Mafia Guard Loves the Daughter

3. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

3

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

- Carl Sagan

The trip to the mall distracted me enough not to think of the lie I’m living with. Dany kept me occupied during the day, even when we needed to get back to school and attend a few elective classes. She had a foreign language while I had advanced calculus, and my mind was pretty much preoccupied with what was on hand.

I got engrossed in schoolwork, and it was no problem for me. I have always loved numbers. The sequences and patterns of numbers made me feel safe. Made me feel like a puzzle slotting into its pieces. My mother always wondered where I got this mind of mine. She’s adamant that she wasn’t that smart or that the man who contributed to my existence hasn’t touched my level at this age.

I wonder about that too. I ask a lot of why and how questions.

By the time school was finished, everything was slowly melting away as I knew I had to face my mother again, the one I had run away from this morning. Even ignoring the birthday breakfast she made me, it was just a normal breakfast with a birthday cake and gifts.

I sat on the bus to my stop—the last one, giving me time to open eBay on my phone. Making an account was the final nail in my coffin. Selling my telescope would've been unthinkable a few years ago.

The telescope was my life. I snuck out at night not to go to parties, but to look at stars in the cemetery or at the park. I was high on passion then. High with the happiness of seeing stars blinking at me.

But here I am listing it for as little as four hundred dollars, when I know it is worth four times that much. I just needed to get rid of it as fast as I could, because I could make the excuse that I let Dany borrow it, and they wouldn’t bat an eye. Dany had borrowed it a few times when she tried to like Astronomy but failed.

She liked the arts more than the numbers.

The bus finally stops by mine, and I fumble to stand and hop out of the front doors by the driver. He smiles. “Have a good day.”

“You too, Gerard”, I smile back. He has been my bus driver for over a decade now. He has aged, but he always greeted me with a smile and always waited for me to get in at times. “Listen to your doctor and take your meds.”

He laughs from deep in his large belly. His white hair has receded a few inches since a few years ago. "You're starting to sound like your mother."

I wave as I hop down the steps and into the heat of the outside. The air-conditioning of the bus, then, to the wild heat of central North America still gives me a shock.

It’s cold in MiT

The insidious thought rose before I could even will it away; it just popped into existence, and I was hit with the freight of emotions along with it: the sadness churning my gut, the lie heavy on my skin, and the dread weighing my foot to the ground.

I'm such a horrible liar. I count my breaths as I walk home—a long walk that passes quickly this time.

The old ranch house with nailed-down roof boards and the paint that never seems to finish, as only the front is painted in mother’s royal blue. We didn’t have the time or manpower to finish everything to fix the entire house, but I love seeing it.

Our shutters were from different eras and colours. The door would creak, and the neighbours a few miles away could hear it. The royal blue was painted three years ago and is now a kind of off-blue. All of which are endearing characters of the house I grew up in.

The same house that was once called “Squalor” by the agent, when my mom bought it, cost close to nothing. All she wanted was a home and a large piece of land where I could grow up, with horses and fresh air. The same way she grew up in the Midwest.

I already spotted my mom in the front garden. She was pulling out the countless weeds around the bushes we planted when I was six, one of my earliest memories, while on her hands and knees. Raggedy denim overalls and her thick hair tied up and out of a baseball cap.

My loud footsteps on the gravel made her look up in my direction with a smile, one that many in town had called “Sweety charming” She earned a lot of attention going to this small town with no future, which needed to travel to the next town to walk around a mall. Everyone was curious about the single mother who lived in the most isolated ranch in this state.

“Well, if it isn’t my birthday girl”, she says, standing on her feet and fists her hands while placing them on her waist. A mock expression of anger on her face. “One who ran out of our traditional birthday breakfast.”

I sigh. “Mom, it was just breakfast and a cake.”

“A pretty good cake! One I made with my blood, sweat, and tears” Her city accent stands out from the cold northern people here.

“Sounds like a biohazard”, I plopped down on the porch steps as she kept looking at me with her thick eyebrows. “I’m sorry”, I mutter. The words are true, but they don’t ease anything.

“Oh, it’s fine, She pulls her gardening gloves off and sits beside me.

I have lived with this woman for my whole life, and somehow, she doesn’t age. My mother is an incredible woman. One who survived, but never really became hard or cold towards me, she has always been gentle and warm. To anyone, even to Dieth and Dany. Dany once told me that her mother’s voice in her head is negative, but the voice I hear from my mother is always the same.

Come home, and we’ll make do, Ehryl.

“I know you’re under a lot of stress.” She bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. A curly band of her hair peeks out of the baseball cap. “You’re preparing for college and have sent applications. You’re nervous and dreading their responses to arrive. I get it.” She meets my gaze with her honey-brown eyes, leaning towards me as if I’m five again and she’s telling me fairies exist in the forest. “You’re going to make the unknown known in a few years. Space and physics. Ah, that is such an amazing future.”

My throat runs dry, but I manage to hold my expression together. “Make the unknown known, huh? I can’t say that’s a first.”

“Honey!” she whines. “Be happy! Enjoy this moment, because you’re going to look back and see that this will be the pivotal moment of your life.”

“You’re going to be alone, though”

She scoffs. “So? That’s a plus! This is what all parents wait for! Peace and quiet. Without screaming toddlers and grungy hormonal teenagers. I am paying for you to actually get out of my damn house.”

I laugh. “You told me I was an easy kid!”

She smirks, standing on her feet in her inappropriate footwear of flip-flops. “Parents lie. We’re very good liars, my love.”

And somehow, children are even better if they want to.