The Life Of A Screen Goddess [One]

Chapter One: "Mother"


Every day, when I came home from school, my mother was drunk.

Some days she would fix me up a meal of whatever we had in the fridge at the time, and watch bright-eyed as I pretended to love it. It was usually disgusting.

Other days, I announced my arrival home just to find my own voice echoing back at me from shell pink walls, and my mother sprawled out on the couch, like a discarded doll. She looked like a doll, with her sequined eye-lids and her rosy cheeks, as if she was auditioning for the role of Marie Antoinette. But she never auditioned. Not anymore. She just stayed home, wishing it could be like the old days, and wanting more for me.

When she was passed out on the couch like that, I would observe her fingers, the tips of them touching the beer-stained carpet, bent in varying directions, spider-like, her long pink fingernails adding to the creepiness.

Woman, broken,
nothing left to live for.
Mother, beautiful,
twisted fingers on the floor.

I would write when she was passed out, mostly from boredom. Or maybe it was to keep from doing my homework. Either way, a thread of sorrow ran through each poem, whether I acknowledged it or not.

But writing was not what I really wanted to do. I really wanted to be a star; to be recognized; for once to be seen. Of course I stopped telling people my dreams when I was ten, after one too many "that's so cute" responses. The only one who ever encouraged my dream was my mother. She nearly pushed it. She paid money she didn't have, to get me an agent and acting classes. I was in a movie or two; small roles; when I was ten; but then we ran out of money and had to quit. It's easy to find acting jobs when you have an agent. But without one, you're pretty much f***ed. So the glimmer that had been rekindled in my eyes went out fast, like a fire on the sea shore when the tide comes in.

I miss the sea. My mother used to take me there, when we had nothing better to do. I loved to let the waves crash on me. Of course, my mother didn't love it, and she warned me to be careful and that I could drown. But I honestly didn't care. I wanted to die, and I didn't know why.

One day at the beach, I looked back from the water, and I saw my mother lying on her towel. I figured she was sun-bathing, or resting... A little pink shell washed up on my foot then, and I picked it up and smiled. It reminded me of our shell pink walls, and my mother's nails, and her lips... I turned and ran up to where my mother was. I wanted to show her my shell. But when I touched her skin to wake her, she was cold. Her eyes didn't open. I tried and tried, but she wouldn't wake up... I was thirteen when my mother died.

I guess it was a fitting way to die, at sea. I would love to die there. It's so peaceful; the sun beating down on your skin, and the sound of the waves. And in that place where the ocean meets the sky, it seems you can see into eternity. Kind of makes you believe in life after death...

So, I lay there on the beach with my mother, watching the sun set over that endless horizon...


[Novel continued]