Love
    by Antonios Maltezos

 

    "Momma?"

    But she was somewhere else, her eyes partially draped with a flesh like foreskin. She squirmed ever-so-slightly, and then pulled back the skin from her eyes as the lid of the mailbox squealed and then scraped against the bricks.

    "My check should be there," she shot out, forcing him into his slippers.

***

    There were times he thought she was pure disgusting--in the mornings, when she was catatonic, drawing breath through a half-opened mouth.  He’d focus on her stains, those age spots growing wild on her face and arms, her fat hands. And then he’d wonder whether the rest of her body was equally soiled, his mind's eye forcing him to see her breasts naked--spoilt melons, her bare buttocks sick with pumpernickel-brown blotches.

     She liked to tell him there were two choices he could make in life. One was to be like his father and mistreat the woman who’d eventually love him. And two… but she’d never get to two because she’d start to cry, forget about his choices, beg him to focus his attention on the pathetic turn their lives had taken since his father had gone missing. “Look around you,” she’d say. “He left us with nothing.” She’d cry until he too would finally start to sob, desperate to have his mother understand that he would always be there for her.