The Son I Raised

Only a woman who has borne fruit from her own loins will ever understand what it is to be unable to touch him. My son, when he was a child, I would cradle him in my arms, wishing upon a star for his brightest possible future. I would gently caress his skin, my fingers in tandem with the rhythm of my heart, pouring my love into him. I would burry my face in his form and inhale. Innocence. That was what he smelled like and....

Where had that innocence gone? 

When did I lose my son? 

Two years ago on Boxing Day — No that was the day I was told I wouldn’t be able to touch him anymore. But I really lost him, the day he was born. I could never, no matter how much love I gave him, fill the void his father left. He would grow up trying to fill that void himself.  

«Who is my father?» he asked on his sixteen birthday.

I had baked him a cake and bought him a present. His gaze had shifted from the cake, to an empty chair. He had held it for a second before turning to me and asked the question. 

I should have said many things that day, except Marcus. 

Once I said his father's name, I created a pandora effect. And he made his first desire clear.

«I would like to meet him?» 

I love my son. But who would have thought loving him would lead to his destruction. Can you love someone so much that you find yourself begging a God, you don’t even believe in, to protect you from what people were saying he did. 

«He killed someone,» the police said. 

«Not my son,» I replied. 

«He killed someone, madam.» 

I shook my head. 

«No. You’re mistaken.» 

«He did,» The police officer insisted.  

«I don’t care what you say.» My palms covered my ears. «I want to see him.» 

When I saw him, I knew. The sadness in his eyes, told me everything, it was the same sadness he had the first time he came home from visiting Marcus. 

It was his father’s fault. I should not have told my son his name. I should not have driven him to his house. I should not have knocked on his door. We wouldn’t be here now. 

It was also my fault. I chose this man once. I made a child, my child, with this man. And his life has been building towards its climatic end ever since.

I am like most parent. I praised him for good behaviors. I grounded him for bad ones. I sent to him to his room. I took away his phone, his video games and he wasn’t allow to watched TV. Was I too harsh? Detractors online believed I was. Harassers, just wanted me to go kill myself, «….you pathetic excuse of a mother, who birthed nothing but a criminal.» I wanted to scream: I birth a human, people. His father turned him into a criminal.

But —

«He couldn’t control the shame?» The psychologist said on the stand. 

Shame? 

«The humiliation he felt after the victim came onto him.»

What? I sat ramrod on the wooden bench in the courtroom. I looked at my son. He was looking down. As if — 

Shamed. 

But who wouldn’t if someone you were supposed to trust lies about you on the stand. 

He had a girlfriend, no? What was his name..what was his name. My legs fidgeted. 

I looked over at her. She sat on the other side of the bench, sobbing.

Ah, yes. Kathrine.  

I wanted to rise from the bench and shout, «Lies. He had a girlfriend. What are you talking about?» But they would ask me to leave the courtroom. I couldn’t bare leave my son. I was the only person left in his corner now. Wasn’t that a mother’s job to support? To love unconditionally. To protect? I already failed him introducing him to his father. 

So I stayed silent. My hands underneath my bottom and my lips pursed. 

Marcus didn’t show up. Once again, hurting my baby by his absence. 

«The victim: James Wade. Male. 18 years old died from head trauma.»

Eighteen. A year younger than my son. A victim like my son. 

«The murder weapon,» the prosecutor said, pointing at a fireplace stoker and an image of my son batching the young man Ja..Ja.James’s head flashes into my mind. I suddenly felt like I had sea legs. 

I had to ask him. 

«Did you k… hi..?» The sound of iron doors open and closing behind me, drowned my words.  

Or so I thought, but in reality I hadn’t uttered it. I stood in front of him with the glass in-between us, my gaze frozen on his blue eyes and I can only see him: cooing at birth, crying in sickness, laughing at the small wonders of life in the garden, taking his first step, loosing his first tooth, saying his first word. 

Mom. 

My heart skip. 

He reached for the receiver at the same time I reach for the one on my end. When he said, «mom,» a surge of… relief? regret? Perhaps, wistfulness washed over me. I couldn’t believe, he was going away for twenty years. 

I lifted my hand and touched the glass. He lifted his to mine. Tears welled in my eyes and a deep mourning stabbed through my stomach. I wanted to smash the glass to feel his flesh one last time. And I realized then that as much as I wanted him to feel my love when I touched his skin before, I was the one who needed his love. A love so unconditional, that he wouldn’t be capable of putting me through pain. 

This pain. 

«Did you kill him?» I asked, the word clear this time. 

«I did,» he said without hesitation. 

I gasped.

«Don’t lie to me.» 

«I’m not mother. I did it.»

He didn’t sound like my son. Yet, it was his face, his eyes, his voice — the exact same timbre, the same cadence, the same inflections. Not words I thought would ever come out of him. 

 As he recounted the event I wondered when I became oblivious to his pain.

It had to be pain. Cause nothing could justify what he had done. Not that pain was justification enough, or at all,  but pain would help me understand, even if nobody else could, why he did what he said he did. 

«It’s Marcus, isn’t it?» 

«What?» He said.

«It must be. I remember. You changed after you started seeing him.» 

 «My father has nothing to do with it, mom.» 

«How can you say that? He wasn’t there for you. I would see you withdraw, getting more into trouble at school, starting drinking and smoking.»

«Mom. Stop. He has nothing to do with it.» 

«Then this Ja..James person must have provoked you.» 

«He didn’t. I was angry when he came onto me and I saw black.» He looked down at his hand, as if blood was still on him, as if his innocent skin was visibly tainted forever. «Next thing I knew, I had the stoker in my hand and I struck him. Repeatedly.» 

«Are you homosexual? The psychologist said —» 

«No I am not.» 

«Because if you are. I don’t mind. You can tell me.»

 «Mom,» he shouted. «I am not! He came onto me.» 

«He came onto you. If a man did that to a woman, she would cry rape, self-defense and everybody would believe it.» 

«Mother, please. I did it. You need to accept it.»  

«No. No. No.» I said, shaking my head. «You are my son. My son would never kill someone because they came onto him. He would never kill someone, period. I raised you well. I —» 

He banged his fist repeatedly on the glass. «Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!» He shouted, silencing me.  A prison guard, banged on the door behind him, ordered him to calm himself. 

For the first time, my son felt like a stranger to me. Had he always had this anger growing up? He was just in pain, wasn’t he? Or was it anger? The look strangers gave me, as if it was my fault he became a murder. Had I not love him enough? disciplined him enough? Installed good values? I failed to notice the signs. 

He took his anger on me, shouting and cursing the first time I took his phone away. I had dismissed it as teenage rebellion. 

There was the time Marcus called and said he couldn’t come to his house anymore because he had bullied his stepsister. And I thought, Marcus just don’t love him like I do. He loved his daughter more than he loved him. 

The time he had slapped his girlfriend. He said he had too much to drink and that he wouldn’t do it again. 

«I failed you,» I said. 

«You didn’t mother,» he said, calmly now. Like the son I know. But he was not. 

«You’re not the person I raised.»

«I am,» he said. «You just refused to see all of me. I am not a victim.» 

I did. 

That day when I left, I had every intention of never returning. Then the first Christmas without him arrived and a seat at the table was empty, a present was missing under the tree. Birthdays come and the emptiness intensified. In the end, my heart could not bare it, the pain of not seeing him. I was his mother. And he was my son. Love didn’t just vanish because he had done a horrible thing. He was a murderer, but still human, and I still cannot make him cease to be my son. And that can only be understood by a woman who has borne fruit from her own loins. So on the second Boxing Day, the iron door closed behind me, I lifted my hand on the glass and reached for the receiver. I’ll do the same on the third Boxing Day. And the fourth for the rest of my life.