You Too Can Have a Mother like Mine

by Helena Pantsis

The yeasty-warm kitchen suffocates my senses: bread baking, hot and real, in the womb of the oven. I mixed Kalamata olives into the dough to please the salt yearning of my Mediterranean stomach and can see them bleeding out in ochre-green patches on the surface of the dough, skin light and crisp like my own.

“That smells delicious,” Maureen says from her seat beside my father.

She has been my honorary mother since Mum died. She's more like Dad than I'm used to a woman being. Mum couldn’t stand the taste of olives, too briny for the tongue. She tuts in my ear.

My mother’s ghost hovers beside me. She doesn’t say a thing, she never does, but I can feel her judgment weighing me down. She's lurked in this house ever since her body was burned. It's been two years. I keep her in an urn on my dresser, a pretty porcelain jar with her initials embossed on the top. But she refuses to stay there. I wanted her here so I'd have a part of her with me, but ever since the haunting began, I've begun to wish for less of her than there ever was to start with.

I came back home to live with Dad when she died, neither of us wanting to be alone. He moved on quicker than me, Maureen moving in with us a year back now. I wonder why Mum never haunted Dad. I suppose she never minded him replacing her.

She emerges in a crescendoing breeze, frameless but obvious. She cannot be seen, but like being stalked, I feel the watchful eye like searing sun on a bare white back. When we sit at the table at dinner, my mother sits on top of Maureen.

“Is anyone else cold?” Maureen asks.

Mum watches my every move. She wants me to remember she is there, but I don't understand how she thinks I could forget. She is always there.

My understanding of ghosts was once that they appeared only when they had unfinished business. I've since learned this isn't true, they can simply decide not to leave. I think what keeps my mother here is the remaining symptoms of her comorbid condition of motherhood. No matter how I tell her I'll be just fine on my own, she refuses to let me alone. There are few groups more difficult to reason with than mothers, and even fewer so to bargain with than the dead.

I stare into the blaring red of the oven. The bread wrestles to life, rising, crisp and cracking, so the smell of rosemary floods out. My mother scoffs.

“I can't wait for you to try it,” I say to Maureen.

She smiles. I feel my mother reach through me and squeeze. My organs flinch.

Of course I didn't initially believe I was in the presence of a ghost—I was skeptical to say the least. I saw a psychiatrist whom my GP had recommended. They wouldn't medicate me since grief had made itself distinct from depression in the DSM-5, and even with these episodes of psychosis they prescribed sleep, exercise, and a balanced diet instead.

Maureen and I did yoga, Dad and I went together for morning runs, and together we went meat-free. But my mother wouldn't leave me no matter how fast I ran or how many carrots I ate. If anything I think it made her more determined to stay, so I sought help elsewhere.

It isn't easy to find a legitimate medium. More often than not they exploit the miserable by feigning a public service: comfort and closure. I wasn't miserable as such, merely irritated, so none of their sympathetic hogwash cleansed me of the ghost on my arm. 

Finally, a medium was able to communicate with my mother, looking her straight in the eyes where I knew she'd be standing.

“She doesn't want to go,” the medium said. “She wants you to ask yourself: Do I haunt you? Or do I guide you?”

It was my mother, to be sure. Only she would be so self-involved as to believe her eternal helicopter parenting was a gift not to be overlooked.

“Why me? Why not Dad?” I looked to the medium.

“She says,” the medium hesitated, listening to my mother's dead mouth, “every child needs their mother.”

I felt too embarrassed to remind the medium I was no longer a child.

I decided to take the matter into my own hands. I looked for exorcists, Googling far and wide for anyone who could rid me of her spirit, which, like the seams of a cloth, seemed to be weaving itself to my soul, weighing down my lifeblood by leeching it in death.

The oven dings. I open the door, letting the warmth smack into me like a wall. With mitts I remove the freshly cooked bread, allowing it to cool on a marble cutting board Maureen bought. Dad turns a page in the newspaper he’s reading. Mum tries to slide the bread onto the floor.

I ended up in a Catholic church despite my Orthodox origins. A priest who could exorcise spirits informed me that neutral entities couldn't be gotten rid of, otherwise they would be damned to an eternity in hell despite their good intentions. I regretted then revealing that the ghost was my own mother. I should've said it was a demon, maybe the stuck would've unstuck. Lucky for me WikiHow had an article for everything.

I burned some sage, said some obscure prayers, begged my mother to leave of her own accord. She had so many names, I never knew what to call her. She was so many things to so many different people. Maybe that was the reason the prayers didn’t work. How can you rid yourself of a woman you don’t know what to call?

My mother emerged as trapped breath, fogging the windows like a spider under a glass.

“Are you so lonely?” I asked her, but got nothing in response.

When she's mad she likes to pour herself into my mug. I drink her up, mistaking her pale liquid form for water or milk. Then she squirms, writhing around in my stomach.

I take a sip and feel her tickle my gullet, tugging my uvula so I gag. It's a punishment for trying to get rid of her. In return I bite into a slice of warm, salty olive bread. She pops right out, repulsed by the taste, the smell, the texture.

I don’t think my mother ever intends on leaving, and maybe it’s not such a bad thing. I love that woman, even as things are. If she wasn’t so afraid to admit she was scared of being forgotten, we might get along. I suppose you too can have a mother like mine, if she is dead, and you are alive, and you are a daughter like me. 

***

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is a writer, student, and artist from Naarm, Australia. A full-time student of creative writing, they have a fond appreciation for the gritty, the dark, and the experimental. Her works have been published in Overland, Island, Going Down Swinging, and Meanjin. More can be found at hlnpnts.com. Social media: @hlnpnts on Instagram and Twitter