Brain Splinters

**This short story received an Honorable Mention in the 2004 Judith Stark Creative Writing Contest.



Brain Splinters

Mommy always had a nasal tone to her voice, but after years of a two-pack-a-day menthol habit, it's become raspy and a bit deep. Her clothes are a hodgepodge of thrift store and hand me down items. Her sneakers cry to be put out of their misery, and her socks have air conditioning. Time has reduced her once breezy gait to a hunched shuffle. Decades of sickness and poor self-care has aged a vibrant young woman immeasurably beyond her forty-seven years. At one time, she had a cute face and body built like a brick shithouse...or so I'm told. Her hair, once thick and wavy, is now thin, brittle, and completely gray.

It wasn't always this way. Friends have come and gone with the passing of seasons. Many didn't have her best interests at heart, and those that did grew tired of the incessant psychotic episodes. My aunt once told me that my mother has never been the same since the first nervous breakdown when she was only sixteen. I've been witness to moments of clarity, where I saw what I imagine to be her true self. A funny, generous woman who loves to dance and play. Such a shame that things turned out this way.

Until recently, through the bad times she would carry a positive attitude and a smile. Now it has become mere memory. She has told me at intervals that having my brother and me was the best thing she ever did. This makes me happy, since most of her life is riddled with regret. Days are lonely and nights are endless in her world. Reminiscing helps her with her hardest days, where she lives in a residential facility, and seems to slip a little further from reality as days become months and years. I visit her now and again, when guilt compels it, but in truth I'd rather not see her like this.

I remember being a little girl, visiting her on the weekends. It's like a dream; one of the best times I can think of. It was as if she was my mother and I was her daughter. Her apartment was cramped, dim, and smoky. It wasn't the type of place you would want to sit down and kick back in. My mother lived there, alone, usually staying up all hours of the night and sleeping during the day. As a child who was accustomed to a regular day/night routine, being there made me feel as if the world was upside-down and backward. I inhaled the thick stench of her Newports, and watched the smoke curl and drift around the room. Sometimes she would blow circles of smoke, which impressed me at the time.

It was nearly 3 a.m., yet I couldn't sleep a wink. I doubt anyone could, with The Kinks' "Paranoia" blaring on the radio. Her eyes bothered me; they had a dark, vacant look about them. She was still so beautiful to me, with her lush dark hair and crooked smile. My brother hadn't been born yet, so I must have been about five years old. She still had a youthful quality uncorrupted by time and sorrow. She made me a glass of warm milk and let me sit with her in the kitchen until it took effect. The fluorescent light above the sink made a low buzzing sound, and the gave the kitchen an eerie glow. I rocked back and forth while she chain smoked, and it was all good. Eventually, my eyes became heavy, so I went to lay down on the sofa bed, and got under the itchy green afghan she had crocheted a few years before. I drifted into dreams to the drone of the air conditioner and my mother tapping her foot to the beat of the song in her head.