“Mommy, Mommy! Pick me up I want to see too!” I was small and standing beside my mother as she sat at her vanity table, putting on her make-up. She lifted me into her arms and cuddled me in her lap. The lights around the mirror made her skin glow like ivory. She was so beautiful.
“See Honey, see your pretty face?” She pointed at the mirror and turned my head to look. I saw my small freckles, and my silver eyes, so much like hers.
“Mommy I want to be beautiful like you, make me beautiful like you.” I reached for her lipstick. She laughed that wonderful soft purring sound.
I jumped back and let go of the sheet like someone had slapped me. My mother’s beautiful face was bruised, colorless, and dead. There were small drops of blood along her brow, which made me thankful I didn’t lower the sheet to see where they had come from. Since she had been with Jeff she never really had the same beautiful glow as she had when I was a very small child. Right now what little beautiful color she had kept over the years was flat. Dead. My mother was dead.
My hands started to shake and the rest of my insides began to join in. I didn’t want to bother looking at the other person. I knew it was Jeff. I hoped it was. I prayed for it. I’m not an evil person, scared, but not evil. I don’t like being scared. It had become a natural reaction to fear for me to instantly become angry. Anger I can handle. It poured down on the butterflies, chilled them. I was full of hate after seeing my mother. The truth was she had been dying quietly the past ten years. He was strangling her. This was his fault. I covered my mother up. The numb feeling was returning to me. This time I welcomed it to my body even more.
I walked around to the second bed, determined to look, nod, and go home. I lifted the sheet more abruptly this time. My eyes stayed open, even though my skin wanted to crawl out of the room. Jeff’s hair was always a greasy mess, now it was stuck flat to his head with blood. Bruises didn’t paint his face blue and purple like they had my mother’s. It fed my anger. He should have received all of the pain, all of the marks. His nose was still covered in pink scars and crooked from having been broken not more than nine months ago in a bar fight. Other than that there were no marks on his face. I threw the sheet over him again, not caring if I covered him delicately or not. Then I walked out of the room, leaving my escorts standing there, both a little green.
All works on this page were written by and under copywrite to Krystal Hicks 2002.