“Wake up, you idiot! Do you know what time is it?”
Mama screamed as if whole neighborhood has been razed by fire and I was the only cretin left behind. No, she is not miles away from me trying to get my attention. In fact she is just beside my bed thinking I was feigning sleep and just too lazy to get up. This is her normal way of expressing herself: shouting. Imagine if she is upset. I am used to her megaphone voice but I was jolted from a really deep sleep. I slept late that night because I vowed to finish the thick and dark The Brothers Karamazov; plus I had recurring nightmares of Grushenka. I was terribly annoyed that I could shove my pillow into her mouth for disturbing my slumber but I could not do it because well, she is my mother and we suppose to loooove and respect our dear mothers.
For as long as I can remember, my mother wakes up before sunrise regardless of the time she slept that night. To wake before the sun is up or we will be left behind was her constant reminder. This is one thing she always pound on us which we ignored with delight. We found it senseless to wake up so early on weekends. We attribute this obsession to her being raised during the famine where they had to work hard and pine for relief coming from the government in order to survive.
I have always been afraid of my mother more than my father. In the world of male chauvinism and women discrimination, she was never the submissive and the martyr type. Looking back, I could not imagine how she managed to raise seven little devils. She has balls the size of Jupiter. She is so much involved in us to the point of controlling our lives. In her own words: I know better. She hardly pinched or whipped but her mouth was her most potent weapon. If the invectives she spews could kill, maybe she should have been indicted for genocide together with Milosevic. My father, the seven of us her children, our neighbors, my fathers’ relatives, drivers, sales ladies are the unsuspecting objects of her daily wrath.
“Hey, get up, lazy boy. Get your ass off to the table, or you’ll be eating my goddamned fist for breakfast”.
I play dead. I did not move and I tried to doze off for a few more minutes.
“If I come up again and you didn’t fix your bed yet. We all know what will happen,” She warned.
She moved out of my room. I heard her going downstairs. It was followed by the incessant whistling of the kettle, the clangs of the utensils and our radio in full volume. I know she does this on purpose. She has a singular talent of annoying people and she does it with great panache. She never stops until you yield.
The arias of discordant noises were killing me softly. I dragged my carcass out of my magnet bed and crawled downstairs or ill be the object of Beelzebub’s wrath again. I gobble a pandesal then leisurely swill my coffee.
“Move you ass off. Go fetch water. Take a bath or well be late for the first mass,’ she growled.
Its Sunday and it its time for that a-family-that-prays-together-stays-together thing. I hate Sundays. I never liked mass. One, I could not handle the torture of boring sermon. Two, I want to slither away from my mother's long cherished religion.
“I won’t go to mass,” I drawled
“Say that again?”
She puffed a cloud of smoke. She crushed her half-finished cigarette into the ashtray with her long manicured fingernails. I saw smoke coming from her nostrils.
“You heard me.”
I cowered behind the table, anticipating 1000 lashes.
I know this is not the proper time to discuss but I figured I am no longer a young boy who should be told to do the do the proper thing. I thought its time I should stand up for my own convictions.
I was 18 then, young and intoxicated with a great dose of philosophy of Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Feuerback and I wanted to declare with sheer arrogance my personal angst, my profound understanding of life and the world. If they do not understand me, it does not matter. I was then a member of an underground organization who believes in an alternative view of life. We spent most of our time discussing Jacques Derrida and Bertrand Russell and humanistic philosophy. Often we shock people with our Weltanschauung. We look down upon those who do not share our views as the docile herd- unfeeling and unthinking. We loathe with passion the unfeeling… the unthinking.
“I do not have any religion. I am an atheist.”
“A… what?” her thin penciled eyebrows went to orbit.
She was probably thinking I was using metaphor. But the thought of that soft sweet fruit having numerous black seeds confused her.
“I do not believe in God any more!”
I wanted to quote Nietzsche: “The death of god is the birth of a superman; the new enlightened man who would trample upon the feeble Christian values.” Not believing in God will bring about a newer and higher phase of human history. The superman will be the highest form of human evolution.
Or Jean Paul Sartre: Man is the creator for his essence alone. Without god he will rely on his strengths, he will work his ass off. He will not depend on some divine intervention. Religion is the biggest impediment for man to achieve his own potential. It makes man docile and weak.
Or Ludwig Feuerback: Religion is an instrument of established power to perpetuate its influence by permanently incapacitating those who fight against it. It is a form of social control.
Long pause and then…
“Ayeeeeee!”
My mother shouted in a way that could wake up the dead. Then she fainted.
