I Stil Luv U Mommy

By: Akkiko

She lay on the bed and quivered slightly. Mother was home. She tucked her knees up under her chin. That day she had smudged a mirror by accident. Mother didn't like smudges. She kept all the cleaning things hidden from her so that she couldn't hide her crimes. She wasn't sure why smudging a mirror was a crime but she soon heard the banging of footsteps down the hall.

Her stomach tightened and her body tensed. The door to her room flew open. "Akkiko! What is this!" Akkiko looked at the small rag her mother had used to wipe the mirror clean. There was a barely noticeable spot of black on it. Akkiko opened her mouth to speak but her mother whipped her across the face with a rag. "I leave you for two minutes and you do this!"

Akkiko let a tear fall, and she moved further back on her bed. Her mother had left her all day, no food in the cabinets because that would make them dirty. Akkiko was hungry and even now her fingers shook from it. Her mother reached out, gripping her head, and drug her up by her hair. She sneered a few inches from Akkiko`s face. "I asked you a question!"

Akkiko cast her eyes downward and sniffled as another tear fell. Her mother glared at the tear on her white carpeting. Akkiko looked at it too and suddenly found the floor rushing up to meet her. The mother ground her head into the carpeting and Akkiko felt warm liquid flow from her nose. "I`ll give you something to cry about!"

Akkiko was lifted off the ground and carried down the hall. She knew where to. The cellar. Mother only allowed the cellar to get messed up. The walls were smeared with blood from punishment to other "crimes". The mother beat her with the buckle of a belt and then kicked her until she could barely stand. After that she left.

In a few hours light flooded the cellar and her father took cautious steps into it. "Akkiko?" His reply was a small sniffle from the corner where a bloody heap was curled up. He sighed and walked over to her, scooping her into his arms.

Akkiko looked up at him. "Daddy, I'm sorry I smudged the mirror." He hugged her a little tighter and she let out a yelp as he touched a broken rib.

He growled in anger and bounded up the steps with her in his arms. He walked into the kitchen and saw her mother. "Marisa, what is this!"

Marisa turned, face emotionless. "It's that daughter you brought into this world. What else?"

Akkiko curled her head into her father's shoulder and whimpered. She heard his heartbeat speed up. "It's a child who you beat because she smudged a mirror!" With that he turned and walked out the door. Akkiko never saw her mother until years later.

--Twelve Years Later--

Akkiko looked at the house and sighed. Memories flooded over her in a torrent. Her mother had scrubbed this place to the bone. It had to be hospital clean. Akkiko still had scars on her face. Now her mother was dying. Her liver was failing, but not enough to make her bed ridden. She needed a nurse and Akkiko was the only one willing.

She took unsteady steps up the stairs, the same ones she had been thrown down on several occasions. The same walls she had been slammed into until she bled, and than she would get smacked for bleeding on the walls.

She grasped the handle and pushed the door open, hit by the smells of chemicals. Her mother was on her knees, scrubbing the floor with everything she had. Akkiko dropped her bag so that she didn't scare the woman. She stopped her scrubbing, rolled to her knees and turned, face set in a frown. "What do you want?"

Akkiko plucked nervously at her sweater. "You're sick and need a nurse."

The woman stood up, now much shorter than Akkiko. She stared at her with those black eyes that sparkled in cruelty. "Yeah, I do don't I?" The woman pushed past Akkiko with anger. "Took you long enough to visit me." Akkiko looked at her in disbelief. She hadn't changed in the least.

Over the next few weeks, the mother would wake Akkiko up in the middle of the night vacuuming. Sometimes she would wake Akkiko up just to tell her that she forgot to clean up something. Akkiko would get up and do it just to appease the woman. She was getting close to screaming when her mother was ordered by the doctor to stay in bed.

Akkiko had a few nights of peace, and than she awoke to hear a loud bang. She leapt out of bed and ran down the hall to where her mother sat on the floor, holding a picture frame. The picture in it was Akkiko as a little girl. The woman was touching it, caressing it. "Mother?"

The woman looked up, eyes studded with tears. "Akkiko, do you remember that day we went to the zoo?" Akkiko shook her head and her mother smiled whimsically. "You ere just a little thing. You kept saying that the animals were making a mess." The woman threw the picture frame away, shattering it, and began to cry. She looked up at Akkiko. "What do you like to do? Where do you work? Did you go to college?"

Akkiko put her hands on the woman's waist to lift her into the bed but the woman smacked her away. Akkiko sighed. "I'm a therapist, I help people who had mothers like you."

The woman finally sobbed. "Akkiko, I just wanted you to be a neat person! I wanted to be a good mother! I did! I loved you so much that I needed you to be just like me! I thought you could be better than me!"

Akkiko knelt down and took her sobbing mother into her arms. "Mommy, I love you."

The woman looked up. "Do you forgive me?"

Akkiko smiled a little bit as tear welled up. "Yes, I forgive you."

The woman sighed and relaxed. "That's all I wanted to hear." Her body went limp, her eyes closed, and Akkiko let out one howl of inner pain.