No Mama!" the teary-eyed seven-year-old boy cries
as his mother's closed fist jets through the air towards him. "No!"
Her rock-hard fist makes contact with his tiny fragile face and he crashes
backward into the wall.
"I'm so sick of you," She yells at the half dazed seven-year-old little child lying on the floor. "I'm so tired of having to watch you all the time because you can't see. Why did you have to be born blind? What did I do to deserve this?"
She walks over to him. Sensing her approach, he instinctively raises his little hands to defend against another unseen crushing blow. With desperation in his frightened little voice, her child pleads, "But I can see, Mama, just not as good as everybody else, I really can."
His words make her stop, unclench her fists, and think about what she is doing. She looks down at her baby boy and sees fear, the fear she's forced upon him, reflected in his innocent blameless face. She kneels down, gently pulls him up towards her, and holds him. They cry together. She says, sobbing, "I know you can see a little but it's not enough. You keep bumping into things, hurting yourself, and breaking stuff. I get so tired. Sometimes I wish you had never been born. At least then you wouldn't suffer so and I wouldn't have to see you suffer."
The young boy says, pulling back from her but still crying, "But Mama, I'm not suffering. My eyes don't hurt unless you hit me. I'm sorry I knocked over the coffee table again. I won't do it anymore."
"Ok," his mother says, seating herself at the breakfast table, "everybody dig in."
He, his mother, his ten year old brother, his mother's two sisters, and his four cousins are sitting at a dark brown mahogany table in the middle of a rather small cozy kitchen with a low ceiling. He and his five junior contemporaries are wearing their various cartoon superhero pajamas and the three women are wearing plain simple Midwestern dresses.
His mother's older sister, whom he thinks of as big aunt because of her huge soft mushy tummy, asks, "Who wants some eggs?" "I do," he says eagerly lifting his empty plate towards the sound of her voice.
"Put that plate down boy," his mother commands impatiently, "the last thing I need is to have to clean up something you knock over." His cousins giggle.
He immediately lowers his plate back to the table with both his appetite and his enthusiasm for the meal and his relatives, respectively, slowly draining away.
His mother's younger sister, whom he thinks of as snooty aunt because of her incessant bragging about her husband, her two little girls, her in-laws, her neighborhood, her house, her furniture, her yard, her gardener, her car, her jewelry, her clothes, her weight, her body, her hair, her skin complexion, her cooking, her cookware, her friends, her doctors, her regularity, and anything else she can lay claim to says to him, "You just wait. We'll get to you. Just sit there and be still."
The rectangular country style kitchen is bathed in morning sunlight let in by two big windows on either side of the table. At one end stands an old brown vintage refrigerator accompanied by a large single sink. At the other end of the room stands a much-used dark green gas stove with four burners beside a tall glass paneled china cabinet. The room is filled with the comforting aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
Big aunt begins ladling out heaping mounds of hot scrambled eggs to his cousins who, to both his and his brother's disappointment, are all girls.
One of his cousins says, "Can someone pass the bacon?"
The plate of bacon begins its slow journey around the table. As it moves from person to person, its delicious cargo is reduced by two and three pieces at a time. As it approaches him, he raises his uncertain little hand to take a piece but his mother, seeing this, raises the plate over him and passes it to his brother, instead.
His mother says to both of his aunts, "He's always trying to do things he can't see well enough to do and he's always knocking things over."
His youngest cousin, who is four years old, says to her mother, "That's because he's blinder than a bat, right Mommy?"
Everyone, including the adults, laughs. Well, not everyone; the embarrassed hurt little seven-year - old boy doesn't laugh; no, he doesn't laugh at all.
Hello God. I am sorry for not talking to you lately but I've been so sad. As I guess you already know, I made Mama mad today when I knocked over a plant in the living room. I didn't mean to do it. She keeps it so dark in there and she's always moving things around. I try to remember where everything is but sometimes I forget when I'm running. I can see, though, I really can. I just can't see as well as my brother and everybody else.
Please forgive me for making Mama mad today. Forgive her for hitting me. She doesn't mean to be so mean; she's just mad at me for being blind. But, I'm not really blind I can see, just not as good as, well, you know.
I've been sad God because lately some of the kids in the neighborhood have been picking on me. You know, they throw rocks at me and hit me in the head and then they run just far enough away so I can't see them. It's not fair, God; it's so not fair. Why can't I see like everybody else, Lord? They say in church that you love everyone but if that's true then why do you not let me see good? Don't you love me like you love everyone else?
My brother runs away with them and when I ask him to tell me who threw the rocks, he won't tell me.
I know it's wrong to hate people but, sometimes, I really hate my mother and my brother. She likes him better than me. She tells me that all the time. If I could see better, I would run away from this place.
She says it's my fault that my father left her. She says that he blames her for giving birth to a blind mutant. What's a blind mutant, Lord? Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, I guess I'm it. She says that I ruined her life and the life of my brother. Please forgive me for doing that, Lord, please. I didn't mean to be born blind.
I wish my grandmother was still here. Why did you take her away? Is she happy now? If you don't understand everything I've said, just ask her to explain it to you. She really understands me. She knows I can see but just not as well as everybody else. Tell her I said "hey."
Tomorrow, my aunts and my cousins are coming to visit for a couple of days. I don't like it when they're here. Everybody always treats me like I'm stupid just because I can't see well. I'll be glad when they leave.
I love you Lord. Goodnight. Amen.
"There," his mother says, setting his plate of bacon and eggs down in front of him. "Now try not to make a mess." He picks up his fork and knife and slowly begins to eat his breakfast.
"Anyway," snooty aunt says to his mother while putting a fork full of country fare in her mouth, "that's what happens when you marry a good hardworking educated man like I did."
His mother lowers her head in shame.
"It's not her fault," big aunt chimes in, "she always did make dumb choices and pick losers even when we were kids, remember?"
The children are all eating now and, other than the voice of the current speaker, there are only the sounds of utensils scraping against thick heavy long-used cream-colored plates.
"Yeah," snooty aunt replies. She adds, "Remember that time when she tried to cheat on that reading test in school? She copied the answers from the dumbest girl in class."
His four cousins and his brother laugh.
His four-year-old cousin asks innocently, "Mommy, when are we going to the zoo so I can see what a black sheep looks like?"
Her mother, big aunt, looks at her sharply and snaps, "Be quiet."
"But Mommy," the little one says, confused, "you said she's the black sheep of the family, didn't you?"
Six junior size hands reach out and pick up six jelly jars full of orange juice and tip them back towards six open and waiting junior size mouths.
After returning his glass to the table his brother, sitting on his left says, "Hey, where's the toast?"
The rest of the children echo his question by saying, in unison, "Hey yeah."
His mother, seizing the opportunity to take herself off the path of her sisters' little stroll down memory lane, quickly stands and walks over to where the bread is setting and begins depositing slices in to the toaster. Looking back at her older son she says, "Get up and get the jelly out of the refrigerator." His brother complies.
Returning to the breakfast table, his mother sets a plate of hot toast beside two jars of jelly. Sitting back down next to him she says, "Who wants some strawberry jelly on their toast?" It's my favorite."
Big aunt answers, "I'll take the grape. I can't stand that strawberry stuff you buy." His four cousins declare, in a rather humorous staccato, "Me too."
Snooty aunt says to his mother, "You never did have good taste in anything. Do you really like that strawberry stuff? Here, let me do it." She takes the knife his mother was about to use and opens the jar containing the grape jelly and begins spreading it onto a slice of toast.
He can feel his mother's embarrassment and uneasiness returning yet again. He can tell that she wants to say something in her own defense but, as always, when dealing with her two siblings, she does not.
Snooty aunt looks at his brother and says, "Ok, it's your turn, my one and only handsome young nephew. Which one do you want, the strawberry or the grape?"
His brother responds without any hesitation whatsoever, "The grape please. I don't like the strawberry either."
Finally, after taking care of everyone else first, she looks at him and says with an air of triumph over his beleaguered mother, "Ok, let's see which one our little blind man will choose. Which one would you like? Now there are two jars of jelly on the table in front of you. One jar is strawberry jelly and the other is grape jelly. So, which one will it be?"
Now he, like everyone else at the table, absolutely hates strawberry jelly. He, like everyone else at the table, only wants grape jelly. Unlike anyone else at the table, however, he, this belittled and berated and emotionally ignored and completely unwanted precious seven-year-old visually impaired child can feel his mother's pain; and in that moment, that one incredible breakfast moment, feels sorry for her and love for her.
After a short pause he says with absolute confidence, "I want the strawberry jelly. I can't stand that grape stuff. It's disgusting. Once, it even made me sick at my tummy. My mom knows what's best and she and I always eat the best and the best is strawberry not grape."
Snooty aunt's mouth falls open.
His mother, for the first time since his birth, reaches over and takes his hand and doesn't let go.
No one ever knew what happened in that moment, that breakfast moment, as he came to think of it many years later; no one except, of course, he and his mother.
Even now, when he sits in his big soft leather executive chair located at the headquarters of the company he built, he finds himself thinking about it from time-to-time. No matter how many years go by, he remembers that breakfast moment and asks himself why, after all the mean and cruel things she'd done to him when he'd needed her the most, he had sided with her.
"Because that's the way love goes," he says in a soft whisper.
"Sir?" his west coast division executive secretary asks as she guides him through a dimly lighted five star hotel lobby, on the way to a meeting with his board of directors. "What did you say?"
"Oh nothing," he says with a sigh, "I was just thinking about something that happened many years ago, from my youth."
The End