–by Dinna Ferreria
I remember this morning all too clearly. Luke was swiveling around in his chair, jamming out to an Adam Lambert song too loud for his asymmetrically placed ears. I could hear every beat of the song even though I stood by the door, nearly ten feet away. His eyes were tightly shut and his mouth alternated between halfway open and not-quite closed, whispering the lyrics. His eyebrows curved and forehead wrinkled as he conveyed the expression in the song, imagining himself onstage. I could see exactly what he saw, somewhere behind those amber-colored eyes: Adam Lambert with the tips of his hair a shade of silver-blue and intense gold eyeshadow covering his eyelids. Except this time I was looking out of his eyes, looking out into the audience. It was an audience that could feel nothing, that could be hurt by nothing, the lyrics and the passion of Adam’s singing engulfing them in a dream-state-like emotion. I know this was what Luke had hoped for. Being out there with a mic and singing his heart out, showing himself to other people without shame and without fear that they would turn around after taking one look at his disfigured face, a face he had been cursed with since birth. I know he had wished to be, at the very least, normal. But I also know he had wanted to be loved, admired, even revered. Someone that others would look at and think:
He is beautiful. I wish I could be just like him.
But my boy knew it could never be. And so I looked at him in silence, a tear rolling down from my right eye, an eye that could never be as beautiful as his. I walked out of the doorway before he could catch me and look at me with a dark peach blush of embarrassment. The last thing I ever wanted was to cause him more pain. I knew that alone, in a room without mirrors, with music obscuring the thoughts of darkness and depression, he could be happy. And so I left, my footsteps light yet growing heavier, my mouth with edges pointed up but eyes looking down. In my mind, he was the most beautiful being I had ever come across. But in his and in the minds of strangers who knew nothing but his appearance, he was a creature no better than a snake. Though he was venomless, others assumed the worst. Each look away, each whisper, each stare a drop of acid upon his skin. A sting, a burn, a scar, a mark. I shielded his eyes; I hugged him tight. Anything to protect him from the judgement of others. Had it been possible, I would have taken his pain as my own; it is a sacrifice any loving mother should be willing to make.
We had tried everything, yet he constantly wished for more. For better. With surgery after surgery, doctors attempted to reconstruct what he had lost, each new surgery tackling the effects of another of my nights at the bar. They attempted to give him what I stole away; what he never had. His skin is a patchwork quilt, every couple inches a shade darker or lighter than the first, each piece visibly not his own. His eyebrows are nearly nonexistent and his ears curved down into little knobs, smushed into balls of dough as they formed. His face is a face of clay shaped by a child no older than four, features asymmetrical and unnatural, mouth too small and lips too thin. Only his eyes were untouched by the wave of deformity that swept across him as he drowned in amniotic fluid. They are perfect. Shaped like almonds yet big in size, lashes long and irises golden. His eyes are those of a god, but his body is that of an old beggar. They shine in Egyptian glory, the sun reflecting their hue. But people are blind to beauty; their eyes are only drawn to imperfection. And so the doctors reconstruct with their scalpels, tearing away at old flesh and adding new, piecing together a face that will never look normal. They tried to bring hope, but every new cut only brought disappointment. There is nothing more we can do, they said. So we walked away.
The other night Luke asked me why he has to live. I said, “Because life is beautiful, and the good moments will always outweigh the bad.” I spoke quickly, blurted out words that seemed right before thinking. I thought my silence would only mean uncertainty. In truth, I didn’t know what to tell him. I would have stood there for hours, speechless, trying to form an answer that could apply to him. No answer could. His happiness was dependant on his love for himself, of which there was none. He responded by asking me, “But what if every moment is a bad moment? What if, even if something is good, there’s always something bad there, too?” I shushed him and told him to not worry about it, running from the reality of his words. My child asked me why he had to live because to him, every second of his existence was torture. He thought peace could only come to him with death. He spoke so bluntly; I know I should have been frightened, but he’s asked many times. He used to ask before every surgery, after every look into the mirror, at the end of every day. My child wanted to die, and I didn’t know how to stop him.
Today I came home to him swimming as he once had as a fetus, tucked deep under fluid he breathed in place of air. Once it had been amniotic, a liquid surrounding him as he grew inside me. Now it was the water of a tub. Both were poison. Mine of alcohol that drenched every inch of his body and stole life from his cells. And today, a poison of death. He lay still at the bottom at the tub, rocks placed on his chest. He could have tossed them off, risen up for air, but death came as no struggle compared to life. Drowning in water was no challenge to him.
He had already been drowning in the oxygen that kept him alive.
Though the water took his life today, I had taken it long before. His face was lifeless, but his eyes gleamed more brightly, as if unearthed gold at the bottom of a river. They looked off into a distance unfathomable to the living. I like to think he had found happiness, that the color in his eyes grew brighter and the rare smile on his face came to be from the peace he had finally reached. I picked the rocks off his pale body one by one and lifted him in my arms, no tears coming from my eyes. Though I had protected him all these years, I knew this day would come, I only wish it had come with a warning. I thought I would be ready, but now I see that no mother can prepare for the death of her child.
He didn’t leave a note; he needed no explanation. I took him outside our small house and laid him on the shriveled-up grass. I grabbed a shovel and proceeded to dig. I dug for hours, never tiring from the work. I didn’t take my eyes off of him. His wet skin was slowly drying in the sun, and it seemed almost as if color was returning to it. But it was only an illusion, cast upon me by the cruel promises of hope and the light of a sun that pretended it did not know darkness. The grave was dug, and I lowered his damp body into the ground. I did not close his eyes; they were all I had left of him. I looked down into the deep hole I had made, too deep for one small body of a teenage boy. So I crawled in with him and held him close to my chest. There, I pleaded to God to take me, to forgive me for what I had caused, to let me join my boy or at least have the death that I deserved. I stayed there until my body ached from hunger and and throat burned from thirst, looking at Luke’s unchanging eyes as mine filled with seemingly never-ending tears. I stayed there until my eyes could cry no more.
Finally, God showed me mercy.
As death came I whispered, “Forgive me, world, for the misery I have caused. Forgive me, Luke.”
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