat without care on the verge of utter devastation, held together
only by my existence. My existence was a frailty all on its own; it was made up
of empty hellos, pleasant conversations and sad goodbyes. Nothing worth
remembering, nothing worth talking about and in all honesty it wasn’t anything
at all.
I was born in the Free
State on May 1986 to one Mildred Makhona, an
alcoholic narcissist who would sooner sell her soul for a pretty outfit and a
night out on the town with some random man than worry about the food in her
children’s guts and the clothes on their backs. I recall very vividly when I
was six years old, my mother seated on our family’s pink and brown floral sofa
inside our inconsistently furnished two room apartment, smoking ferociously one
cigarette after another, throwing back the cheap liquor all the while yelling
insults at my sister and I and demanding we get on with preparing supper when
she knew all too well that there was nothing to eat. My younger brother
crawling around on a old wooden floor picking dusty bits of odds that were once
mine or my sister’s favourite toys off of it. Amid all the terror of being a
young child living within an unstable home there were good moments. When she
was sober, mother would clean us up and take us to the park or the zoo or out
to eat, but those moments where greatly sporadic. We would plead and beg with
her to take us out alas to our great dismay when she picked up a bottle we knew
to expect nothing pleasant. Romy who was three years old at the time, cried so
hard on one particular day asking her to give him as well as my sister and I a
little bit of money so we could go out and get some ice cream from the truck
parked right outside out apartment block flooded by other neighbourhood kids
who all walked away with cool ice lollies and creamy cream on sticks. She not
only declined but cursed brutally and went off on a tangent telling us we were
ungrateful.
Many years later an old looking Mildred sat on the verge
of eternal destruction sat weathered and frail. I, a young adult newly
affirmed, told her, I said “You were never around.”
The blank stare she shot me preceded her words, “Your
farther left me after Romy’s birth, he left us. Who was I in between single
handedly mothering three kids with no money in my pockets or joy in my heart?”
she said with tears in her eyes and great solitude in her voice. “I tried to
love you, but you saw fault in all my efforts. I tried to raise you and yes I
know it wasn’t perfect, but you kids didn’t make it any easier.
I asked her about the drinking and the revolving door of
men, explaining that these elements stole our mother and she said, “In the arms
of those very frequent male callers you bashed so vehemently I found a little
momentary sense of fulfilment. I’m not excusing some of the things that I did
wrong, but I had to be a mother and a father and an individual person in my own
right.” She declared a boundless devotion, relayed a tale drenched in
sacrifice, claiming it was on her back that she managed to feed us. “A woman
with no skills or education, three children and no man has no way of another
chance in this world. Yes I drank, but you try prostituting and tell me how it
feels.”
This response left me feeling deflated because once
again the focus was on her she told me she had done all she could have and she
provided her best. A terrible statement I thought, when her “best” saw her
children raising themselves. She went on to paint a picture far removed from my
reality, telling of picnics and personal conversations, carefree moments of
dancing and singing in the kitchen, visits to theme parks and long whimsical
walks.
“I can count all these things you speak so proudly about
on one hand!” I screamed thinking in the confines of my sweetest dreams life
with my mother was pleasurable thing.
