My Mama Told Me When I Was Young Novels & Stories

"Don’t you?" Nova’s eyes flick to his, then back to the horizon. "I know a story. I don’t know if it’s true." "Tell me." She sighs, stretching her legs out. "My mom told me when I was little. She grew up here, remember? Said the land remembers every wound it’s ever been given." "What does that mean?"

I don't even remember my so-called mother, because she never came back home or inquired about me after she left. The moment I learned to distinguish between right and wrong, my grandma took every opportunity she got to tell me how my mother did not want me and how she wished my mother had taken me with her because I was a burden to her. As little as I was, I don't think I deserved to know all that shit, but it became like a ballad to me, a lullaby I had to hear every single day.

Mom and I love to cook, experiment, and mix spices. "Good morning! How's your first night back home?" Mom smiled while busy. I retaliated and then approached her. It's just an inch away from her. "Is there something wrong?!" She asked when suddenly I cuddled her. I missed her so much. When I was young, I told her all my problems and troubles. "Did someone hurt my daughter? Tell Mom I'll teach him a lesson he will never forget.." I smiled at what she said and then wiped away my tears.

Could you maybe put an end to that nonsense and tell me your story? Daddy, I was reared by a woman I affectionately referred to as her grandmother. At the national mall, she sells veggies. Before she died, my grandmother told me that my mother's name was Teacher Paulina. She was at a village named Palm Wine Village in the countryside. I hadn't seen my mother in a long time.

Dad once told me and it made total sense to a fifteen year old me after watching some action movie with dad. "My first time holding a gun, I was pregnant with you. I had just known about the mafia and I was terrified. Your father and you gave me strength. I would die protecting my family." My mother told me when I had just turned eighteen over a glass of chocolate mild we had every midnight.

“When I was younger, I heard you telling Mama that you were going to eat that pussy once we left, and since then I’ve been terrified for my poor little pussycat.” Yep, she just did.

(Like you, I think. "Ojalá la hubiera conocido mejor," ( I wish I'd known her better,) I said quietly. "Solo tenía cuatro años cuando ella murió. Tengo recuerdos, pero son... fragmentos. Sentimientos más que hechos". (I was only four when she died. I have memories, but they're... fragments. Feelings more than facts.) "Then I will tell you everything," grandma said firmly. "Every story. Every moment. You will know your mother through my eyes, sí?"

He disclosed the shocking news to me. "What!" I shouted into the phone but dad already hung up. “Shit!” I threw the phone to the back seat. I reduced my velocity on the highway as I started to think about the whole new development; where could Mammy Julianna be? Mammy Julianna is the eldest in the family, she use to be my godmother before I traveled out of the states to pursue my education at the age of 9 years. I had an accident with nearly claimed my life and I was in a coma for two years, and after I woke from the long sleep that was when I learned from the states that my parent was dead!

I sighed deeply. “What? I didn’t say anything. I just think that whatever they had you do has now come back to bite you.” My mom wasn’t one to mince words much. She always told us the brutal truth. It was the one thing you could always depend on. It sometimes cut deep, but you could always depend on my mom to tell you the full truth.

Paloma Williams. "I love you," mom had told me when I was six. "And because I love you, our love will never let us be apart." I'd held on to those words, those few glimpses of happiness that I'd gotten from what was otherwise a trying childhood, a time before he'd upped and left, before she had decided to sacrifice me for her pills and before I had decided to devote myself with the faintest of hopes that she might one remember how much she cared for me.