{ "schemaVersion": 1, "id": "texto-mama", "language": "en", "canonical": "https://paynalton.tech/en/works/mama/", "title": "Mom", "summary": "Childhood, family abandonment and violence.", "author": "Paynalton", "format": "fiction", "year": 2010, "source": "https://cuentosdesangreymuerte.blogspot.com/2010/03/mama.html", "partial": false, "topics": [ { "title": "Stories and narrative", "url": "https://paynalton.tech/en/topics/lectura-categoria-cuentos/" }, { "title": "Story", "url": "https://paynalton.tech/en/topics/lectura-cuento/" }, { "title": "Social drama", "url": "https://paynalton.tech/en/topics/lectura-drama-social/" }, { "title": "Childhood", "url": "https://paynalton.tech/en/topics/lectura-infancia/" }, { "title": "Family", "url": "https://paynalton.tech/en/topics/lectura-familia/" }, { "title": "Violence", "url": "https://paynalton.tech/en/topics/lectura-violencia/" } ], "body": "Your ears don't stop buzzing and the headache is getting worse. In the distance you hear Andrea's voice shouting your name while she cries... the world looks so far away and unattainable that it seems unreal that you are part of it.

Facing your eyes, you see the water of the putrid puddle in which you have fallen. You can see the dark water swaying every time you breathe and feel it entering and leaving your mouth while you still try to move your jaw that begins to swell. In front of you, a rock the size of your head blocks your view beyond and you wonder what will happen now.

Samuel no longer hits you, he must believe that it has been enough and that he can leave you alone. You feel as if your entire face is swollen, Samuel is much bigger than you, he must be around fourteen or older. Simply, you had no chance, besides he wasn't alone, Kike and Raúl were with him... what were you thinking?

You can't avoid it, you would like to cry, you would like to cry and have mom here to comfort you.

You don't remember almost anything about when you were little, but surely your first word was \"mom.\" You love her and surely she also loves you.

You remember the cold nights when she would wrap you in the blanket you liked the most, that one with soft fur. Then mom would hold you very tightly and hum a song until you fell asleep. Sometimes she was the one who fell asleep and you tried not to make noise to not wake her up, also you didn't want her to stop holding you.

Dad would come in the night. He was different, you never liked the way he looked at you or the fact that he never smiled at you like mom did. But she would get happy when he arrived, she would get up immediately and run to kiss him. You didn't like it when he left you, but she was happy and that made you happy.

One night dad didn't come back and mom stopped rocking you. The first days she would just cry curled up in bed.

You didn't want to see her suffer and your attempts to comfort her didn't work. So you simply opened the door and went out to play in the street until she called you back to come home.

Sometimes mom would leave the house all day and you would wait for her playing in front of the house's door. She would come back very late, but it didn't matter, you were happy to see her return even though she no longer embraced you. She was just mom and you loved her.

The days when it took too long for you to arrive, the woman next door would call you to give you something to eat. You didn't like going with that woman, her house was clean and tidy, but it smelled strange, as if there was no love behind those walls.

-Would you like to stay with me?- the woman would sometimes say.

You didn't like that, you wanted to stay with your mom and be with her. You came to hate the woman for constantly asking you that, but you were hungry and you bit your lips while eating what she gave you.

Sometimes your mom would come back with a bottle containing something that smelled very bad and tasted worse. Then your mom would sit at the table and drink from it until she fell asleep. On those days you would cover her with your favorite blanket and hug her. Your mom was beautiful when she slept. Sometimes you would give her a kiss on the cheek and stay to sleep next to her.

Playing in the street, you met Samuel. He always arrived in the afternoons after selling all his candies. He would stay to play with you for a while before going home. Sometimes he would start crying when he hadn't sold enough and knew his dad would beat him. Sometimes it was you who would cry, telling him how sometimes your mom didn't realize you existed.

-At least your dad doesn't beat you,- he would say, and would give you a candy, even though he knew he would have to receive a whipping for it.

One afternoon the woman next door and your mom argued when your mom arrived and you were eating in her house.

They started talking badly to each other and began to shout, yelling things about you, something like that you were old enough to go to school, that your mom was drinking too much, and something about some government officials who would come to take you away from your mom.

That was the last time you ate in the woman's house. That day your mom grabbed your wrist so hard that you felt a lot of pain and took you inside the house. She slammed the door shut and let you go, then she collapsed on the bed and started to cry.

With tears in her eyes, you approached her and touched her shoulder. Then she looked at you and, for the first time in a long while, she hugged you. Both of you were crying, lying on the bed, and she kept repeating that you should forgive her.

You didn't understand anything, you just cried while hugging her tightly, wishing that this moment would never end. Both of you fell asleep.

From that moment on, everything changed. You started going to school where the teacher and the other children treated you very kindly. Mom got ready every morning, really looking beautiful, and went to work. In the afternoon, she always waited for you, just as she had waited for dad for a long time. She herself prepared meals for both of you every day. Mom went back to work and you waited for her with a smile on your face. They were truly happy days.

One day, mom came with a picture of a man and placed it next to the mirror. Sometimes she came a little later than usual, but she always returned happy. Occasionally, she would tuck you in, but she didn't get dressed for bed, instead she combed her hair and dressed more than when she went to work. You pretended to be asleep until a car stopped outside the house and mom came out of the house smiling. You could hear her voice greeting someone, the door closed, and the car left.

You always stayed awake until the car returned and mom came back home. She entered the house and you closed your eyes again. Then she took off her shoes, gave you a kiss on the forehead, and lay down next to you. Only then could you sleep.

But that night, she didn't return happy as she always did. That time, she came crying and cried all night. You stayed in bed listening to her sorrow while she constantly asked, \"Why?... Why did she do this?\"

The next morning the photo in the mirror had disappeared and the following days your mom was always sad. She would come back with bottles, sometimes bringing some that she didn't drink, but instead soaked a cloth in them and spent the afternoon smelling it. That calmed her down and made her stop crying.

A few times she wouldn't go to work, other days she would come back to eat and stay home smelling that rag, until one day she came furious from work and never went back. The house became saturated with the smell of that clear liquid.

Mom was almost never going out on the street anymore. Sometimes she would send you to the lady next door to ask her for a loan, until one day the lady no longer wanted to lend you money. Then you had to go farther, asking other people who knew Mom, and one by one they started refusing. It was obvious that Mom needed money.

It was Samuel who suggested that you go work together. You set aside some money and bought your first box of candy. Samuel taught you how to sell, how to look pitiful so people would buy more.

You went to work every day. With the money you bought a little food for Mom and for yourself, and the rest you left for her on the table.

Mom didn't ask who the money was from, she just took it and went out to buy a bottle. Mom was calm and you kept working.

You stopped going to school. That place had become a nightmare. The new teacher scolded you for not combing your hair and cutting your nails. The kids made fun of you because the uniform was tight, dirty, and somewhat broken. Even the teacher constantly told you that it was unpleasant to see you and to be near you.

The teacher called your mom, but you never delivered the message. Mom already had too many problems and she would get angry if she had to listen to the teacher's shouts too.

Mom got used to seeing the money you left on the table. She never thanked you, but it wasn't necessary, you knew she needed it to buy her bottles and sometimes it was enough to buy a white powder she really liked to put on her nose.

You simply worked to see her happy and saved every penny to give it to her.

But things started to go wrong again. People were talking about a crisis and it was harder to sell or ask for money. Your mom also didn't have any luck getting money, and that made her angry.

 One day you came alone with two apples, it had been a bad day, and you put them on the table. Mom had also had a bad day and when she saw you didn't have money, she got furious, because she would have preferred the money over the food. She threw the two apples and broke the mirror, then sat down to cry in bed.

You approached her intending to hug her, but when she felt you close, she pushed you away and started hitting you over and over. It was the first time Mom hit you.

Her hits hurt more because you didn't know the reason she was so angry with you. You started to cry and she hit you even harder to make you shut up. Then you couldn't stand it anymore and started saying terrible things to her, asking her, \"Why don't you love me?\"... You kept crying and told her you hated her, even though it wasn't true, you loved her more than anything in the world.

Mom walked away from you and sat in a corner with her head between her legs, crying.

You got up and left the house. You were sorry for having said those things to Mom and didn't want to go back, the guilt was too much to face her again.

A few months had passed since Samuel had left his house and now he lived with other kids who had also left their homes.

When you arrived at the cardboard shacks that served as shelter, Samuel invited you to stay. The night came and you didn't leave. No one asked you any questions, they simply received you as one of their own.

The routine was the same day after day: leaving in the morning to work, looking for something to eat, and spending the rest of the afternoon playing with the others. Some sold candy like Samuel and you, others cleaned windows or simply asked people passing by for money. Sometimes some men arrived in trucks and some children and teenagers went with them all day, then came back with a lot of money. According to what those men told you, they took them to hidden places and gave them money in exchange for taking off their clothes and letting them be touched by them.

One day, just like you arrived, Andrea arrived. She was only a little younger than you and no one asked her any questions either, although later she confided in you that she left her house because her father forced her to do terrible things, like the ones the truck drivers did to them, and that he had threatened to kill her mother if she told anyone. That's why she begged you to keep the secret.

Sometimes Samuel and the older kids brought along bottles with the white liquid that mom loved so much. Just like her, they would soak rags and spend the afternoon smelling them. They said it took away their hunger and the cold. You never liked that, it reminded you of mom and made you feel sad, wondering how she was doing.

It was on one of those afternoons that they brought that, some of the white powder that mom loved and other things they kept looking at Andrea. Samuel told her to take from the bottle, but she didn't want to. Then he and the other two tried to convince her to go with them to the vacant lot \"to play,\" but she refused.

Samuel got angry with her and dragged her out of the hut toward the vacant lot, she screamed that she didn't want to go, that he let her go. Her screams could be heard from a distance.

Then you decided to go. Samuel had Andrea by the hair and was trying to take off her blouse. You pushed him and he turned angrily toward you. He let go of Andrea and started hitting you. You couldn't defend yourself, he hit you until you fell to the ground and then kept kicking you until he got tired of it. Andrea screamed at him to leave her alone and the other two just laughed.

That's how you arrived at the place where you are now. Andrea keeps screaming that they let her go and Samuel has spit at you while the other two keep laughing.

With effort you get up, feeling a thread of blood sliding down from your nose. Samuel approaches telling you not to get involved again, to get out. In two steps you're in front of him and you can see his mocking smile.

Andrea shouts something you don't understand and Samuel turns to look at her. That's why he doesn't notice when you hit him with the rock you were holding in your hand, causing him to fall to the ground with a red ring on his head.

You charge at him and keep hitting his head with the rock. You hear the bones crack, you see the blood spurt out, and you feel his body twitch uncontrollably underneath you. You're crying and screaming, but you don't stop hitting. It's no longer Samuel's face you're hitting over and over, it's the face of dad who never smiled, who never told you he loved you; it's the face of the woman who keeps telling you to abandon mom and go with her, it's the face of the teacher telling you you stink as if you hadn't bathed in days, it's the face of the school kids who keep laughing at you.

When you pick up that bigger rock, which you need two hands to lift, you see your own face telling mom you hated her. Three times you drop the heavy stone on Samuel's head, which is now in pieces. His body stops moving, your hands are soaked in blood, and your face is bathed in tears.

You get up and look around, the sun has gone down and the clouds cover the sky. Kike and Raul have left, along with Andrea. Two police officers run toward you. One of them grabs you by the collar and takes you to the patrol car, telling you to get in through the door.

-How old are you, friend?- he asks you.
-I don't know, I think I'm nine\"- you reply, asking yourself how long it has been since you last saw mom.

His memory fills you completely. You curl up in the cushioned seat and shrink against the sides, pressing yourself against them. You can't take it anymore and you start to cry and call her, you call mom, you want to be with her, you want her to wrap you in the blanket one more time, to whisper a song to you, to kiss you on the forehead... you just want mom to hug you one more time.

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\n\nImage property of [AntonioGuzzo](http://www.arteyfotografia.com.ar/176/fotos/205879/)\n\n
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