Chapter 5

Chapter 5

My mother loved me just as much.

Her love was different from my father’s, though; hers was deeply internalized, buried in her core.

While my father was away at the mine, it was just my mother and me at home, day in and day out.

She would have me help her with simple chores. She would take me to the mountains behind our home to find a plot of land, looking for spots sheltered from the wind where the coal dust on the ground was thin. If we found a suitable patch, she would have me help her clear it to see if we could get potatoes to grow.

In her heart, I was no different from any of the other children running and playing in the village. I was just a normal, healthy person.

She refused to acknowledge that I had any defects.

She was stubborn, but she didn’t pick fights easily. I can only recall a few times she ever lashed out at the neighbors, and every single time was because they had treated me like a cripple.

“You are a normal person. You’ll face the same hardships everyone else does,” she would say.

“You’ll have the same opportunities everyone else does.”

“God isn’t going to take pity on you just because your hands and feet don’t work right.”

“If you start thinking of yourself as a cripple, then that’s what you’ll truly become.”

I didn’t understand any of this when I was little, and my heart always leaned toward my father. Looking back now, if she hadn’t tirelessly hammered those ideas into me as a child, I never would have made it to college. I never would have found my career path, and I wouldn’t be living a normal life today.

However…

My parents didn’t have a good relationship.

My mother always wanted my father to quit his job so our family could leave the village. If we had enough money, she wanted to buy a small house in the county seat. If we didn’t, she wanted to find another village and start over-farming and selling produce. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t afford my schooling that way.

But my father probably wanted to give me a better life. He wanted to take the whole family south. The economy was better there, and the climate was milder. He wanted to earn more, save more, and leave me with enough of a cushion so that after they were gone, my life wouldn’t be so hard.

So, every time my mother urged him to quit, he would tell her to wait a little longer.

Next year, the year after that, a few more years…

He kept stalling, year after year.

The rift between them grew, the conflicts multiplied, and their affection faded. Eventually, my mother barely spoke to him when he came home. They couldn’t say two words to each other without starting a fight.

My mother would curse him, saying he was no different from the animals at the mine.

But no matter how bad things got between them…

Would my mother really go so far as to kill him?

What was the real truth behind that mining disaster all those years ago?