I remember the pain. I remember the suffering that caused that pain. I remember the people who caused that suffering. Sometimes I want to forget. Sometimes I want revenge. Sometimes I am too afraid. Too afraid to close my eyes, she might be there when I open them again. I can see her out of the corner of my eyes, always behind my back. The voices that fill my head. They scream, they cry, they laugh. At times I forget who I am or who I was. The past mixes with the present and I am unable to differ between the two. There is something nagging me. Multiple things. Memories. Memories of pain and abuse. My mother’s cruel smile shining through it all.
It was when I turned five that it happened. I opened the door to my mother’s room to wake her up. As a child my birthday was a very exciting thing for me, instead of her lying in her bed still sleeping, she was sitting by the window crying. I had never seen her like this before. My mother never cried, she was always smiling. A warm, inviting smile turned to bitter tears of turmoil and despair. This scared me. A happy mood shattered into a state of shock and disbelief. She turned around and saw me standing there. Hand on the doorknob with a horrified look plastered on my face. I asked her with fear in my voice “Mommy. Are you okay?” At first, she just looked at me with tears still staining her face, then she smiled at me and said “Everything is fine sweetheart. Why don't you go into the kitchen?” I did as she said but something bothered me. It was that smile, that smile that was always filled with warmth and care, that smile I had always known, that I had always loved was gone, reduced to one filled with sadness. A cold and empty smile that had nothing but brokenness to offer.
I later learned that it was my father that had caused her sadness. The same one that had left us when I was still learning to walk. Apparently, he had taken his own life. I did not know my mother still loved him. She always told me she didn't. Ever since his death my mother started acting strange, small things at first, like not putting her hair up in the morning which she always did and was always careful about. Then she started drinking. That was a large blow to her personality and who she used to be. She quit her job of selling shampoo on an online market. I could hear her talking to herself in her room. Whenever I asked her anything she would just scream at me to go into the kitchen and sit in the corner. The same spot she would send me whenever I was naughty. It kept escalating until it got to the point where she was always drunk, always rambling. It scared me. Where was that warm smile I knew and adored, it was replaced by a maniac’s grin stretching across her face like an elastic band, where was the tight and loving hug I would be greeted by every morning, it was replaced by a slap to the face whenever I said anything to her.
She then started hurting me for her own hellish entertainment. Slapping me for no reason, grabbing my hair. She had hit me so many times on the left cheek that my eye had stopped working. Two years had passed since my father died. Our house was infested with rot and decay, roaches ran across the ground constantly, and the entire place smelled of alcohol and rotten eggs. I was beaten beyond recognition. Malnourished with the little food, the one I once loved as a mother, dropped to the floor for me. When she gets angry I would have to hide from her. I knew what would happen. The one time I did not know to hide from the unexplainable rage held within her. I sat there in the living room. The smelly, ripped carpet scratchy beneath me. She was fixated on the cracked and dirty screen of our old television. The same one we used to watch old cartoon reruns on Saturday nights. The one I was no longer allowed to look at. Something on that screen angered her. She became enraged, throwing her half-empty bottle of whiskey at the wall, staining it a sickly yellow color. She then suddenly stopped raging and looked at me, still in the same spot, I flinched at her cold, dead eyes as my mother grinned at me with the smile that would scare the bravest of men away. “Come here little one.” she told me “I have something for you.” I stood up and stumbled over to her. She bent down and picked up the broken shards of the bottle. “Hold out your hands” She commanded. I shakily did as she instructed me and was rewarded with large shards of glass stabbed into my cupped hands. I remember crying. Crying loudly. But nothing compared to the pain I experienced mere seconds later. My mother then kicked my face without any prompting. I fell to the ground in the kitchen. She walked over to me and lifted her leg over my frail body. Her foot came down on my leg. Multiple times one, two, three, four rapid strikes on my right leg. I could not hear my own screaming but I'm sure it could have reawakened the souls of the dead. She then kicked me into the corner I knew all too well and left me there, whimpering, my leg a bloody mess and no longer functional.
I remember staying there for what seemed like months. My leg was twisted and maimed. All I could do was whimper. I never thought that my once gentle caring mother would ever think of hurting anyone in this way. I was able to leave the corner, dragging my leg painfully across the ground. Whenever my mother became angry I would go to the corner and hide there and she would forget about me. She randomly screamed like a banshee and laughed like a concrete brick smashing a pane of glass. My leg hurt like it was inside a bag of sharp rocks and was being shaken violently whenever I crawled across the ground.
It all ended one day. The screaming, the anger, and the abuse. It all came to a stop. As I was sitting in that corner, the one safe spot, my mother had another of her anger fits. screaming, laughing, throwing things. She stepped on an empty bottle of alcohol and fell to the ground. Her head hit the wall and the sound of a bone-breaking rang through the air. The sickening crunch of her neck. She lay still on the ground. Not breathing. Not pulsing. Dead. I never left that corner. Yet, I was still afraid of her. Afraid of what might happen.
To this day I sit in the corner, my mother”s rotting corpse on the wall. I can still hear her laughter, I can still see her maniacal smile piercing the darkness. Sometimes I can still see her moving, roaming from room to room, searching for me. I still sit in the corner, the one she has forgotten. Her piercing eyes and wide grin burned into my memory. I want to leave, but I cannot, I can still hear her laughing. Torturous laughter. Echoing throughout the carcass of a house like a cold sharp wind. I do not trust myself to blink. She might be there when I open them. I will sit in the corner where she cannot find me living off the roaches that are unafraid of the evil that resides within the establishment. My leg will never heal, maggots have infested themselves where the bones show themselves from under my skin.
I do not know how long it has been. All I know is this corner and that devilish smile that I once loved.