Smoke and Mother

Content warning: Religion and smoking.

Mother fumbles in the glove box for mints, that if it wasn’t for their packaging would form a singular white entity bound by heat and sugar, insisting I take one. Exhaling sharply into my palms, the unmistakable scent of tobacco ricochets backwards, forcing me to oblige. Again she recounts a story, nothing of great importance; a wedding, a guest at said wedding’s weight, the origin of a popular character, a television show premise (though she remarks on her lack of time to watch television), surprised I’ve heard it all before. The radio splutters eighties pop music as patches of service flitter through the winding countryside. Occasionally, confectionery clacks against the back of my teeth with a swift gulp of mint saliva, saving me from an answer my mother and her husband disapprove of.

We burst from clusters of trees, revealing a patchwork quilt of fields dotted with livestock, bright yellow squares of rapeseed flowers contrast the dull beige of wheat. Clouds appear painted, flat and low, sluggishly crawling across the sky. From the “cheap seats” I observe my mother adjust herself, her expression pained in the sun-visor mirror, “I didn’t think, especially with what I’ve gone through, you’d pick up smoking.”

Though my mother quit years ago, the scent reminds me of her. Calming me down as a child, she’d knock on my bedroom door to sit beside me. Vapour from two tea cups rolled up the walls by the dressing table. I told myself I could never pursue music or art as a career. My teeth are crooked and tea stained, nose like a strawberry, deep pores and all. I would be a deterrent on a CD case, not a selling point. However, when my mother was close, our noses the same, cups steaming beside one another, my place on this earth felt deliberate. Her breath hot with tea and strong with the scent of Rothman’s Blue or Richmond Kings. I wasn’t queasy, I was comfortable. My mental state so destructive as a child that she allowed me to destroy every fragile thing she’d poured her heart into. Closing the door, then opening it again to observe the aftermath. Never a time where I wasn’t at the centre, voice haggard with a scarlet face. As an adult, I know there is no such thing as a bad child, but I hesitate to admit that statement applies to me. After that, I refused to ever be the bomb again. There are only so many times you could see someone you love pick up the pieces. In no way am I justifying nicotine addiction, but as my lips purse around a Vogue, smoke making my eyes water, I think of my mother and every time her shirt was damp from my tears.

Call it coincidence or disregard it completely, but every time someone around me is ill, negative, deceitful or close to death, I witness crows. Death could be the ending of a cycle, not a life. As a child, even with my disability, I had the overwhelming urge to run away. The weather couldn’t decide to blanket the town in darkness or offer patches of sunshine. I left in my socks, no shoes, and ran past the reservoir, straight down the long strip of road lined with horse chestnut trees to the motorway. Memories were tied to the reservoir. When the Gideons group, an evangelical Christian association visited our school, they offered Bibles for free with the assumption that the teachings would be available to students who may be seeking hope or a change in their lives. One of the tallest boys in my class threw his copy off the stone bridge into those murky waters. It broke the surface with a satisfying splash, a little red book surrounded by algae and minnows. A pang of guilt washed over me violently, I thought the lapping water and dense mat of sago pondweed would drag me into the depths along with the Bible. Spikes from conker shells ripped my socks and skin on that particular escape. For me, my feet were damned regardless, it wouldn’t have mattered if I wore them to stubs as long as I could get out of there. With hindsight, running to the woodlands would have made for better survival, but I wanted to be nowhere near home.

Megan was a friend from high school who I looked up to, despite my mothers destain. Maths was never my strongest subject, so she asked the teacher if we could use the bathroom at the same time. We left together, she proceeded to whisk me to a bathroom on the other side of school, standing on the sink to light a cigarette and blow smoke from the tiny slit of the window. She offered me strawberry bubblegum, of which she chewed a piece of her own, exhaling into the bubble to watch a puff of smoke pop in a satisfying circle when the gum over-expanded. She made me pinkie swear not to tell. The idea hit me in the adrenaline rush of running away to visit Megan. Never in my life, even since then, have I seen so many crows clustered in one place. Megan’s mother had called my parents, mortified that a grubby child with unkempt hair and bloodied feet had requested for her daughter to play outside. She wasn’t much of a looker herself, doubled over with a strain of thin silver hair dripping over her chest. Hands adorned with crystals and rings, crone-like and weathered with the waft of deep-fat cooking oil, presumably for chips, blaring through the crack of the front door. Soon enough my mother and (at the time) stepfather hoisted me by the collar, a police car pulled up beside them. I remember the officer standing with his arms crossed, leaning one foot against the door of the BMW. No words were spoken during the drive home.

Eventually, the cycle repeated itself. Tea, the smell of smoke, yet this time a plate accompanied with a statement, “I thought you might be hungry.”

“I just want you to be my Happy H-. Just eat half for me, okay? One more mouthful. Sometimes I wonder where my Happy H- has gone.”

Does she see that part of me in the rear-view mirror? Something wild and thrashing was slaughtered years ago. Too unruly and unpredictable, it was easier for me to nod along and stay silent. No longer could the rot bleed out from my pores and affect people and environments around me. We never look in the eyes much. I’m afraid she’ll turn pale staring a ghost in the face. It was a memorable death. After that I never tried. Grades began slipping, interests faded, I tried to keep myself out of the spotlight. Next thing you know you’re in a room sectioned by glass brick windows with a therapist who is more interested in offering biscuits from a tin than coping techniques for depression and generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). My mother showed me an article in the local newspaper. My therapist fired and charged for animal neglect. I could have seen that a mile off. Put a shivering prickly animal in a chair, watch it bear fangs and respond by feeding it stale shortbread.