Prologue
My mom and I were such a strange family. Dad had cheated on her when I was ten, and since the family had split up, we'd been estranged from each other. I didn't talk to dad, of course. Not because my mom didn't want me to. She encouraged it if I wanted to talk to him. But he was too much of a pig for me to really relate to him. I like men who didn't abandon their families. Yet, at some points in time, I could understand his side. My mom was a hard person to live with. Or get along with. But she was my mom, and I loved her even so. We were both alone, since our family was spread out all over the states. We had family in Michigan, Texas, California, and pretty much everywhere. No one really ever organized a gathering of the family for holidays, since it would take too long to fly all of us to wherever the meeting would be. Of course, I'm talking about my mom's side of the family. We just never kept in touch with dad's.
I was forty-three and still living with my mother. People talked about my lack of a love life. But I'd never really found a man or woman that I liked and wanted to spend my life with. At this point, I also wondered if my mom could handle living on her own. She had retired at sixty one, and we lived comfortably. I worked at Intel in one of their clean rooms. Had been there for quite a long time. She had worked as a doctor at an acupuncture clinic for fifty years. She had me at twenty, and by then she had already been established at her practice. We were okay when it came to our living situation. We lived in Portland Oregon, in the outskirts of town.
Our house was her mother's. It was an older house that we'd added on to as time went by. It had a laundry room, a living room, and three bedrooms. One bedroom was in the laundry room, and the other two were in the kitchen. My mom's room was next to the bathroom down one hall off the kitchen, and mine was right next to the laundry room. The den was right next to her room. Of course, we never used the den. It just had furniture for anyone who came over, but mostly sat gathering dust. We hardly had guests. The den was where the front door was, although we entered through the side door in the laundry room.
My mom is such a hard person to live with. She's a real bitch at the best of times, and a psychotic mess at worst. With her, I never knew what I was going to do wrong next. What wrong thing I was going to say. If I was going to make her cry or what. Now that she retired she spent most of her time in her room sleeping and watching TV. We had two cats, and she was very diligent at taking care of them. But she didn't much like to do anything else. I wondered if she was depressed or somehow just had a different way of personality. She was never physically abusive to me, but I can't remember the last time she hugged me either. A lot of our talks ended in arguments as she always perceived I did something wrong or said something offensive against her. I was beginning to wonder if she was a narcissist. But I couldn't think those thoughts about my mom.
And then in October, I came home from work to something very much a surprise to me. I quietly entered through the laundry room, and Boo, one of our grey cats, came running in with me before the door shut. She slapped me across my legs with her tail as she ran past. I gently closed the door and locked it. Then, I walked into the kitchen, and heard moaning coming from my mom's room. She was making loud erotic sounds that said she was having a very intense moment. I'd never heard her like that before. In fact, I never even once saw her and dad kiss when they were together. But she apparently was human enough to have sexual desires.
"Oh yeah! That feels so fucking good!" she moaned as she continued.
I had never once heard her cuss before. I realized then that my vagina was on fire. I could feel moisture gathering in my crotch, and I had to make some kind of noise to signal I was there. But what if she flew off the handle?
I grabbed the door and swung it shut behind me. "Food for kitties!" I said loudly as I stomped to the dining room table and put down my lunch and brief case. "Kitties need food!"
"Hi, Becky." My mom said from the bedroom as I began to take the cat food out and prepare it.
"Hi mom." I said smiling. "You eat lunch?" I asked hoping she had.
"No. I didn't get hungry. What's for dinner?"
She was the retired one. She was the one home all damn day. And I was supposed to make dinner? I seriously didn't know why I just didn't leave.
"I'm making burgers." I said calmly.
"Okay. Thanks." She said as I heard her TV turn back on. It was the big bang theory. She liked that kind of stuff.
I had to cook dinner, feed the cats, and do the rest of the household chores while my mom just lounged around. I swear she was mentally unstable somehow. I don't know if it was retirement or what. She had gone through a phase where she used narcotics and we had to rehabilitate her. I swear now she was drinking. I saw a lot of wine bottles go out with the recycling. Sometimes, I went into her room while she was in the shower, and I saw all these pills for pain that she really didn't need. She claimed her knee was bothering her since she had a knee replacement, but I had older friends who had knee replacement. And they had healed in no time. So I really questioned my mother's mental stability. She was cranky most of the time, and she smoked. I seriously wondered why I just didn't move out of here. I had little friends, but I could afford to stay on my own. It's not like I was poor. Have my mom do her chores once in a while.
She walks around with a cane, and uses a bench in the shower to make it easier. But once I actually saw her walking around without a cane when she thought I wasn't looking. I never confronted her about it. She had gone through a lot of doctors because they all refused to fill her prescriptions at one point or another for medicine. She would come home and be absolutely angry that they wouldn't let her have what she wanted. I questioned the state of my mother.
Thanksgiving
Rebecca had the whole week off for this holiday. We didn't really invite anyone and we didn't really celebrate big. It was usually just the two of us. She would ask to help with the turkey and all that stuff, but I'd never let her. If I wanted something done a certain way, I had to do it myself. And holiday dinners were no time to mess around. I needed everything to be just right. Of course, that didn't mean I liked getting up and doing things. I hated it. And today was going to be a very bad day. Usually she asks the night before if I'm going to want any help. This year, she didn't. I couldn't stop thinking about that. I really truly tried to get it out of my mind, but I couldn't. Was she going somewhere else? Had she given up on trying to help? Was she taking advantage of me? I didn't know. I didn't know how to find out. Every time we talked, it ended in a fight. She just was the sort of daughter that could never say the right thing. She was self-centered, and never thought about me. I didn't ask for much. Just a daughter who loved me for who I was. I was a very nice person. I had lots of friends. I didn't understand why she didn't love me.
"Hey, mom." She said at four in the morning as I was getting ready to put the turkey in the oven.
"Rebecca." I said bitterly.
"Okay." She said as she walked past me and into the bathroom.
"Don't look at me that way, young lady!" I shouted bitterly. "I am not an asshole!"
"Mom, come on." She said as she closed the door.
I put the turkey in the oven, set the timer, and started to head back to my room. I had to confront her.
"You didn't ask me if you could help me." I said standing at the door as she peed.
"Mom, you never let me help." She said bitterly. "I was saving us the trouble of you rejecting me, and me feeling like I let you down. Of course, I'd help if you needed me to. I am up."
Only because I was sure to make extra noise this year. Not because she wanted to be up.
"No. I'll let you sleep. I know how important it is for you to get sleep. After all, living with me is such a demanding task!" I said bitterly as I walked into my room and slammed the door.
She wasn't leaving me! She wasn't feeling taken advantage of! And more importantly, she wasn't going to move somewhere else! I was so happy. I put on the TV and laid back down. I was so happy. And there was going to be turkey.
The day went by very slowly. I hated this day. I wanted it to go by faster so I could go back to not doing anything. I hated walking around and doing stuff. I'd rather be in my room, just being numb to the world. After my knee replacement, I'd been trying to find a way to get rid of all this pain I had. None of the therapists were qualified to help me. They all thought I was lying, or addicted to pills, or something of the sort. Well, I wasn't. I was in pain, and I was going to find a way to get rid of it. My quality of life had to improve. One way or another.
