Eleven Wishes

• Kriste Martinez, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

I was only 8 when she was diagnosed. Mama was frail and white as a sheet. Her auburn hair was replaced by a sort of turban as she, in her words, didn't want to blind people with her lustrous scalp. I knew she was beginning to feel insecure and was just trying to cover it up with bittersweet humour. Mama used to always be happy.

"When are you coming back home?" I asked through pained breaths. I'd missed her voice echoing lively around the house despite it eventually becoming infuriating from demands of chore completion. "Soon, baby," she replied in a weak and terribly raspy voice, but soon never came and I felt an overwhelming guilt for all the times I'd ignored my jobs and left her to tend to it.

We were a mess without her. Daddy held a strong façade, his blue eyes darker than ever. He looked at Mama's sickly body with tubes surrounding it like it meant nothing to him. I never understood why he masked his emotions and for that, I hated him.

We had spent countless hours in and out of the hospital, an unfathomable amount of money that gave us false hope, and a sea of futile tears. Nothing worked and cancer took over.

I turned 11 on that day I last saw Mama smile. I blew my cake's candles. A wish for each candle and every single one of them was to cure my mother. "Baby, I have a wish too. Promise me you'll take care of Daddy and your little brother," I nodded ever so slowly against the tightening in my chest that engulfed me. She smiled. Mama had suffered 3 long years of agony and unsuccessful treatments. She knew it was her time to go.

I reminisced the times she'd helped me through my predicaments and how she was able to console me despite me being mad at her. I could confide in her completely. She'd given and taught me everything. So that day, I had my loneliest birthday.

None of my wishes had worked.

Dean, my brother, wasn't able to do anything apart from stare at her motionless body on that cursed hospital bed. He was only 4 at the time. So when that monitor beeped and the doctors took our mother away, it killed me when he asked, "Where's Mama going?"

Tears suddenly flowed out of me like a river. I felt suffocated. I screamed out and gasped for air. I was never going to see her again. Mama was gone and she wasn't coming back.

Dean burst in tears along me as he asked again in broken yells, "Where's Mama going, Lanny!"

My heart throbbed and I wasn't able to answer. Father stood stiff and solemn in the corner of the room with tears that sparkled with sadness. I could finally tell he was hurt. We all were and we could do nothing but accept it.

Mama, wherever you are now, I love you.

Goodbye.