I'm Not Your Mommy

Chapter 7

Calista

I wasn’t always like this. Sure, a lot of people have said that, because change is constant and therefore you can’t be who you were before, at least not exactly, but no, mine is completely far from who I was before all this s**t went down.

Sometimes I wonder to myself, when I am alone in the comfort of my room, how life would’ve turned out for me if only things had been just the way I imagined them to be. Maybe I would be working leisurely beside the partner that my parents chose for me but ended up loving. Maybe I would be happily giggling over cribs and baby clothes at home right now, but sadly all of those are but a figment of my imagination that I know won’t ever come true.

Mimi left me alone in the guest room now, much to her disapproval. She almost managed to convince me to sleep together, but I already feel bad enough for stealing her from her husband even though I know Tyron won’t mind. I know Mimi is going to be there for me anytime but it’s different now that she has a husband and daughter to take care off. I cannot be more of a burden to her than I already am. Mimi would of course, disagree, but I know deep within me that I can’t just randomly call her in the middle of the night to cry about the memories creeping in again when she has a life to take care of as well.

I buried myself deeper into the soft covers and just looked at the moon lamp situated on the bedside table. It was pretty but nothing like the beauty that was the pale crescent moon outside. The lamp inside the room was like my life now, an exact replica of something magnificent but could never come close to the original. A perfectly moulded replica with a lot of cracks deep within.

Sighing, I took my eyes off the lamp. Memories always make me a little poetic, if only just a little, and most of the time, it's useful but times like this, it’s a nuisance to deal with, but I seemed to forget that memories were not something that you could escape even in your sleep.

The scene played out in front of me like a movie. It was the night before the news came out and we weren’t any wiser. I see the proud smiling faces of my parents, beaming at the other socialites in the party, absolutely confident about what they have achieved as they should. Who knew that this was going to be the last time I ever saw that smile?

The scene slowly fades into a haze and I desperately reach out to my them. I wanted to savor a few more seconds of that smile, ingrain it deep into my mind to cover up all the grief and anguish that replaced it the very next day, but even in my dreams I am tormented, for the next thing I see and hear is my parents shouting and arguing in the background as past me stood shakily on the door, as tense as the atmosphere inside.

I remember this scene like yesterday. I hurriedly rushed home from my university after a few of my classmates started whispering stuff about me and my family and showing me an article released about my family’s supposed crime. I didn’t believe a single bit of it of course, for I know who my parents were, but the scene I came home to made me doubt and the sinking feeling inside me was buried deep inside.

There was so much shouting and arguing inside our house and I see myself hastily running away from the door as my father angrily burst out of the room only to be followed by my equally frantic mother as well. The look on their faces as they passed me was one of the last memories that I would remember of them and yet I was clueless about it.

Mother stopped walking after father when she saw me in the doorway. I was far away from the people in my memory, but even with the distance between us, I could still hear what was being said.

“What’s happening Mom? I saw all the articles and it- it couldn’t be true, right? You would never do that right?” the shell of my 20-year-old past trembled as my mother slowly cups my pale cheeks. I tried reaching out, wanting to feel the warmth of my mother’s touch once more, but like a cruel joke, I could only watch like you would in a movie.

“Don’t worry too much about it Calista. Mommy and Daddy would handle this okay? Until then…until then, I want you to be strong, okay? You could do that for us, right?” my mother’s sweet melodious voice reached me like how it reached the past me and I watched as past me nodded. I saw my mother smile her special smile that she only shows to people she loves one more time as she plants a tender kiss on my past’s forehead like a promise.

“We’re going to be okay Cali. You’re our strong girl, we could get over this as long as we’re together, okay?” It was like every other talk my mother gave me when something bad happens and usually it worked but it wasn’t the case in this one.

We couldn’t find a way to prove ourselves, every strand we tried untangling led to a more complicated web of lies and before we knew it, we had exhausted everything. Our reputation, our money, our pride, and the life we once had, have all gone down the drain. The people who we thought were our friends abandoned us the moment the issue spread more like a plague and soon I was faced with disdain and disgust everywhere I went. My father took the most and the last straw was when the company was ripped out of his hands and was subjected to sneers and disgust by everyone around us even before the claims were proven true and even more so when articles upon articles were released about the treachery that my father had committed. Everything he gave his life for was crumbling and so was he that one day I came home, to an ambulance outside our house and I knew this was the last of what he could take.

I remember running as fast as I could to our house, exhausting my legs till I felt my leg wobble and fall on the ground, my lungs almost failing with all the heaving I was doing, but it was too late, it was always too late. I remember my mother looking empty, like a broken doll, as she looked at dad carried by the stretcher. I remember feeling intense dread more than ever as I stared at my father’s lifeless eyes as the paramedics tried their best to save him, but by then he was beyond saving, and following my father’s death was the death of everything I ever was and hoped could be.

I woke up with a deep heave, feeling nauseous as the memories flooded in again. It got overwhelming to the point where I ran into the bathroom and hurled everything into the toilet, emptying my stomach, but at this moment all I felt was something other than empty.

The emotions that I had tried my best to keep under a lock were growling to come out of the dark and it almost succeeded, but I willed myself to momentarily forget about all the negative and focus on the positive. Don’t think about the death, the anguish, the disdain, the breakdown, the shouting. No no, don’t let them win. Think about the smile that they only show you, the laughter that you shared with them on the simplest of days, the warmth of their hands as they hold you close, the love that they gave you that could’ve conquered mountains. Think about those.

I repeated it all in my head until the light beat against the darkness and I could feel myself breathing calmly now. I took a couple of deep breaths before standing up and flushing the toilet. Washing my face on the sink, I looked up and saw my tired eyes looking back into me.

I looked tired but at least there wasn’t despair in them. I shook my head and exited the bathroom and slowly opened the window of the room I was currently in. The moon that greeted me was the same as the one every night I would open my windows to relax and let myself think. It was the same moon, the same nights, with the same nightmare over and over again.