In My Mother's Time (5 page)

“Well
what
the
hell
took
you
so
long
to get back to us?” She
fussed.

“Do you have any idea the chaos
that
ensued after the rain stopped”
he continued, “rape, murder, men
burning things, people
steeling.”

“They
were
like
wild
animals
attacking anything that moved.” He said, “I
had to wait for everything to calm
down.”

“As strong as I am, I am not
bullet proof” he
finished.

Mother nodded her head from side
to side
as
if
to
say,
“yeah,
yeah
if
you
only knew”.
And
that
was
the
end
of
the conversation.

My mother said she knew he
was right and that they had made love
so feverously and with such passion
she thought she’d die of
euphoria.

She said he was good for
penetrating her soul when she least expected it
but when
she
really
needed
it
the
most.
My mother loved him more than life
itself. If
she
could
exist
as
one
entity
with
him for an eternity wrapped in rapture
she would morph into angelic energy and never
come
back
to
earth
again.
He
was
sometimes intensely passionate
and always
blowing
things
off
with
a
laugh.

Mother couldn’t help but smile
when he’d fool around, she said his
laugh was contagious. He could make
the whole world smile with one grin.
That type of guy you know is an asshole
but he just had a fizzy personality
that bubbled over. It was that
naughty sweetness
that
had
everyone
consumed and addicted. He was a bad boy
turned man.

My father was very
handsome. Woman became
uncontrollably flustered in his presence and he
made girls swoon. His eyes sparkled
and glinted. His features were bold
cuts specially engineered by god. He
was
one of a kind and could not be
held down. Mama could never stay mad
at
him.
He
was
really,
really
good,
and
he knew
it.

She missed him but something
inside her kept her distant from
him emotionally until he grabbed her
and forced a kiss upon her lips she
gawked at him in shock and relinquished
her heart to him once more, wrapping
her arms around his neck and kissing
him passionately as no woman had
done before. Love is such a small word
in comparison to what they had
no distance  or  time  could  unmake 
the

bond created on the day her
soul entered her body. She was made
for him and he ruled her body and
soul.

Chapter
seven

For weeks
my
mother and
father fought screaming and yelling at
each other sending us outside to play. As
if we wouldn’t be able to hear
them screaming through the walls. Then
my
mother would come out much
later smiling to
herself.

She told me they had gotten used
to being alone, to doing things their
own way. Mother said he was stubborn as
a mule and powerful like an ox.
Either way she thought he was an
animal.

When I caught her grinning
she’d furrow her brow and tell me to
keep writing until she told me to stop,
and other times she’d say drop that
pencil and come dance with me in
the meadow.
We’d
spend
hours
napping
in the posies and running through
the yellow and orange tulips stopping
to smell them and brushing them
around with outstretched hands. I had not
seen her smile in ages and now it was as
if god himself came down and kissed
her heart.

When the rains came we’d all sit
on the porch in rocking chairs listening
to the  booms  and  cracking  snaps of
the

lightning. In the fall we’d plant
crops and chop wood. In the summer
we lived in the lake doing flips
and laughing when the warm drizzle
would sprinkle us under the bright
summer sun. The sounds of the earth were
like lullabies. My mom said the
hippies would be
jealous.

Life was not easy but easier
than
before the end times. My
mother pointed out to me many ways
that living, after everything was
destroyed,
was better. She said maybe the
earth would have time to heal and
reaffirm itself in the universe as the
most habitable. In a thousand years, she
told me, everything that was will
be something new. The trees that fell,
the houses that crumbled, and all the
man
made things will be broken down
and food for something
else.

It is harder for trouble makers to
be trouble now that life was marshal
law the people would be able to fight
back and kill their attackers without
penalty of imprisonment. In the old days
they
hung men for stealing horses for
rape and murder. Sometimes the
way
mother talked frightened
me
but mostly I was intrigued. Sounded like an old western I half expected a
gun toting angel eyes to come galloping
by guns a
blazing.

My mother had a thing for a six
foot blue eyed spaghetti western actor
so she made us all watch his movies even though the movies themselves
were older than her and the man was as
old as my grandfather. Every time she
saw
him squint his beady eyes she’d
fluster and say,
my
gosh he is handsome!
She

would miss movies most of all she
had said.

Chapter
eight

When she talked of new life I
missed my
old
life.
I
missed
the
heater
when
it was cold it filled our tiny
house thoroughly unlike the fire you have
to manually stoke up to keep the
heat pouring out. The front half of the
room would be baking and the other
half would
have
a
chill.
Mama
said
we’d
all catch our death if she didn’t stay up
to keep the blaze
roaring.

I could see what it was that I
was supposed to be appreciative of.
I understood now what she said
about honoring and loving thy parents. How could anyone not understand,
just watching her grow old in front of
me the lines the grey hairs the
wrinkles, they were all because of us. All of
the work she did to keep us
comfortable. How could we ever measure up to
this woman?

Mommy said every woman
was capable of being the best mother.
Love is what makes a woman change
her
selfish ways to be what her
children need.

Amelia was starting to grow
breasts and we both now had hair growing
in places
there
had
not
been
before.
When I got upset
my
mom would giggle
and

say, “don’t worry it is all part
of growing
up.”

I
was
afraid
to
grow
up
I
wanted
so desperately to have a child hood
again to play with other children and go
to school. I did not know of school all
I knew was mothers love. I guess it
was easier for me learning hands on
the way I did, but I had to have
something to miss, everyone else had, well
except Theodore.

I had been one summer away
from entering
second
grade
and
had
watched Amelia
go
to
fourth
grade
introduction, but
I
am
not
positive
she
remembers.
It has been so long since those
days.

My siblings and I spent so much
time exploring with our mother. We
knew the
trees,
we
knew
the
animals,
and
the birds. We were something of
experts by  now, on all things mother 
nature.

We knew every hoop and whisper
of the land so when strangers
rolled through
every
couple
of
years
we
could hear them coming miles
away.

Most of them never traveled
through the trees
my
mother planted to
thicken the two hundred or so year old
woods around our compound. They
didn’t seem that smart but after a while
my
mother
became
conscious
of
children’s lives, and would go out and greet
them with
bottled
water,
band
aids,
and
fresh bread.

My dad didn’t like her popping out
at people he worried they’d come
back, and take our house, or shoot her in
the face.
He
said
people
are
jumpy
after
the apocalypse.

Chapter
nine

One afternoon unparticular from
any
other, doing everything we always
did. Collecting eggs, and tending to
the newly found horses, we heard a
man screaming, for hours, and it started
as just a distant call. Eventually we
could make out that it was a man, and
hours later we heard his
words.

“Hello!”
he
shrieked,
“can
anyone
hear me!”
by
this
time
we
were
all
in
the