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Entering the small town opened a vault full of bad memories that had once felt distant. It was almost like seeing a life that wasn’t your own. Everything felt strange and new, but also familiar in the worst way. A pit began to form in the woman’s stomach, the same one that formed when she got the call to return to her hometown. Her friends had encouraged her not to go. It had to be a trick, some lie that would bring her back to the place where she fell apart. She had already made up her mind, though. None of her friends were willing to stop her, even though their concerns were strong. Even her partner wanted to keep her at home, but she decided to make the drive over so she wouldn’t be alone. The woman’s head rested on the window as she looked out. The dark clouds loomed over the car, practically haunting the pair like a ghost trying to scare them away. However, they refused to run from the danger. She was far too old, far past running away from what was old history. The car pulled up against the same white house that was once a prison.
“You don’t have to do this, Lilly.”
The woman lifted her head and looked over to the driver. Her girlfriend’s stern look, usually reserved for when she was pissing her off, was now being used to anchor her.
“You guys keep saying I don’t have to, but I do,” she insisted, “I feel like I do. For the longest time I thought she was dead, but she asked for me to come back and visit her. I have to see her at least; I have to see her being ok.”
Leah frowned, “I know you feel that way, and I’ll support you if this is what you want. I just don’t think you should be looking for closure in her.”
“I’m not,” the woman insisted. “I’ve found closure a long time ago; this is just the epilogue or the fourth movie after the trilogy.”
Leah shook her head and sighed, “Do you want me to go in with you? If things go wrong, I wouldn’t mind going to jail for killing her.”
The woman snorted before catching a glance at herself in the rearview mirror. Her long black hair, which was neatly brushed that morning, was already starting to get messy. Her eyeliner was perfect. Her two-piece black and purple shirt hugged her body. A few years ago, she would have worn something baggy, not skinny jeans and a top like this. A few years ago, she wouldn’t have even wanted to look at herself in the mirror. Today, though, she loved everything about how she looked. She had never felt more confident in herself. She looked over at her worried girlfriend and leaned in to kiss her.
“I’m gonna be fine, I promise.”
“Okay,” she nodded, “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
The woman opened the car door and stepped out. The pit in her stomach only grew stronger and heavier as she approached the door. She took a deep breath to steady her mind and body before knocking. It took a few minutes before the door swung open.
“Hi, Mom,” left her lips for the first time in over a decade.
“Learoy,” the old woman choked out.
That name made the woman cringe. Her mother looked so different since the night she left. She was noticeably older. Wrinkles covered her entire face. She seemed more pale than she did before, but perhaps it was just the weather. Her eyes were gentle and kind, which came off as more disturbing than anything else. The old lady reached out to hug her child before flinching backwards away from her.
“You look different,” she reflected. “It looks good.”
The woman blinked in surprise. She seemed relieved that her mother didn’t go with the hug, instead leading with a compliment before inviting her into the home. The house itself was nearly identical to when she left. The same pictures, the same outdated decor, the same wallpaper that was beginning to rot and slide off the walls. It was an exact snapshot of a life once forgotten. It was almost like stepping into a museum rather than a home.
“How have you been?” the woman asked.
The old lady scoffed, “As well as one can be.”
Her mother led her to the living room. The two sat facing each other. The lady kept looking at her child up and down, observing every new little thing she had done to her body, from every new piercing to strand of hair. The woman was visibly uncomfortable, feeling like a project being analyzed. Finally, the woman broke the silence.
“Why, after everything, did you ask me here?”
The older lady seemed puzzled. “Your father passed away earlier this year, Roy.”
She grimaced at the name. “I know that.”
“Could have fooled me. You didn’t show up.”
“Didn’t know I was invited,” she shrugged.
“It’s your father. Of course you were invited.”
“Mom, I hadn’t seen him since I was, what, ten? That was so long ago. I barely even know him anymore. I don’t know what he did after he left.”
“He remarried,” the lady explained. “He had another boy and a girl. They were twins. The young man is serving in the army as your father did. He was an incredible athlete in school. Quite the handyman too. Nice young man. I enjoyed meeting him. I think he would have liked to meet you too. Your father always hoped you would turn out more like him.”
The woman scowled, “And the daughter?”
“Oh, her,” the lady paused, “I don’t know much about her. She didn’t speak much at the funeral. She’s married, I think.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you invited me here,” the woman spoke.
“I think it does plenty,” the lady recounted. “Learoy, I haven’t seen you since you were nineteen, and you didn’t show up when your father died. I’m old and weak, boy. I asked for you because you definitely weren’t going to come here yourself.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “I didn’t think you would want me here.”
“No!” the lady interrupted, “You just didn’t want to be here. You never want to be around your family. You’re just like your father in that way. You run away and abandon the people who loved and cared for you.”
“Oh, here we go,” the woman muttered.
“Excuse me!” the lady clutched her metaphorical pearls, “Don’t you dare talk back to me like that. After everything I did for you. All of the things I sacrificed over my life, and you assault me and run away for ten years, not even caring if I died or not! Now you’re giving me your damn talk.”
“Oh my god!” The woman raised her voice, “Do you really think I would have left like that if you were such a good mother? What, you think kids who feel loved and supported by their family run away and stop talking to them? I never came back because I hate it here! You treated me like shit my entire life, and now you think I should give you something for that?”
“See? You’re just as hostile as your whore of a father! Always blaming me for everything. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t the perfect mother.”
“I never needed a perfect mother!” the woman yelled. “I just needed a mother that wasn’t drunk off her mind and comparing me to her ex-husband, who she was obsessed with.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“You! You are everything that is wrong with me!”
The woman stood from the couch, towering over her mother. The old lady found herself speechless, glaring daggers into her child.
“When I’m not around you, I actually like myself. I feel happy. But whenever I was with you, I felt suffocated. I was always in Dad’s shadow. I could never be enough to be him, and I was too much like him at the same time. I could never be my own person. Everything I ever did was wrong to you. I’m not your replacement for your failed marriage! I never was! But you treated me like it because you knew I was the only person who would tolerate you, and I did because you’re my mom and I loved you. I was wired to love you since day one, and you used that love against me to torment me and make me feel small.”
“Selfish…” the lady murmured.
“I’m fucking selfish? All you have ever done was think about yourself! You didn’t even call me here because you missed me or wanted to check on me. You never even asked about my life or what I’m doing. You just wanted me to take care of you because you need someone to care for you now that you’re old. You need a retirement plan, not your child. I am not going to spend any more of my life under your thumb because I’ve built something amazing entirely separate from you. I have a job as a delivery woman, I have a girlfriend, and I have a group of friends who treated me better on the first meeting than you did in nearly twenty years. You do not get to walk back into my life and demand my help when you never even got a chance to know me.”
The words fell out of the woman’s mouth like word vomit. Years of resentment, frustration, fear, heartbreak, and grief spilled out of her like a flood. She huffed, not realizing how exhausted she had been with just a few minutes with her mother. The old lady, still sitting on the couch, looked shocked at her child.
“Woman?” was all that came out of her. “You? A fucking woman? You don’t know the first thing about being a woman. You don’t know how hard being a woman is. You’ve never gone a day struggling as a woman. You think you can put on some cheap makeup and shoot yourself up with some drugs and that makes you a woman? You’re a fucking embarrassment, Learoy. You and that stupid gay little costume. You want to be oppressed so bad that you make up this entire story about how terrible your life was. You are the only reason your life is bad. You’re a broken little man. A mentally ill little psycho. I should have called the police and had you locked up. Throw you in jail with a bunch of other disgusting men who’d beat you and rape you for fun. Maybe then you’d understand what it’s like to be a woman. Being a plaything for some filthy man. I gotta beat some sense into you for coming in here looking like some slut off the street. Everyone was right about you nasty people. You should be murdered and made an example of.”
The lady continued to go off on her bigoted tirade, mocking the woman for every little thing that had ever been wrong with her. It left her shaken, but not in the way she ever expected. This lady, her mother, who would once make her break down into tears over her cruelty, who gave her panic attacks whenever she got home from work, who she cried over the night she ran away thinking she had just killed her, was now a frail, delusional creation lecturing her over everything that was wrong with her, unable to see the flaws within herself or take any sort of criticism. She was living in this house by herself, barely getting by due to being supposedly ill, still living in the past where she was a wife with a son. This couldn’t be the same woman who made her life a living hell. It was as if everything that made her so intimidating had disappeared.
The woman was snapped out of her train of thought by her mother’s loud coughing. She tried to continue her insulting rant, but was unable to due to her lungs seemingly giving out on her. It was like a cat struggling to cough up a hairball. The wheezing echoed throughout the house. The woman could see tears in her mother's eyes. The pain and energy it was taking to fight whatever illness was taking her. Looking closely, she noticed some sort of dirty slime coming out of her mother’s throat. Some sort of mixture between mucus and blood. The entire experience was vile, making the woman’s stomach twist just by watching. Eventually, the lady’s wheezing slowed. The old woman didn’t continue her tirade. It was almost like she was ashamed to continue after such a display of weakness. She just sat on the couch, pouting like a child. The woman looked down at the lady with pity in her eyes.
“I was so worried about you when I pushed you. I would spend nights terrified that I killed you. For years, I was too scared to find out what happened to you. I never wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry I shoved you. I’m glad you survived.”
The woman bent down to her mother’s level and scooped her into a warm embrace. She could smell the alcohol and cigarette ash on her mother’s clothes. They stung her nose. It just made her hug the woman tighter. The lady didn’t move. She just stayed still as her daughter held her close. The woman parted from her mother, backing up. The lady seemed to be stuck in a perpetual shock, her mouth open like a fish. The woman turned around, walking towards the front door. She turned around and surveyed the house one final time. Her mother was still sitting on the couch staring back at her.
“Lilly,” she said before closing the door, “My name is Lilly.”