My momma was no good... neither was my pop. And neither was my home. I guess I can say I was born a boy of no land. And a son of no one. My momma was no good; no good person, no good woman, not even a good mother: in fact she was so bad at being a mom, that my sister ended up being one for all of us. Becky. My mama’s name was Becky. To me she was beautiful; amazing in a way that always made me feel so small, so fragile. She had this look, this look of coal: solid, sharp, intense, cold. I think that no one ever told her she looked beautiful. That was the problem with her. She grew up in a house that smelled like bad liquor all the time and she had nothing, nothing and nobody. Her mother was a working girl. And her dad used to be so angry that he’d just get home and hit her hard even for the smallest thing. My momma was no good. I guess that was because my nana had no business in reminding her how life could someday turn into something nice. I’m sure that’s the reason why all that beauty I’ve always seen in her got lost to the others along the way.
So, anyway, momma Becky kept on growing up in anger and in silence and she started filling herself with more and more melancholy and gin and drugs and without even realizing it, she turned into this terrible, bad, sour girl who’d eventually got knocked up by three different horrible men without even wanting to be no mother at all. That’s what led to me, little Jake, born on a boat, in the middle of the seas, on the land of no land, stuck in between one big piece of coast and the mouth of American soil. One night I slipped out of my nest into the greasy darkness of that boat’s belly and there my life began: among the vicious smell of gin Becky’s clothes had, the herds of hairy black rats running around the deck and the big waves of the ocean. They made me feel so damn scared, those huge waves… they were so big and powerful and hungry and the boat felt so weak under their watery weight that everyday I started to feel tinier and tinier, till the point where I was just completely frightened and terrified all the time; It almost felt like I could die any minute, even when the sea looked quiet and soft and the black rats were sleepy and tired. That’s pretty much how my childhood went by; drowning in my own fear knowing that the only person who could save me was also the only one I could never reach: momma Becky, the woman who never reassured me, who’d be always too busy drinking and pretending I didn’t exist to hold me or to kiss me or even to tell me that everything would be alright… Here’s the reason why she was no good, absolutely and definitely no good at all. Here’s the reason why at some point of my life I even started hating her to the bone. And here’s also the reason why, after everything bad she’s done, I can’t quite figure out how she can still be so beautiful to me; the most wonderful woman I’ve ever seen. Believe it or not, even though I’ve been so furious with her throughout my entire life, now that I’m standing here in front of this old, bent, dusty box where I know lays that only picture of us as a family I got, I can’t help but feel deep regret: she was no good mother to me, nor to my siblings, but if only once in my life had I told her how beautiful I thought she was, maybe she would have passed with somewhat of a smile on her contracted face.
Ho scritto questo testo in occasione della Florida Weekly Writing Challenge per il Florida Weekly Newspaper. La richiesta era di creare un breve testo ispirato alla foto proposta. Ecco cosa ne è uscito :)
