Thrown Away by My Own Mother

1: 1

Mom said my brother, born in the city, was the smart one, and I, born in the countryside, was the fool.

In grade school I brought home an award certificate. My brother didn't.

Mom muttered to herself:

That can't be right.

The next day at school, my workbooks were gone, and I had to stand in the corner all day.

When I got home, the only explanation was one line:

"Mom's been decluttering."

After that, I was always losing things.

Study notes, award certificates, my exam admission ticket.

Every time I asked her, she only said:

"I'm decluttering."

When the college admissions exam scores were posted, I was the state's top scorer.

Mom said nothing. She looked at my brother's final-exam total of 186 across all subjects, and sank into thought.

I thought Mom had changed.

Instead, right before the semester started, my college acceptance letter went missing.

Mom said:

"I'm decluttering. I threw out all the useless things."

Everything of mine was useless.

So, Mom, am I a useless thing too?

...

I start school tomorrow, and my acceptance letter is gone.

I knocked on her bedroom door:

"Mom, I'll be more useful once I'm in college."

"Could you"

Before I could finish, Mom picked up her car keys and walked out.

She didn't glance at me once. She slammed the door hard behind her.

Watching her back, I swallowed the rest of my words.

Could you give me back my acceptance letter?

Once I'm useful, could you spare me even a little of your attention?

The first day Mom said she was decluttering, I looked the word up online:

Throw out the useless things to make life lighter.

So Mom threw out my textbooks and my homework because my things were useless?

If one day I became useless, would Mom throw me out too?

I tried to make myself useful.

But after I became first in my grade, she threw out even more.

Mom thought I was useless, so I would be a little more useful.

Then maybe she'd give my acceptance letter back.

I started cleaning the house.

I wiped the tables three times and mopped the floors three times.

I scrubbed all of my brother's sneakers, and organized Mom's makeup too.

I cleaned every window and watered all the potted plants.

When I finished, I crouched by the door and waited for Mom to come home.

The sky outside went dark, and she still hadn't picked my brother up from his tutoring class.

A part of me envied him.

Since third grade, Mom had stopped picking me up from school.

That day it was pouring rain. On the way home, Mom asked me my midterm score.

Carefully, I answered. Ninety-nine.

Then she asked my brother. Sixty-two.

Mom slammed on the brakes, her face cold, and said to me:

"Get out."

I gripped the straps of my backpack:

"Mom, I'll get a perfect score next time, I promise."

Mom pulled over to the side of the road, got out, and opened the back door.

She grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the car.

The rain was coming down hard, and I was soaked the moment I was out the door.

I begged her, crying:

"Mom, I'll get a perfect score next time, I promise. Don't leave me here."

In the struggle, Mom's bracelet fell off.

My brother had braided it by hand, and Mom always wore it.

I crouched down and picked it up.

When I looked up, Mom was starting the car.

I ran to the window and stood on my toes to knock on it:

"Mom, your bracelet fell off."

Mom didn't hear. The car shot forward, and I was left behind on the roadside.

I scrambled up and ran after it:

"Mom, your bracelet fell, do you still want it?"

The car went faster and faster, and I couldn't keep up.

Tears mixed with the rain.

Mom, do you still want me?

I held my backpack against my chest so the textbooks and test papers wouldn't get wet.

But by the time I got home, the books had turned to pulp.

"If you hadn't picked up the bracelet your brother made, I'd be done having you as a son from this day on."

"If you ask me, you're the one in this house that most needs decluttering. Go live with whoever you want!"

I stood there in my soaked clothes, clutching my backpack, at a loss.

"Country-born, all right. Your own head doesn't work, fine, but you have to drag other people down too!"

"From now on you get yourself to and from school. Don't count on me to pick you up!"

"Better yet, let some trafficker snatch you off the street. One less headache for me!"

2: 2

I remembered the way home. No trafficker ever snatched me off the street.

It was just that no matter how hard I studied for a perfect score, no matter how useful I made myself, Mom would never spare me a second glance.

When I judged the time was about right and stood up, my legs had gone numb from crouching so long.

I'd made a whole table of food.

Mom loved garlic-butter shrimp and green salad.

My brother loved braised pork and egg tarts.

I had just carried the last dish out when Mom and Max came home.

Mom kept smiling and chatting with him, never once looking at me.

I edged closer, careful:

"Mom, I made dinner for you and Max."

She looked at the loaded table as if seeing it for the first time.

"Elijah, who told you to waste all this food?"

"Haven't I said I'm decluttering? Why do you keep making garbage for me?"

"You didn't actually think I'd be touched, did you?"

I didn't know what to do with my hands.

"It's not garbage."

"I figured you probably hadn't eaten yet, so I made some of the things you like."

Slap!

Mom's hand landed across my face.

"You figured? You wasted all these groceries on a feeling?"

"Have you studied yourself stupid?"

Max looked at the red mark on my face and clapped, laughing.

"Mom took me out for seafood today. One king crab costs eight hundred and eighty-eight dollars, and I ate four in one sitting."

"Hey! Eli, why's your nose all red? You look like a clown!"

He ran up to the table and started flinging the dishes like frisbees.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Take that, clown!"

I couldn't dodge fast enough. Sauce splashed all over me.

My arm blistered from the heat, shards cut my skin, and beads of blood welled up.

The floor I'd spent most of the afternoon mopping three times over

was now covered in the food I'd made.

Mom watched Max with a doting look.

"Amazing, Max!"

"Hits every time!"

Then she shoved me.

"Can't you make sure Max hits you every single time? The plates don't move. Are you dead too? Nailed to the spot?"

Caught off guard, I fell into the sauce and the broken shards.

Fragments dug into my palms and knees, a piercing pain.

Blood mixed with the spilled sauce.

Max pinched his nose and broke into a little dance to fan away the smell.

An obnoxious backing track blared out into the living room.

"I really love you so much, so why are you crying~"

Mom applauded.

"That's my city-born Max for you. He's even got a talent for dancing."

"Dance and take out the trash for Mom while you're at it. Just like Mom, you know how to declutter."

Max danced harder, his footprints tracking sauce everywhere.

Mom turned to me, her face cold.

"Home all day doing nothing but causing trouble!"

"Clean up this mess. You're not allowed to sleep until it's done!"

Thinking of the acceptance letter, I pulled the porcelain shards out of my palms and knees.

Biting back the pain, I started cleaning all over again.

Mom muttered something under her breath.

I heard it.

Mom said, if I'd known it would turn out like this, I never should have given birth to you back in that town.

A dull ache spread through my chest, and somehow it made the pain in my knees and palms fade away.

By the time I carried the last bag of trash downstairs, it was past midnight.

My stomach growled with hunger.

But orientation was at dawn, and my acceptance letter was still with Mom.

After going back and forth in my head, I decided to go up and ask her for it.

But I entered the code three times, and each time it was wrong.

On the fourth try, Mom's phone rang.

"What are you doing at the door in the middle of the night?"

3: 3

I gripped the phone.

"Mom, my code isn't working."

"I changed it."

"I've raised you to eighteen. After this you can do whatever you want, as long as you stop bothering me."

"Hang around outside my door again and I'll call the police to haul you off."

"Oh, and there's a bag of trash by the door. Take it down with you."

"Mom, then what about my acceptance letter"

I waited quietly for five minutes.

She didn't answer.

I took the phone from my ear and tapped the screen.

She'd hung up five minutes ago.

I waited an hour outside the door.

When I was sure she wasn't going to let me in, I went downstairs.

Almost out of the complex, I turned and looked back at her place. The lights had already gone dark.

I walked for two hours and reached the train station.

I dug my ID and bank card out of my phone case.

There was $954.30 left on the card, saved up from summer jobs.

Mom never sent me any living expenses, so I'd had to work my way through school.

After the exams, this was all I had left.

I bought a hard-seat ticket for 0-023.60.

It got in at ten tomorrow morning. I'd make it.

Sitting in the waiting room, I couldn't understand why Mom's decluttering only ever meant throwing out my things.

My exam admission ticket had been one of them. So was my acceptance letter.

On exam day, Max snatched my admission ticket right out of my hand and took off, shouting as he ran.

"I want to verify the card! I want to verify the card!"

I chased after him, tripped over the coffee table, and went down hard.

My head hit the corner of the couch, raising a lump and scraping the skin.

Max saw me fall, crouched in front of me, and waved the admission ticket back and forth.

"Card checks out."

I reached for it. He scrambled to his feet and tore the ticket into tiny pieces.

"Grab it, refine it in an instant!"

He planted his hands on his hips and laughed. I picked the scraps up off the floor.

I wanted to piece them back together, but he'd shredded them too finely, and no matter how I tried, they wouldn't fit.

Seeing me try, he stomped all over them, hopping foot to foot.

"Bold mortal, have you not witnessed my true power? And yet you'd dare save this card's life!"

"Stomp, stomp, stomp!"

Mom came out of the kitchen and hurled a half-chopped gourd at my head.

"What's all this racket first thing in the morning?"

The tears came, panicked.

"Mom, Max tore up my admission ticket."

Mom stroked Max's head.

"Good boy, Max, helping Mom declutter."

Then she turned and looked at me with disgust.

"So he tore it up. It's just the exams, isn't it? Who do you think you are, some emperor?"

"Your brother just likes to play. Would it kill you, as his older brother, to let him have his fun?"

"Sit it if you want, skip it if you don't. Doesn't matter to me."

"With that thick skull of yours, born out in the country, you were never going to get in anyway."

"Go start delivering food. At least then you can put a little toward your brother's tuition."

Clutching my pens and pencils, I ran to the testing center, crying the whole way.

At the door, a teacher stopped me.

"Where's your admission ticket?"

"No admission ticket, no exam!"

The tears came again.

It was my homeroom teacher who got there in time, bringing a backup admission ticket, so that I could sit the exams after all.

I murmured to myself:

Was it because I wasn't useful enough? Was that why Mom threw me away?

The train swayed and rocked, like my uneasy heart.

What if there was no acceptance letter and I couldn't register?

And if I could register, what if I had no money for tuition?

If I couldn't get into college, and Mom decided I was useless and didn't want me, what then?

Three questions. I turned them over the whole way there.

4: 4

Just after noon, I reached the gates of Kingsley University.

Everyone around me was loaded down with bags, mothers and fathers at their sides.

I stood there with nothing, not even my acceptance letter.

A volunteer spotted me.

"Hi, are you here to register?"

I nodded, then shook my head.

"I lost my acceptance letter. Can I still enroll?"

The volunteer eyed me doubtfully.

"What's your name? Which college? Did you bring your ID?"

I answered each question quickly and pulled out my ID.

He scrolled through a video, held it up next to my face, and his eyes lit up.

"You're Elijah Walker, the top scorer from Lakeport! I saw the coverage on you."

"How did you score a 145 on the English section? That's insane. Are you even human?"

"Losing your acceptance letter is no problem. The college has all your information on file."

I twisted the hem of my shirt and kept going.

"I don't have the tuition. Can I still enroll?"

He blinked, then smiled.

"Don't worry, there's a special financial-aid channel for that."

"And our school has tons of work-study spots. You can even earn wages helping professors."

After he got me registered, he took me on a little tour of the campus.

In the crowd, I saw my mother.

She had Max by the hand and was going red in the face arguing with someone from the admissions office.

"Don't you look down on us! So what if it's 186? Why can't he get into Kingsley?"

"He's still got two years, doesn't he? Careful, or I'll report you for crushing my son's self-esteem!"

"Do you know my younger son was born in the city? If my older one, born out in the country, could get in, then getting Max into a school like yours is no trouble at all!"

"I flew all the way out here just to bring Max to see your school. If you won't take him, then you can refund our plane tickets!"

The admissions officer answered awkwardly.

"Ma'am, please, calm down."

"If your son had a total over 500, two years of hard work might get him into Kingsley."

"But your son scored 186 on his finals. That's under 27 per subject on average."

"You have to understand, our lowest admission cutoff this year was 689."

I stood frozen where I was.

So Mom had planned to bring Max here today.

She'd never said a word to me about it.

Back home, whenever I studied, Max never let up on the jabs.

"Bro, why do you even try so hard?"

"Mom already said it. Kids born in the city are just smarter than the ones born in the country!"

"It's a talent thing! Greatness speaks for itself!"

"Watch me blow past you on the SATs, bro! I'll waltz into Kingsley, easy!"

But he stayed glued to the internet, and his total on his freshman-year finals came out to 186.

Mom turned and saw me. I worked up my courage and said to her,

"I got registered, Mom. I promise I'll make something of myself from now on."

She raised her voice.

"You got registered? Didn't I throw out your acceptance letter?"

The other parents started murmuring.

"Who throws out their own kid's acceptance letter? What kind of parent is that?"

Mom fired back.

"Ever heard of decluttering? You keep trash around for the holidays or something?"

She grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me in front of the admissions officer.

"Look at this blockhead. Even he got into your school, and you're telling me my Max can't?"

"You call yourselves teachers?"

Every gaze around me swung toward me.

Some pitying, some embarrassed.

Mom yanked me by the collar.

"No. You're not going to college."

"I'll give you two choices. Either you go do delivery work right now and save up tuition for your brother!"

"Or you go back to high school and repeat the year with him until he gets into Kingsley."

She turned on the admissions people, her voice full of venom.

"Once my younger son gets into Kingsley, I'm reporting every last one of you! I'll have you all thrown out!"

"Unbelievable. Nowadays even a blind fool can be a college teacher! Disgusting!"

I'd gotten into Kingsley as the state's top scorer, and my mother still thought I was useless.

If I went and did delivery work, or repeated the year, she'd only think I was more useless, and then she'd throw me away.

I didn't want to be thrown away.

I stayed where I was and said nothing.

Furious, she slapped me right there in front of everyone.

"Grown wings now, have you? You won't even listen to me anymore?"

"You know what, the one thing I should really be decluttering is you!"

My face burned, and the tears came.

She held me there, refusing to let go, when a figure suddenly stepped in front of me.

"Monica, what do you think you're doing?"