Page 58 of There is No Devil

I walk over to the laptop, intending to close the screen.

Right as my fingers make contact, I hear the soft chime of another email arriving.

Usually, my mother’s emails are shunted over to a folder where I don’t have to see them. Because that folder is already open, I’m hit with her name and the heading:Your Mother’s Day Card.

I stare, confused, forced to parse that sentence.

I obviously do not receive Mother’s Day cards myself, and I certainly haven’t sent one to her.

My index finger moves without my consent, floating over to the trackpad and clicking once.

The email leaps up before my eyes.

For once, there’s no rambling diatribe.

Just an image, which appears to be an open card, scanned and copied.

I recognize the childish handwriting:

Happy Mothers Day Mommy

I love you so so so so so so so much. I made you cinnimin tost.

Im sorry I make so many misstaks. Your the best mom. Im not very good. I will try so hard. I will be beter.

I love you. I hope you never leeve. Please dont leeve even if Im bad. I wont be bad.

You are so pritty. I want to be pritty like you.

I love you Mommy. I love you.

Mara

Each word is a slap across my cheek. I can hear my own voice, my own thoughts, immature and desperate, crying in my ear:

I love you, Mommy, I love you.

I’m sorry.

Please don’t leave.

I won’t be bad.

Even my name signed at the bottom makes my stomach clench, the bile rising in my throat.

Little Mara. Desperate, pathetic, begging.

Every word of it is true—I wrote it. I felt it, at the time.

My deepest fear was that she would leave like my father did. She used to threaten me with it when I fucked up. When I forgot something or broke something of hers.

Later, it was me who wanted to leave. Who dreamed of doing it.

She’s throwing it in my face, the intense connection I had to her. The love to which I clung no matter what she said to me, no matter what she did. It took years longer for that love to wither and die. Even now, some perverse remnant endures, lodged deep in my guts.

I still think about her. I still yearn for what I wanted her to be.

I hate that about myself.

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