She, the living God, and ‘was’ – the condition of being past – a tense that is refused, and Elena worships her, calling her Mother, Mum or Ma:
– ‘Nothing will happen to me’, her mother says in a trembling voice.
– ‘But Ma, what if you had an accident?’ Elena asked, Ma was the name she most preferred.
Unsaid; the possibility of her death, because her mother is in poor health, overweight with a weak heart and mothering them all exhausts her. Mothering, not only the four children she has given birth to herself, and her own own mother, Elena’s grandmother, but also the others, her two half-brothers, and their children, the cousins and the whole extended family, and her children’s friends and their families, caring and loving them all, and they all love her too so that it is impossible for anyone to hear her say – I am Ma, and one day I will die.
– ‘ You don’t understand the pain I am in,’ she says instead to Elena, ‘it is worse than giving birth’. Her unlined face breaks into a radiant smile.
Elena drew closer – ‘Oh Ma’, she said extending both hands towards her.
– ‘Please don’t come near me, darling, I smell horrible’, her mother says. These are the words the Gods use when they begin to die. This is now the end of the living feast she has prepared for her daughter and it is beautiful as far as the eye can see.
But for Elena it will always be betrayal.
mmj