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I forgot Mother's Day.572Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLIeAEE4gTb
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Truthfully, it's not completely my fault, because it's not as if I usually celebrate mother's day. The most I ever did for Gweneth is make her a card with cartridge paper. I'd usually get ready creative with it, using glue and glitter and markers. It had to be perfect, because anything that came from me has to be perfect. That's just how I am. I always found it strange, the way she always kept the cards, some on her dresser, some on her chest of drawers, and some on her what-not. Because of that, I knew that it meant something to her. I haven't seen her in over two years. The past two mother's days before this one passed without much thought. Then something occurs to me.572Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJIh6IV0mXx
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"Why didn't Akatua come over in mother's day?" I ask Kwamé, who is wolfing down a plate of jerk pork and festival.
"How am I supposed to know?" he asks, before wiping his mouth with a napkin, grease stains still on the right corner of his mouth. I find myself wanting to lick it clean. I shake my head in an attempt to clear it. "She probably isn't sure about how you feel about her. She wouldn't want you to feel awkward. I guess she thought that if it meant anything to you, you'd say something."
"I missed it."
He looks at me for a few seconds as if trying to figure out what to say.
"Call her."
"Really? You just want me to call her? And say what?"
Say 'Sorry I forgot mother's day. You wanna come over for some oxtail?'"
"That sounds so mundane," I say, rubbing my chin. "I feel as if I owe her more than a lame ass dinner, you know?"
"It might seem lame to you, but it would mean the world to her."
I think about it for a second. Finally, I think why the hell not. Kwamé, after all, knows her better than I do.
"Okay," I say to him, "I'll do it."
I call her and make arrangements for her to drop by.
"You don't have to do this, you know," she says over the phone, her voice cracking, although I can tell that she's trying her best to hide it.
"I want to," I mumble honestly, biting my lip as I become emotional, too. "I've never really had much to celebrate on Mother's Day, but now... I have you," I tell her, pulling at a lose thread on my clothes out of nervousness.
When she comes over, she smells strongly of lavender, and she's in one of those flow-y, casual summer dresses that she's so fond of, stopping somewhere in her calf. This one is red with purple flowers all over, and as always, it fits her beautifully. The most astonishing thing about her, however, is the look on her face. She looks absolutely thrilled to be here, as if it's the biggest honour to be invited to her daughter's house for a late Mother's Day celebration.
I feel like shit.
"I'm glad you came," I tell her, although I know that for her, it was never really an option.
"Oh, I got something for you," I tell her, as both she and Kwamé look at me in surprise. It was really last minute, but it was something that I felt had to be done.
Jewellery is something that I know Akatua likes. She's always in necklaces usually golden in colour, and I figured that if I should give her something sentimental, it should be something that I know she would like.
"It's 18k gold," I tell her, pulling the small cardboard box, golden cover and white base, out of my pocket and presenting it to her. "I didn't know if you have metal allergies--"
"I don't," she assures me, and it makes sense, considering that she's pretty much indestructible.
"Anyway, I wanted it to be sentimental, so... here."
She opens the box, and gasps. The chain is ropey and designed to have a loose spiral. It's pendant is flower that stops at about the base of the wearer's neck, the word "mother" written in the centre it. She looks down at it before looking up at me. Sure enough, I'm wearing a similar one in white gold, a pendant in the design of a leaf stopping at the base of my neck, which has the word "daughter" written on it.
"Nya... thank you," she says with a smile and teary eyes, and I know that it's not just the necklace she's thanking me for. "Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for giving me a second chance."
I chew on my bottom lip as she takes it out, hands Kwamé the box, and puts it on. I look at the pattern on her dress before speaking.
"Honestly... when I thought about it, there was nothing to forgive." It took me a while to see that, but eventually, I saw the truth. I'm much happier now than I was a few weeks ago, and I'm grateful to have a mother, even though I came to know about her in my adulthood.
"Well, if you two are done being sappy," Kwamé says to us, "can we, like, eat?"
I roll my eyes at him. For a dead person, he has quite an appetite. For food, I mean. Well, for other things, too, but let's not get into that right now.
"Sure, hun," I say to him casually as I make my way to the kitchen to dish out some food for everyone."
"Let me help you with that, Nya."
"You take care of yourself, hun," Kwamé and Akatua say at the same time as I take out three dishes.
"-- we can help ourselves," Akatua, finishes.
"No, no," I say to them. "You guys are guests--"
"Please," Kwamé says after snorting, "I pretty much live here."
"Yes, but today's special..." I start, but trail off when I see the look on Kwamé's face, the "stop bullshitting me" look. I sigh and let them take up their own plates.
"Thank you," Kwamé says sweetly.
"F*ck off," I tell him lightly, but I can't help the smirk that tugs at the corner of my mouth.
"Are you sure that that's what you want me to do?" he asks teasingly, and I can't help but smile at him. He smiles back, of course, no longer a smirk, but a full on smile, a certain wickedness to it, and it's as if my whole world comes crashing down around me, in a wonderful way. I feel happy about it. It's one of the best feelings in the world, as if we're both radiating joy and sexual desires simultaneously, and--
"Oi! Love birds!" Akatua says, interrupting my train of thought, "get a room."
We laugh together. The term that Akatua uses to describe us doesn't even bother us anymore. In fact, it excites me, and I'm sure it probably excites him too.
~
***
~
"Your favourite superhero cannot be Harley Quinn," Kwamé says to me, as we sit around the circular, mahogany table, that I got from Courts last week, having finished our meals.
"Why the hell not?"
"She's not a hero, Nya," Kwamé tells me, but I shake my head vehemently.
"She's on DC Superhero Girls, and that's enough for me."
"So despite her being described as an evil maniac in pretty much almost every comic, show and movie that she's portrayed in, one children's cartoon makes you see her as a hero?"
"Pretty much," I say to him. He shakes his head in disbelief.
"Pick another one," Akatua says to me. I sigh loudly.
"It's between Thunder and Raven."
"You love DC, huh."
"Yeah," I say to Kwamé."
This discussion started when Kwamé brought up his love for Heath Ledger's Joker, and how brilliant the performance was.
"What about Marvel?" Akatua asks.
"Uh, T'challa and Killmonger," I tell them, to which Akatua chortles and Kwamé shakes his head yet again, and sighs.
"Killmonger isn't a hero," they say simultaneously, to which I roll my eyes and sigh in exasperation, something I'm beginning to realise that both Kwamé and I do a lot.
"Oh, come on," I say to them, "for us, he's the most relatable character in the whole film. If we went to Wakanda in the pre-Killmonger era, do you think that they would have accepted us? They would have sent our asses back." I don't know why I feel so strongly about this, but I do. "They were never even colonised, so why are black people acting all proud as if Wakandans would have felt any kinship with them if the place were real? We pretty much have nothing in common, apart from race, which was never an issue or struggle for them. That, and Killmonger had good intentions. For people like us, people like him. I can't take that from him."
Kwamé is now looking at me, an amused expression on his face.
"You really do overthink things sometimes, you know," he tells me.
"No," I insist, although I know that he's partially right. Not on this topic, though. "I'm realistic."
"I see where you're coming from," Akatua comments, although I can tell that she doesn't quite see him as a hero.
"Okay, fine. He's an antihero."
"Yeah," Akatua says in approval.
"Makes more sense," Kwamé states.
"I love Wonder Woman and Thor," Akatua starts, and I assume that she intends to explain it. She doesn't get to, however, because she's interrupted by Kwamé.
"Oh, f*ck," he mutters in a voice that tells me that something is going to happen. Something disastrous. I look up to see that his eyes have begun to glow red.
"Nya, go--"
That's all he gets out before my front windows are shattered, and in come owls. More than one hundred of them; some white, some brown, all seemingly locked on one central target: me.
They hit into me, bite me, scratch me, and I feel myself growing weaker by the second. If it weren't for the fact that I know they can't kill me, I'd be even more terrified than I am now, and I'm pretty terrified.
I know that Kwamé is doing everything that he can to stop them, but there are just too many of them.
"Enough!" I hear Akatua shout from where I am, somewhere on the ground. I don't know how I got there, but the ground feels so cold against my exposed skin, so soothing, so... relaxing.
I hear popping all around me, popping and screaming, as red sprays everywhere. There's nothing attacking me anymore, but I still cannot move. I feel stuck to the floor, where I lay, glued almost. I don't know if it's seconds or hours before the screaming stops, because it's as if my perception of time is distorted. Faster or slower, I don't know.
"Nya?" Akatua asks as she sits beside me on the floor, rubbing my arm, my back. The tiles don't feel cold anymore. Maybe it's because they're now the same temperature as my body. Maybe my body is now cold. I don't know. "Nya, come on, sweetie. Get up."
I want to, but I can't. I'm exhausted. I raise my head to survey the dining room and attached living room, and wince when I see that blood and dead owls cover the floor and furniture. It's as if they've exploded, and I know that it's Akatua who did this, probably with her ability to control water, and by extension, blood. I can also smell some burned owls, no doubt as a result of Kwamé, but it's not nearly as overpowering as the smell of blood that is beginning to overpower me.
"Nya?" Kwamé asks, and I can feel his body heat beside me. I can smell him beside me, his own unique smell mixed with Old Spice body wash. I'd know that smell anywhere. I raise my head to look at him, to see his face. I feel as if I need to look into his eyes, but the sudden movement of my head and neck is too much for my body to take, because it falls back to the ground with a thud. That harsh bump to the head is the last thing I feel before I lose consciousness.
~*~
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