The kid’s shouts were boring into my brain, a trowel burrowing in thick, sticky mud, full of worms and messy life. I wondered, would I too beg for my mother, when the time came? The idea of that woman filled me with hatred and disgust. It had been years since I last saw her, and I didn’t want to see her; the idea of invoking her name, her help, seemed inconceivable to me. Still, somehow I wondered if behind that mother there was not another one, the mother of the child I had been before something was irremediably broken. I too would probably writhe and cry out for that mother. And if not for
...more
