FOURTEEN BY ISSA MUDASHIRU

I was fourteen when my mother and I finally talked about Rex. Well, that was his name, until a pair of motherly eyes from the rearview window suggested otherwise. Judging by her gaze, my six-year old self figured a compromise would have to do. Mere seconds of agonizing deliberation between my pleading arguments and my mother’s calm, authoritarian “no’s” resulted in Hammy, a nickname short for the hamster he was. I remember having faith that he would last forever. The silence emergent between our then car’s engine shutting off and my mom’s door clicking open to our third home that year left enough time for young me to whisper a short prayer. Eyes shut with arms hugging the bars of his metal cage, I prayed that Hammy would fall in love with me as I had already with him. But he didn’t. He never seemed to like me, nor did he last. Our morning car rides to kindergarten often began with a contagious yawn originating from my mother and her occasional recounting of a late-night hamster escapade. For instance, one night my mother woke up to Hammy’s perpetual clawing at the unfurnished master bedroom walls the three of us shared, and on another, she’d venture downstairs at the crack of dawn to meet my companion leaping from marble countertop to 10-foot dining table of the desolate mansion serving a family of two. I remember the way she’d look at me through that rearview window when she’d tell me these things. Her glistening gaze, concerned about everything regarding her son’s health, asked me to remain positive. My happiness was her priority. Mom always tried to take delicate care of my childhood oblivion. Our life’s circumstances, she believed, had no place in my youthful cognizance. She and my father divorced a few months prior, and in the months following, we left the one-bedroom affordable housing unit with him and squatted in empty mansions, the doors of which my mother had to beg her friend that worked in real estate to graciously open for us. She was drowning in stress; the type of stress one wipes from their eyes moments before sporting a pasty smile when picking up their child from school each day, or the type that destroys knees driven into hardwood floors, floors absorbing the dejected cries of a mother calling out to God hours before the light of morning or her young child showed face in the living room. I was living a dream, an extended vacation, oblivious to all the hardship my mother endured and concealed. I hadn’t even sensed she was upset when I crawled into the back seat after one of my nightly swim practices; the breaking of her usually expressive countenance was a sight I had yet to see. “Issa,” she said, voice soft yet unquivering, using the rearview window to examine my cold, damp body as I entered the vehicle. My door shut, then a pause followed, compelling me to return her tearful, red-eyed gaze from the car’s rear. Finally turning towards me, still as can be, provoking my restful visage into one of confusion, she revealed that our current home had been burgled; thieves took her jewelry, her laptop, and strangely, my hamster as well. It was on that ride home that my childhood oblivion collided with reality. I witnessed my mother cry for the first time. It was a soft cry, one with its shudders and gasps but suppressed to avoid frightening the already wide-eyed boy in the back seat. It wasn’t until later did I put two and two together and realize that my mother needed Hammy more than I did. My happiness was her priority. And hers became mine. Hearing the full story pained me. I gained perspective, and for weeks, my heart and soul felt engulfed by anguish. At fourteen, I made a silent vow: to never let that powerful single-mother love be spent in vain. Every hour, rather every minute, I spend within the elegant brick edifices of my private school, on stage executing hours of dedicated violin practice, on the soccer pitch piecing passes together from defense, and in the front seat sharing yawns with my mother between morning conversation, I cherish. Because everything I do for myself, I do for her. I do it for those tender, loving eyes smiling back at me from the rearview window.

Mountain Side PAINTING BY JEFF DUONG