Holding a cup of cappuccino, sitting in a coffee shop, I looked through the transparent glass. Maybe it’s school dismissal time, so primary school students rushed out of the school and held their mother’s hand tightly. Laughter and joy filled the street. I looked at the warm scenes in front of me and the memories of thirty years ago floated back all of sudden, without advance notice…
I was in a jovial family, with my mother as a perfect housewife and my dad a successful businessman. We had a felicity life that almost everyone admired, until one day…
“Mommy, I’m very hungry. Can you cook faster?” I shouted to the kitchen with a child-like voice, urging mother to finish cooking quickly.
“Honey, it’s almost ready. I’m almost done!” she replied.
“Why don’t you go help mommy?” My father suggested with a smile.
“Okay!” I galloped to the kitchen, yet before I reached it,
“Ah!!!!” My mother screamed loudly. My dad and I rushed into the kitchen, and saw a frying pan on the floor. Oil spilt over mom’s face and she had passed out. We carried her to the hospital hurriedly. After having all first-aid treatment, the doctor said, in an apologetic voice,
“I’m sorry. We’ve done all we can do. Her life is no longer under threat but the scars will follow her in the rest of her life.”
After that accident, my parents’ relationship changed dramatically. My dad even left home with another woman, and I could hear mother weeping every night.
Maybe I was afraid that my classmates would tease me about my mom’s appearance, thus every time when she said she would accompany me home, I rejected her.
One day, I forgot my lunchbox. My mother took it to my classroom. When my classmates saw a woman with a scarred face, they said, lowering their voice, “Don’t tell me this is YOUR mom!”
I replied quickly. “Of…of course not. She’s just my maid…”
One of them even laughed at me, “What? Oh please, even if it’s a maid, you should have chosen a better one, at least with better appearance, man!”
When my mother heard all that, she cried and rushed out of the room. Suddenly, a classmate sitting by the windows screamed, “Oh no! Your maid is hit by a truck!”
At first, I thought it was all a joke, but as I went out of the room, I saw blood. It kept coming out from my mother’s head. I was scared and didn’t know what to do…
The memory button was pressed to stop there. I put down my cup of cappuccino, dried my tears, and went to my mother’s graveyard. I knelt on my mother’s grave and cried for a long time. There’s a photo of my mother with her face full of scars. Without hesitation I asked someone to carve a line of really big words on the grave,
“SHE’S NOT UGLY, SHE IS MY MOTHER.”