Momma

		Momma.
	She gave God permission to

create the universe, then she ruled it
from her living room throne. From

there, she barked her orders with a
voice that was known to make bats fall

from the sky, and her son scurried to
obey, lest the wrath of Momma fall upon

him.

	He played in quiet. He didn't
want Momma to hear him and

decide he
was having too much fun. He tip-toed
around the house, being very

careful
not to touch anything, but accidents
have an evil way of

happening.

	Crash. Horror. A lamp lay
shattered. A voice shook the

foundations of the house, demanding to
know what broke. He felt the tremors

of
 footsteps coming nearer.

	The sun burned out, darkness
covered the

Earth. Momma appeared, her
shadow covered the boy.

	She was enormous. She was

everywhere. She was the mountain known
as Momma. Her head was snowcapped,

pine
 trees grew down her back, and a goat
was perched precariously on her

shoulder.
	Of course, the lamp was her
favorite. All things, once

broken, were
 her favorites.
	Her screaming killed a nearby
geranium, but

the boy survived it,
wishing he was as weak as a plant.
 Soon, he was bent over

her lap, his
bare bottom an easy target as she
raised the belt strap above her

head.

	Afterwards, he hid behind a
bush in the back yard, crying, but he

wasn't safe, even there. God was an
agent of Momma. She had convinced the

boy that the angry God waited on a
purple cloud with a lightning bolt in
his

fist, waiting for some hapless lad
to talk bad  about his loving mother.

The boy never talked bad. He
simply cried.

		Momma.
	She

demanded excellence from
her son, the boy genius. Anything less
than perfection

resulted in punishment.

	The boy walked home, with paper-
evil heavy in his

back-pack. It was a
report card that his Momma had to sign,
 or the teacher would

call the house.

	If Momma ever got a call from
school, it meant

blood-loss.

	The boy genius had made an
unprecedented accomplishment this

time.
 In his mind, he heard Momma slowly
reading aloud his grades as her anger

mounted. "F. F. F. F. F."

	Uck.

	Maybe he would be lucky this

time and get the wooden spoon.

	It hurt less than the belt.

Momma.
	From her living room throne she
 passed judgment on all mankind,

dividing them into two groups of good
and bad; Nice People and No-Teeth

People.
	The boy stumbled into puberty
with all the grace of a rat on a hot

frying pan. He perfected the art of
noiseless masturbation, but even still,

every orgasm was over-shadowed by the
fear that his Momma would hear him and

discover his sin. The worry never left
him, even if he masturbated in the

shower and scrubbed the tub afterwards.
He dreaded the unholy vengeance that

Momma would take if she ever found out.
 The boy was convinced that the Devil

was whispering in her ear, "Do you know
what your son is doing?"

Along with his fascination for
masturbation, came a hitherto unheard
of interest

in girls. He began to
notice the blossoming breasts of his
female classmates, and

for reasons
unknown to him, he wanted them. He had
no idea what he would do if he

had
them, but his desire went unquestioned.

	His wandering eyes never

wandered far from a girl with black hair, who would giggle at him with a
silver

smile. Egad, there's beauty in
braces! She commanded his lust with her
 black

hair and
her black eyes and beautiful braces and
her blossoming breasts.

He did his best to conceal his
crush, but Momma somehow knew. She
explained to

him in a voice that only a
paper shredder could envy that she was
Puerto Rican,

and her family was poor,
and her father drank, and her mother
dyed her hair red,

and they lived in a
bad neighborhood, and she was Puerto
Rican, and they were

greasy dirty
people, and her father was a garbage
man, and their house was

furnished with
garbage, and her mother didn't speak
English very well, and she

was Puerto
Rican, and therefore, she was No-Teeth
People.
	The boy listened

and nodded and
didn't dare talk to the black-haired
girl again, for his Momma

forbade it.

	But secretly, the boy knew the
 girl couldn't be No-Teeth

People. Her
teeth were merely hidden behind
beautiful braces that made her smile

seem silver.

		Momma.
	She dressed her son the way a

boy ought to be dressed, and any
mothers who dressed their sons
differently

were No-Teeth People.
	Unfortunately for the boy, the
clothes a boy ought to

be dressed in
went out of style when a leech was
still a doctor's best friend.

	High School is a miserable
place for a boy who can't find friends

among peers, and his ancient garb
alienated him, and acted as an
effective

barrier against
socialization.
	He finally found some courage
hidden in a

corner of his heart, and he
confronted Momma on the wardrobe issue.

	But his

Momma worked hard to
put the clothes on his back, and how
could he be such an

ingrate? And if he
didn't like his clothes, which Momma
washed for him, he could

go to school
naked.
	Which would it be? Eternal
humiliation or the

righteous
retribution of Momma against her
rebellious son?
	The next day, the

children
laughed at his clothes again.

		Momma.
She was in

control of all things,
always. She dictated to her son what
was right and what

was wrong, and
allowed her son an opinion only when it
matched her own. Any other

way of
thinking was showing disrespect for
Momma's feelings, a mortal sin.

She realized that when he went
to school, her son was being exposed to
things she

had no control of, and it
worried her. When he asked her if he
could go to a

concert, she flatly
refused.
	How could he not see the logic?
 There were

drugs there, and criminals.
 Only No-Teeth People listened to that
kind of music,

anyway. He could get
mugged, kidnapped, or killed. It wasn't
 worth the risk, and

was therefore out
of the question.
	Momma relaxed when her son
walked

away dejectedly, without even an
 argument. Another battle won.
	But when her son

didn't return
home the night of the concert, she sat
up all night by the front

door,
waiting. She would glance at her watch
occasionally and stroke the worn

leather strap she clutched tightly in
her fist.
	A car pulled up, stopped,

and
then pulled away, having unloaded its
cargo: One Wayward Son.
	When he

opened the door, he
knew she would be there. Immediately,
the screaming began.

She told him to
turn around and face his punishment.
She waved the belt in the

air while she
 hollered her foul curses.
	Force of habit almost made the

boy submit, but somehow, he fought the
urge. He looked at his Momma

objectively as she yelled like a
lunatic. He realized she was no longer
the

mountainous Momma she used to be, in fact, the boy was now taller than
the Momma.

But Momma still saw the child
when she saw her son, and she tried to
hit her son

with the leather strap. The
boy promptly took it away from her.

	For the

first time in a long
time, Momma was speechless. The boy
celebrated with a good

night's sleep.

		Momma.
	She paid for college out of the

goodness of her heart, provided she
could wield those bills as a weapon to

control her son. She wouldn't pay for a
 dorm room, so the boy was forced to

commute. If he stepped out of line, she
 threatened to yank his funding.

By making her son commute, she
was able to save him from the bad
influences of

campus life, such as
drugs, alcohol, loose women, and no-
good friends.

Momma saw the rebelliousness in
him growing, and she didn't know how to
stop it,

except by threatening him. But
 when she thought back, he was a rebel
even as a

little boy, when he would
break her favorite things on purpose.

	One of

Momma's greatest fears
was that he would start dating, and
some floozy would

ruin him. No one had
the right to warp his weak mind,
barring only Momma. But,

despite her
best efforts, she knew it was happening.
	He tried to hide from

her. He
tried to convince her that he was going
 to the library, but Momma could

detect
a lie with an ease that was eerie.

	She followed him one afternoon

to the doorstep of a house where No-
Teeth Mexicans lived, and to her
horror,

she saw a Mexican whore emerge
from the den of filth and defile her
pure son with

her putrid lips.
	A cry of rage announced her
presence, and she grabbed her son

by
the ear and led him off, shouting
obscene oaths that made the Devil's

ears bleed.
	When the boy moved out of her
house the next day, she

retaliated by
announcing that she would no longer pay
for college. It annoyed her

a great
deal when her son took out a student
loan and got a job.
	Momma was

sure that he would be
back as soon as he realized how tough
the real world could

be, but in the
mean time, she was alone in the house
that was her kingdom for the

first time
in years. She had a private cry, and
every time a tear hit the living

room
throne, she wondered what went wrong,
raising the boy.

Momma.

She tried everything in her
power to show the boy the error of his
ways, but her

once vast control had
slipped away, and was vanishing
entirely. Momma was

convinced that it
was the Mexican Whore's fault.
	The Mexican Whore had

driven a
rift between her and her son, and that
was unforgivable. She called the

boy
daily, begging him not to go through
with the wedding, imploring him to see

her for the No-Teeth People that she
really was, but the boy would have
none.

He was completely brainwashed.
	When Momma appeared at the
wedding and

publicly disowned her son
and predicted that the marriage
wouldn't last a year,

she was confident
that her son would come crawling back,
begging for her

forgiveness. Maybe she
would even let him move back in.
	As Momma grew older and

her
health deteriorated, she was still firm
 in her belief that her son would

return as soon as his marriage failed.

	She was still waiting.

Any day now.
		Momma.
	She knew that there would be a
great

period of mourning when she died,
 and dozens of people wearing black
would weep

for her.
	The thought of so much misery
made her smile as she passed away,

alone in her kingdom.

		Momma.
	She was buried underneath

a
tombstone with no epitaph, only her
name and the years that she lived.

Only her son came to watch her
body being lowered into the ground. He
remembered

her sitting on her living
room throne, and he imagined her
sitting on a golden

throne in Hell,
barking orders to the Devil, and
watching him scurry to

obey.

		Momma.
Though her grip was gone, the marks
from her nails

?remained.
	The happy marriage was
interrupted occasionally by arguments,
 as

all marriages are, but the boy had
rarely been on the winning side of an

argument. His beautiful Mexican wife,
whom he loved, would scream at him,

much the way Momma did... too much the
way Momma did. An overwhelming desire

to shut her up before she turned into
Momma resulted in a raised hand and a

smack across the mouth, followed by
silence.
	...
	And then, "I'm

sorry."

	But the bride cried. The man
vowed never again to strike his wife,

and kept his vow.

	Until the next time his wife
raised her voice, and

the shrill
accusations brought forth a memory of
Momma, and he had to beat her

back into
 the grave.