Mafia

My mother was a shy woman, especially about her sex life. When she had it out she did it with the bizarre knowledge that it had to be done in secret. But she was always crushed because the husbands made violent love to her. But she also liked to share her experiences with us children.

We lived in digs in London.

Remarking that it was a husband. There was a glazed expression on her face. She did not love her husband she said but when he arrived he was welcome. He did not arrive much and he left soon.

Shops on Fridays are on credit like the rest of the week. Then she wept as she was denied creditability that she would be acceptable as a creditor. She had no intention of paying because so much on the tick.

Her good-for-nothing husband?

He never came home for him to be welcome. Her penury was a puss in her boot. She disliked that. She asked to be rich. So that she could become the ladylike woman who got on well.

At nuptials said it was not allowed. Allowances had been made to her. She was this poor Zeks who had it rough because her husband kept on being a cruel man a bully a man who was a beast.

But mum loved a woman. You all now think you got it bad in the old days the worse thing was to be gay. Mum disapproved even of herself. But she could not help loving her loved one.

She did indeed she was a woman who disliked her husband and hated him interfering with her. But that was married for you. One had to count the cost.

And she did. He did not want anything but to be nearby to pay off credit companies and the landlord. Hire purchase orders were bills that she paid and then wept when there was no money left.

When he paid he was told she was too busy. She disliked him because he a fool for paying.

He on the other hand hated her to such an extent he would leave her on her own. She would wail in the knowledge that she would fall flat on her back again earning her keep satisfying men who were after her dear body.

So she just sat there crying all the time.

"The best years of my life with this."

When she refused to wear make-up she was done for. Her knowledge said she was past all that. She was twenty-seven. Still young but she said it was over for her.

She would never accept charity and disliked the thought of her family knowing she did the stuff she did. So she said shush.

She was grown up and older she was now dignified as a wife and a mother but not a woman.

Her good family her dearest nieces would be shocked by her plight. They would have been if they had not been having such fun. She shed tears for their innocence. She just hated them to know. They came bearing gifts and we never told.

They must have seen the dinky do and the lack of warmth but mother always put the fire on when they were coming and did a spot of cleaning oh this place was only temporary.

Does she have the will to move me forward why is she still on my mind making me speak about her tormented life? Because I promised her I would write a whole book or two about her life.

"Don't let my life be a waste." She pleaded.

I had been startled then but over the years her yearning to be heard matters to me.

She had been robbed of her inheritance by my father. He had become the venom in her life. He had robbed her of her virtue he had robbed her of her childhood and she asked me to listen to what he had done.

"I don't blame us all for being who we were. It was just that Gold was into young nephew and so dad had me."

She had become a go-go topless dancer in a nightclub because of him.

The young nephew had had sex with her when she had been eight. He had become the worse man in the kingdom pretending kindness and masking that which she had been. Her dad was seconded as always but she loved him the best.

She had been an heir to some land that he had wanted he conned his way to their house and robbed them of everything. Caused rows and dissent and made their lives a misery.

The creditor haunted her hounding her even to England and eventually to her death.

Her mother's affair with Ali caused her to bring up the age-old difficulties between age and old. What had happened? The mother had been fooled. Ali collected most of their land and fortune and swept her into whoredom.

"Go and dance."

Mother did.

Ali then said he was still owed land for all his troubles.

"What happened to the house?"

"It is falling down bit by bit. It is in need of resources that I do not now have. The land was taken from under me as if I a mere nothing."

"Law." Said Z.

"In Cyprus?"

"No law in there and no law here." She added in contempt.

Z went and sat alone as her mother wept. She was always crying.

"In this world"? Mother was so used to saying the worst that she did not know that the children were too young. I was the oldest child.

"We make our own laws."

"As I am able to lift this thing up I am the law. The strongest wins."

She was assuming that we were adults in there. I silenced my doubts. Did feed the kids and asked the mother if she needed something. She shook with the rage of it all. Why was she so shaken I wondered if it was only a story was it not?

"Killers everywhere." She said in bliss, " and no one to kill me."

"I know what that is like a game?"

"You do not want to know." Z and B looked at each other and laughed.

"Yes, it was." Jeered mother. Her lips had that awkwardness as if she was about to cry. There was something so akin to the paintings of suffering in the chapel of the church in the school I used to go to.

"Ouch, I am suffocating here." She said and said and there was nothing but said.

Like the mother and the virgin and all that, I thought she was going to be a common woman. I think they must have been common in the old days. I got confused.

For mother said I was a virgin birth.

The quake happened and her lover is known now as a brother. People forget they do not understand memory is what one is told daily.

"He ruined me." She said but how did father ruin her?

Her brother the brother of Satan more. He came under various disguises disgusting perversions and they were engaged when she was fourteen. But she was caught out again. She was nearly sent to jail for something she had not done. Stealing is wrong she said.

But the wristwatch was filled with diamonds and rubies.

Her lover had such fun and then he fled. People are so bad rumors spread I was an outcast.

In a small town, one smell can cause outbreaks of diseases and disasters. I smelled.

"Your daughter is such a disaster." Shouted dad as he screwed her. He lived off her. Spent her. Did away with her.

"I am all used up old now." She said.

"He told me he has no more use for me."

"Who mum?" I asked.

"Oh, you fool."

"Don't trust men they say one is finished when they finish with you."

"Why mother what is the matter with you why was the man your brother such a monster?"

"He then said I was ugly."

"I am sorry who told you that mother?"

"He. Never mind."

"Mother?"

"Too young I shouldn't have told you."

"Forget about it. Just forget."

"Is the pain really bad?"

"Spent my life thinking how to do something and when the opportunity knocks there is nothing I can do."

"What is it, mother?"

"I know." Said B and she did know she was a brilliant little baby.

"Fiddlesticks how would you know you are barely enough like a doll."

"But I do know." Sighed B.

"Both of you leave this room."

"Why?"

"Because I asked you too."

"Come let us play at emptying the potty."

"That game again?" asked B.

"Yes?"

"Well, I always run faster than you do."

"No you don't." She said running so fast.