My mama stopped living long before she died.
It started back in 1993 when my daddy left us for no good reason. My mama simply said he found hisself a better life somewhere else. I knew she meant to add, “… that didn’t involve us, “but she never actually said that part out loud.
She worked long hours as a registered nurse at Touro (tur-ro). I was only 13, and I often had to manage for myself with ramen noodles, but dat’s fine.
It was the rare occasion that my mama and I’d go to City Park, or a museum, or the zoo. Even as a teenager I’d find these places magical, but my mama always seemed to be far away in her mind, and just getting up seemed like a chore sometimes. By 1995, we pretty much stopped going anywhere.
Most every day of my teenage years was about the same: I’d go to school, come home, make my ramen, sit in front of the television and watch cartoons meant for someone nearly half my age, take a nap, do my homework, read something ‘til mama got home—usually early early in the mornin’, and watch her sprawl out on the couch, turn the TV on, and usually fall asleep within five minutes.
We lived in a crusty old shotgun on South Genois (gen-oyce). It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, but it wasn’t a good one either. I remember once seeing on the news someone got shot on D’Hemecourt (dee hemmy court), just a block away from our place. But that don’t bother me. You can’t be bothered by stuff like that. Shit happens anywhere you go.
By 1998, I graduated high school. I decided I didn't want to go to college. At first my mama and I argued about it. She said that I'd never make something of myself. I just didn't feel college was really necessary. I wanted to be a writer. I had compiled a bunch of short stories I had done in high school, and I had even got a few published. I was part of the literary club in school, and I felt like I could do this. We finally agreed that I could have a year to see how far I could go on my own, and if I managed to not be able to do it myself, then I had to go to college.
I moved into a shitty Uptown apartment with a friend from school named Jeremy Gautier (go-shay), and I got a job as a stock clerk at Langenstein’s grocery on Arabella. It’s a small, overpriced grocery store mostly patronized by rich elderly white folk who been comin’ there since 1922—or at least who looked old enough to have been. They were all set in their ways, always getting the same things, always acting like they’s the only customer in the store, always expecting us to stop what we doin’ and bring their groceries to their cars where if we were lucky we’d be given a shiny nickel.
I figured I could save up money working there, and then maybe I could hire myself a literary agent. I was hell bent on this writing thing. Unfortunately, I didn't know just how much life would get in the way. I wrote some poems here and there, but that's about it. I tried here and there to write a story, but every time I'd get lost in my own mind, unable to focus and create something new.
Like a good son, I’d make sure to visit my mama on my days off, usually bringing her a gift of some sort of meat that’d they’d give me at a discount because it’d expire soon. One Sunday I was frying up some boudin (boo-dan) on her old gas stove when I heard from the other room a loud sigh. I went to go check on her. The TV was blaring the WWL news, and Hoda Kotb was telling about how some little girl was trying to start a recycling program at her school. But it wasn’t that story that was makin’ my mama sigh. Though she looked in the direction of the TV, her stare was empty. That sigh was her soul leaving her body.
She leaned back in the ratty old couch which has been in the family since 1985. Its cushions shifted a bit under her weight. Right before me she turned into an old woman. Lines were sprouted all around her eyes, which were now sunken deep into their sockets. Her skin looked a bit loose and translucent, and it was a shade paler than normal. She kicked off her white clogs, they made a loud klompen noise when they met the floor. Her body seemed to move in slow motion, and her breathing seemed to take so much effort.
“Mama, you ‘right?”
Her face transforms into a smiling mask, “Yeah baby, I’m good. I got some Zatarain’s in the pantry. Why don’t you fix that up with your sausage?”
“Yes ma’am,” I say quietly as I slide back into the kitchen.
From that day on, she acted like she was plagued with some debilitating disease. Maybe she was. Maybe she had a cancer of living.
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