Narrative Writing - Mildred Makhona and I

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.