The Saints Of Mibba

Thirteen years. Four months. One week. Six days.

That’s how long it was since she left to be an angel. All those days and I’ve been counting; truth be told, I still am. It still drives me crazy to this day that I never knew her, but then, how could I? Only seven months prior I had been born. Too little, too naïve, to understand what it meant when she wasn’t coming home, I was content knowing I had a bottle of warm milk when I went to bed.

But regardless, on September 13th, 1994, Angela Marie Nash passed away. The only one of my biological parents that I actually had left had passed away.

Growing up, there was a little wooden end table with cabinets underneath. Always it sat beside the couch, and always we were told never to open it. We all lived with my biological aunt, though I had learned to call her mom. She had adopted me after all, if not my other two sisters and my brother, she adopted me. They still lived with her though, and our uncle as well, and were scolded just as bad as I when they tried to open up the small cabinets and see what was inside.

We never questioned the facts that we were told about our mother’s death. We were told simply that she was killed. Never had we been given details. All we really had of her was the picture that stood collecting dust on the bookshelf where she seemed happy and carefree, and the occasional mention that my sisters and I greatly resembled her.

Curiosity overtook me, and when I was six, inquisitiveness was often hard to control. I’d wait until I thought nobody was looking and swing open the tiny wooden doors, pulling out the one item that lay behind them. A photo album.

But not just any, this photo album held pictures and new clippings that I couldn’t decipher. The pictures were enough though, because I knew from that my mother was beautiful, gorgeous. I would look at them until I heard ominous footsteps, and then at once I would close the book and shove it back inside its dark and forbidden cave.

Never once did I get in trouble until I was older. It was maybe four years later, and for a while in between those four years, I gradually lost interest in trying to learn about my mother. After all, I had a ‘mom’ and a ‘dad’, what more did I need? They loved me like I was their own, so naturally I treated them like they were my biological parents.

Once, though, by chance I happened to go on a visit to my great grandma Mary’s house. She was a sweet old lady, but she could be bitter. I remember walking in on that day to the musty smell of Avon perfume and dust. It never bothered me because I had become accustomed to it, the trips I made there becoming more periodic as I grew older.

She always asked me to clean for her, and as her grand-daughter, I had to oblige. The one favor she asked of me though was to clean out an ever familiar little end table that had gone with her when she moved. I did as told, and wasn’t surprised when I came across that same old photo album. I was better at reading now, and since she was in the living room I took the opportunity to look at the newspaper clippings from Florida, 1994.

The words appalled me, I knew she was gone but they were brutal. Murder, homicide, and rape on every page was all I could see. I was lost in a daze, unaware of what to do with this newfound information. Just as it started to register, I received a sharp glare and yell from my grandmother, who just happened to walk in as I flipped to that page.

She said they printed lies, that I was too young to understand it all. But I did, more than she knew. And I knew what had happened now.

Angela Marie Nash was raped and killed by a drug dealer in Winterhaven, Florida. My mom.

To this day, those words still echo inside of me. Worse than that, though, is the fact that my great grandma said she deserved it. She had said, plain as day, that my mother was a whore and she deserved what she got.

Later in my years I had come to find part of what she had said to be true. My mother was indeed extremely promiscuous. That’s why I didn’t know my biological father.

It was because she didn’t either. Still today I have no clue who I came from, but I am aware that I am merely the creation of a one night stand. I have long since come to terms with the fact that the only reason I am here is not because two people loved each other, but simply because some drunken idiot forgot a condom, nothing more.

There was no love from my biological parents’ relationship, just drunken lust and infatuation, if even that. And it kills me inside to know that my father could be anyone that was in southern Florida in 1994. If there was ever a chance for me to find out who he was, it has long since passed. Some questions are always going to linger though.

Do I look like him? Do I act like him? Will I grow up to be like him?

Some things I’ll never know, and maybe it’s for the better that I didn’t know either of my parents. I’ve grown bitter toward the thought of ever meeting him after this though. Every day, though, my ‘dad’ tries to take the place of a biological parent that he’s never going to be for me. It’s like a blank void that he can’t fill. Nobody can fill it.

This would be the story of the creation of a one night stand.
This would be the story of the person that wouldn't be here had someone remembered a condom.
This is my story.
And I've learned to accept it.