The Helix

Note:  I have been doing much more story writing than poetry and am putting the first chapter of my new story here - as I find people are unaware of or avoid
the Allstory site.
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My mother hated me all of my life.  In fact, when I was older and understood the basics of conception, I grew to believe that she hated me for even the possibility of inception.  I could visualize my mother's eggs paddling frantically away from my father's sperm. Perhaps the egg hid in corners and
spat and fought back, but she didn't defeat one particular sperm - and thus . . . I am.

Even in minutest infancy I see her pinched face hanging over my cradle, spitting invective.  Her Mum, my Grammy, would whisper to me and cup my head with her tiny hand, and whisper,  "God, you have to take care of this wee one; give me the strength to do for her so Lillibeth won't kill her."

I was born in 19 and 45, as my grandparents would say.  Grammy was a Irish Colleen through and born, and Grandpa would reiterate whatever she said.  Cork, born and bred, sons in the IRA, Grammy came to Canada and then emigrated to the States.  All she had left was Lillibeth, a tiny evil asp who could provoke love in no one - not even her own mother.

What about your father then, you ask.  Good question. Handsome as the devil, illiterate and a bigot to the ends of his toenails, my father saw something in her - or rather, I think, didn't see what was there to see.  He was a prude and my mother was well raised.  At that time in her life she had morals to put him off where "cheap women" would let him kiss them, even fondle.  Personally I don't think she could stand the man and most of her maidenly modesty was a ploy to keep his hands off her.

My mother was in love with some Italian boy.  My Grammy would have none of that. She hated the Catholic church and would never let her child be spoiled by Papist hands. She had her boys to Catholics.  "Carl is a hard worker, Lillibeth. He is a good man."

A hard worker he was, Carl Benson.  Worked in the woods with his brothers, except for Ernest, who was a war hero with a flagpole dedicated to him at the Tillamook post office.  He was dead of course, someplace called Iwo Jima.  We all stood looking at the pole and waiting for the flag to be run up the first time.  Only time I ever saw a tear in my father's eyes.

The Bensons came from Oklahoma.  The O'Bannions from Cork. Grammy had the personality of a fairy  and the quaint quality of the Leprechaun.  Not a bit over four feet, hair a pristine white halo of hair. She was a sight to behold and honest as the day is long.  Never an unkind word passed her tiny lips, which were most always crinkled in a smile.

On dark evenings, as we sat on the porch with cigarettes and the radio I would look from woman to woman and wonder how in God's creation someone as sweet and innocent as my Grammy gave birth to ravening thing like my mother. It was why I didn't believe in God.  Where was the evil that came from my innocent and loving little Grandmother?  When I bore children my daughter became the spitting image of her grandmother, whilst I was a loving and generous girl.