Missing Mom

Goodbye, Grace

I felt nothing as I stared at the lifeless face beneath the piece of glass.

She was the woman I knew as my mother all my life. Her death was no surprise, she suffered from a lingering illness for the past three years and I was nothing if not prepared for this event.

They let me know while I was in the South wrapping up a lecture tour a week ago. This is the first and perhaps the last time I’ll be seeing her as she is, finally without the ability to hurt me and make my life miserable.

I said a short prayer for her soul as I passed the black painted metal box and let others view her emaciated corpse.

I went back to my apartment in a building an hour’s drive away from my childhood home. I did not have the volition to unpack but did it anyway because it was something to do. Afterwards I lay down in my bedroom, unable to acknowledge the relief and the joy her passing brought me. It was to be the end of a very sad chapter in my life; it was the closure of a painful and scarring episode that defined who I am today.

Her name was Grace, which I think is a very bad divine joke for she exhibited none of it all her life.

My earliest memory of her was when I was three or four and we lived in one of the rooms of her eldest sister’s cramped house in the poorer part of town. Her husband, who is not my father, came home drunk and vomited in the chamber pot at the foot of the bed we all shared with my brother, who was a year older than me.

She screamed at her husband and punched him in the stomach, mouthing epithets faster than you can say uncle.

I don’t know how that memory affected me but it set the tone for my life with her. You could not count the number of times she gave me a mind fuck with her actions.

But the biggest mind fuck of all came when I was five. It’s a memory that will not fade with time, an event that defined me for such a long time.

It was the summer after my first year in school and much as I enjoyed the experience I was glad for a break. I spent my mornings playing with the neighborhood kids and the afternoons napping and playing some more.

One Saturday she woke me up early, heated water in a kettle for my bath and carefully gave me one. Then she dried me with her own towel, dressed me in my best t-shirt and shorts, combed my long hair and braided it. She even tied the shoelaces of my sneakers.

I never felt so loved in my young life!

She was smiling as she did all this and then she said in a soft voice, “Baby, we’re going to your favorite amusement park today. We’ll ride all the rides you want and eat all the cotton candy you want. Just do as I say okay?”

Her words sent me to five year old heaven.

She hailed a cab, got in first then had me sit on her lap. But the taxi did not go in the direction of the amusement park; we went the opposite way where the big houses were.

The driver pulled over in front of green gates which hid a sprawling structure set in an even more sprawling lawn.

We were greeted by a man who looked as if he had been sitting on the lower floor verandah since last night. I did not like him at first sight. His grey hair was camouflaged by raven black dye and he had a couple of gold teeth that glinted sinisterly at me when he smiled. He smelled of sandalwood soap, but it did not sit well on him.

He grabbed my hand after handing Grace a thick wad of hundred peso notes and half dragged me into a bedroom in the second storey of the house. He was rough as he undressed me. He took off my panties last; he did not remove my pink sneakers.

He smelled my underwear before he undressed himself. I closed my eyes and I remember to this day the searing pain I felt between my legs a few minutes later. I did not open my eyes until I heard him go out and close the door a good twenty minutes after.

When I did, I saw blood trickling down my legs and soaking my yellow socks. There was also blood on the bed sheets. I shivered in the cold room; the air conditioner was turned on full blast. I curled up and fell half asleep.

I woke up to her scolding, she bitched about waiting and how I should have had the sense to get dressed and go downstairs. She raised her voice as she commanded me to put my clothes on and wipe the tears that I did not know were flowing from my eyes.

A white car that I imagined to be a funeral pyre took us home.

A week later I heard Grace complain to one of her officemates that she lost thirty thousand pesos at the horse races. Instinct told me it was the money I was bought with.

I changed after that day. I used to be an outgoing, precocious child. I became sulky and moody, always given to introspection and I will admit that majority of my thoughts were focused on trying to figure out what it was I did that got me in such big trouble. I still got good grades in school, I still enjoyed learning and the task of getting an education distracted me from the hell home had become.

But with Grace, it was as if nothing happened. There were no traces of guilt in her demeanor and she treated me like trash as usual. It wounded me to think as I looked back that I was nothing more than a piece of meat to her. And maybe because I was.

She proved this when I was nine and her husband got a job that required him to travel regularly to the provinces to oversee the company’s various factories.

On his first night away, Grace barged into my cramped bedroom and commanded me to go to theirs. She had only a towel wrapped around her naked body. Then she lay on the bed and spread her legs. She grabbed my hair and shoved my face in her crotch.

“Lick me and suck me and don’t stop until I scream,” she said hoarsely.

I was going to do no such thing. This was not going to be 1982 all over again. I kept myself from gagging at the stink of her genitalia. Instead of doing as I was told, I bit her hard there until I tasted the iron of her blood in my mouth.

She boxed the right side of my face and screamed “You worthless animal!” at me. I reeled and fell face first on the floor. My nose broke and the blood that spurted mixed with the blood in my mouth.

I failed my quiz the next day.

I could go on and on and I wish I could say she had no redeeming qualities and maybe there was one. She did not turn me out on the street when she could easily have done so as I learned after she was diagnosed with stomach cancer that she was not my real mother. That was all she told me, she did not go into details. She wouldn’t tell me who my mother was or how it was that I was given under her care.

That was when I finally decided to cut loose. I moved out of her house and finally took on the low paying, highly fulfilling job I always wanted. I stayed in public relations for Grace, because despite everything she did to me I felt what I now realize was an ill-placed sense of duty and gratitude towards her. Wanting to earn her approval was a bad habit I could not kick and when I look back I see it’s worse than being addicted to drugs. But she was the only mother I knew and I always had a strong sense of family.

I taught economics at the state university where I finished college and I could not remember feeling happy in a long time. It was liberating. The hours were not demanding. I had a teaching assistant who took care of most of the grade keeping. All I did was lecture and grade essay assignments, which I loved to give in lieu of quizzes.

I was gaining equilibrium when I was told of her death. The receptionist at the front desk of the hotel where I was staying handed me a note left by Grace’s son, whom I always thought was my brother.

I locked myself in my bathroom, waiting for the tears to come but none did. The note informed me of the date of the cremation, which was two weeks away. It was the soonest Grace’s daughter could come home. I decided to stick to my schedule and go back to Manila after I finished my lectures.

Her will stated that her ashes be left with me, her paltry fortune divided between her two offspring. I did not want to keep it. I was trying to decide what to do with the urn when my doorbell rang.

An elegant elderly woman was at my door. She wore a tailored long sleeved shirt and slim cut black slacks. It was Celine, Grace’s older sister. Seeing her gave me a shock, it was like seeing myself twenty years into the future. I’ve never seen her in person but we wrote occasional letters and I sent her birthday and Christmas cards when I remembered. Grace also let me speak to her on the rare times she called on the phone. She also sends pictures of herself and her family, which is based in England, but I was not prepared for this meeting.

“I have a lot of explaining to do and I don’t know where to begin,” was how she started the conversation.

Celine was married at the time she had me, but not to the man who is my father. I was born in secret in remote Birmingham. She asked Grace, who was starting her own family, to come and smuggle me into the Philippines and have me registered as her own child.

The agreement was Grace would keep me until Celine could get a divorce and marry my father and we would all move to the United States.

“But she kept you so she could blackmail your father and me for money,” Celine expanded.

The money stopped coming when I was five, which was why I was sold, she further explained. They refused to give in to her demands and threatened to sue for breach of contract.

“I didn’t want you to hate me for making such a choice. I regretted it the moment my sister left the hospital with you,” Celine sobbed.

She explained she stayed away because Grace threatened to turn me against her if she stepped foot in the country—it was her revenge for leaving her to care for me and spend for my upbringing. My education was an investment because Grace saw I was no halfwit and had the potential to earn a good living so I can support her in her twilight years.

Tears were trickling down my cheeks as I took it all in. I got the explanation I have been praying for for so long. I tried to hate Celine for the things she did and did not do but I couldn’t. I have known her all my life but it felt like we’ve just met. I sat on my part of the couch silent, watching Celine watch me.
“Please say something, anything. Blame me, I know I could never make up for giving you up, for being such a coward,” she pleaded.

I wiped my tears and gave a half laugh, hoping Celine could see the joy in my eyes.

I held out my hand and said “Hi Mom, it’s great to finally meet you. Do you have any suggestions on what to do with an urn of ashes?”

Her frown lifted and she laughed. She shook my hand. “I’m glad too. How far is the sea from your place?” she asked.

I hugged her and picked up the keys to my 1969 Volkswagen Beetle from the mantel. We drove to the beach three hours from where I lived.