THREE SHORT VIGNETTES FOR MY MOMMA

 TW/CW: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, MISOGYNY.

ROW-HOUSES

When I was a boy, my momma was a sex-worker. She was all smiles and giggles as she worked West-side corners: Madison, Cicero, Homan, Kedzie. And I should say my momma loved me, more than she loved her pride, more than she feared the walk of shame as she guided her clients—hips waving, braids down her back, dresses fitted to perfection, she embodied seduction, she illustrated love—through the rugged, decaying, row-houses. 

The row-houses, my decrepit home, where I saw all aspects of life before my eyes; they housed my lovely broken family, nurtured my young bones, took my virginity, thrusting manhood upon me. And my momma strutted through them with pride, a sense of duty, that casted aside the whispers, evil eyes, prayers for her “salvation.” 

Oh, how they clicked their tongues and shook their heads; but a boy I was filled with shame as they pilfered the pride I had in my mother’s love. They called my momma everything under the sun, and begrudgingly I bit my tongue, clenched my fists, retracted my fangs of anger toward those that invoked this shamefulness. What was I but a boy without a tongue ? I could not say “my mother is love, her love has been tested by fire, she is a phoenix and you know nothing of her and her gentle love. My mother’s love is cosmic; even I can’t fully comprehend how my mother could love me, how my mother holds me in her hands like I was still child, still boy, still without shame.” 

COSMIC SLOP 

My momma would always bring the most grotesque men home: heads bald and wrinkled, skin ashy from lack of lotion, mustaches too thick to welcome in a kiss, and a forest of nose hairs. They were much like the apartments we lived in, that same neglect, that same ruin. My momma’s clients would stink of cigarettes and cheap liquor, E&J, 40s, Wild Cowboy; they would reek of my momma’s "high-priced-screw" being worth the last fifty dollars of their two-hundred dollar check. 

She would bring clients home, lock me into the closet in my room across from the kitchen, lock my bedroom door, then, presumably, lock her own door. I would be let out in between clients, she would free me like the knight frees the fine maiden from the sadistic fairy king: arms wide open, big smile on her face, smelling of Bath and Body works and Cocoa Butter. 

Then, it became time to return to my prison, a boy trapped in a world I had no part in constructing. I would hear screams. I would hear moans. I would hear tears, laughter, and other sounds that now escape me. The worst was hearing nothing. When a deep silence came from mother’s room it was normally followed by shouts, by insults—“hoe you think I’m gon pay you for the full hour, it only lasted five minutes.” 

“Bitch, you think you can get over on me, I ain’t payin foe no got-damn condom sex; I ain’t even cum, I was better off having sex with a garbage bag.” 

“You ain’t nothin but a five dollar hoe, I ain’t giving you shit but what you worth.” 

I was a closet-boy, restrained, I could say nothing, do nothing. I don’t think I could have done much to assist my momma at that age anyway, but it was the age where all boys begin learning, quite incorrectly, that men have to protect the inferior woman. I wanted to be a knight on a white steed, liberating my momma like she periodically liberated me. I thought at that age that maybe her work was her closet, that she was a prisoner, trapped by her love for her only son. I was more than wrong. Although I have not worked out why I was wrong, intuitively I understand that it was quite arrogant of me to think that love could bind my momma like a prisoner. No, my comparison was flawed, I needed to re-evaluate how I perceived love, how I misunderstood imprisonment (and oh, how incarceration became normal for a Chicago boy living from his closet). My momma, her ogre and her love, was more complex than an eight year-old could understand. 

 

THE OGRE 

My momma—my momma had it rough. So, she turned to God sitting atop Her throne of light, asking for respite, for divine rest. My momma prayed to God for understanding, prayed that God would be able to see the circumstance that guided her action. 

And as she prayed she called her work the Ogre, it became a mythical beast, lurking in every room whenever we prayed, sang in worship, danced. The Ogre: a collection of sorrow songs my momma would bring before the Lord as an offering. Did God ever dance to her music? Or did God weep? I wonder about God and Her reaction to my momma’s fervent worship. 

My momma would pray the same prayer every night, tears muffled to the back of her throat, knees beating the worn wood floors, dripping blood, she would sing from the heart. She would sing of a pain that outweighed shame, that outdated poverty, that overshadowed death: she would sing of love for me. An unending, undying, love that the Ogre had no right to attempt to alter. This was the woman whom I call momma, the woman who placed love at the center of her existence. As I aged, progressed, and gained knowledge, I realized there are no devils, no monsters, there is only the Ogre. The Ogre is a neutral force that appears as humans are alienated from their existence; work alienated my momma, love re-enchanted her as she gave the Ogre dark magic. 

I remember, now twenty-one years old, the final time I left the closet, I was twelve; I was very familiar with the boy whom my mother locked in the closet, but that boy no longer existed. The boy I was when I left is unknown to me, a stranger, in many ways. A myth of a myth, beclouded by time, plifered by the forgetfulness of youth. I tangled my love for my mother in that closet, outlined a love for her that transformed how I viewed love.