Where to begin

Well, I will begin somewhere, I suppose. My name is Hanna Holmes.

Hello there, you.

Okay, so, I just turned twenty-five yesterday. I think that is why I am inspired today to write something...something about all that has happened to me. I would like to tell a long story. About me.

Even though, I am not really sure who gives a shit.

But, I need to do this.

Before I forget, I am already forgetting those small details. The ones that are the most important.

So, I will share this with you, the stories of my life.

And, for those of you who lived it with me, I hope these stories will give you insight to the truth. The truth about me. About my family. About who I really am. And about what really happened in that little, mountain town.

I need to tell you all before I forget.

Because it is so much easier to forget, but my life has never been easy.

When I close my eyes I can remember where it all started.... ten years ago.

"Hanna!" I heard my mother yell for me.

I sat at my rickety vanity, staring into my own oak colored eyes. My room at the end of the hall echoed with her call.

"Hannnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" the scream piercing my ears, I shut my eyes, thinking it would make a difference.

I could hear her booming footsteps coming down the hall, her wide body clanking the lamp on the hallway table, her elbow hitting the large mirror around the corner to our entryway. Like clockwork, she is at my door.

"Hanna!" She snaps at me.

All I can do is stare beyond her black beady eyes. That looked so much smaller than they were. Her round, puffy, red face, out of breath. Her large clothes draped over her even larger body and she stood like the seal to the tomb of Jesus in my doorway. The hallway light barely shinning around her.

What a sight. Even in my room at home, looking at her felt so embarrassing to me.

She didn't care at all.

All she cared about was barking at me to fetch her things. Snacks. Blankets. The TV remote. And, food. That is what she cared for most of all.

I really did hate her, then.

"Hanna I called your name. Do you have an explanation"

I just continued to look at her. I didn't have an explanation other than "I hate you." But I couldn't say that. As much as she annoyed me in more ways than one, I felt pity for her. I always have.

So, most of the time, I just ignored her as long as possible. It was a journey for her to come all the way to my room, six-hundred pounds would be a burden to anyone. So, I would wait.

"I am sorry mother, I didn't hear you" I lied. Often to her.

"LIAR" she barked. "I know you can hear me little girl." Venom in her voice "I know you. I know who you are, what a little brat you are. Now, you listen here, you will come when I call you. Or, I can take you to see your doctor right now, and you can explain to him why you're disobeying me."

Her eyes darting down at me from the doorway, she was an impenetrable fortress. I knew to surrender.

I crossed my legs, bedsheets wrapping around my thighs as I looked down. I could never truly look into her eyes when the evil would cross her face. I thought she hated me too, she probably did.

"Well, what are you doing then?! Just going to sit there, huh?"

A long silence when by. I kept looking down but I felt her eyes on me.

"Get your ass up."

".........." my hesitation, penetrating the air like a knife.

"NOW HANNA"

I slowly stood up. Testing her patience, of course. Always testing her. I moved toward her, but never in arms reach. She may be fat, and slow to move, but her quick wit and her quick hand to punish my face always made me fear her. Always to fear her, more than love her.

Closer to her, I could see her eyes soft, as they did sometimes when she knows she has scared me. When she knows she has won. The mood would change often around her, from chaos to chaos.

"Now, darling, your mother needs her sweet girls help. The kitchen must be cleaned, and the laundry folded. There are a few other things too. I know you were wanting to go to the church cookout this weekend, and I think I could allow it if you would help out? ....

Do a good job for mama?"

She reached out her hand. Balancing her large body on the doorframe and stablizing herself with the other arm. I looked at her as she held it out for my embrace.

Ugh, I have to.

I took her hand. But I made her hold her heavy arm out to me. For as long as I knew she could.

She had be standing long enough and her ankles would begin to swell soon. I just wanted to be left alone, she needed to sit down, I knew. I knew she would any. second. now.

Walking in front of me, Her body shook the hallway ever so slightly. The force of her heavy leg rattling the keys that hung by the door. I could see her tiring just from the walk. My spirits always were lifted when she began to tire. Some hours of peace.

"I must go lay down immediately, I have been working all week and what have you been doing?"

Looking into her eyes I could see she was upset again. I hated this.

"I'll take care of it, mom."

Walking away, her large body clumping slowing back and forth and back and forth. I always could only stare. Fifteen years and I still was not used to seeing such a large person.I breathed in and out.

A few hours of not hearing my own name was always so nice. I hated my name as a girl, her menacing voice is still even now the one I hear in my head. When I say my own name.

"And wake me when you are done," she said, startling me from around the corner, "then I can tell you what else needs getting to-..." her voice trailing down the long hallway of our one story house. We hadn't lived here long, just since Gramps died.

She said she had to have this particularly huge house because it was one story and there were very few one story houses in the mountains that were not in trailer parks.

Thinking now of it, I don't think I saw my mother walk up any steps until I was in college. Huh. Makes sense why, she could barely walk on a flat surface.

I knew what she meant when she said she was going to lay down. It wasn't particularly laying down. I don't think she ever really slept, her weight kept from doing that too.

She had two special chairs, you see. My grandparents had two lazy-boy recliners. Matching with navy blue leather. I remember those chairs fondly at my grandparents house, out of Southern-Homes 80's edition, they looked ideal in my grandmothers all blue and green, and tremendously quaint TV parlor. The two of them could sit close enough to hold hands and snack, and I could curl up too and sit with one of them. It was my favorite time in life, but more of that later.

Unfortunately, I hated those chairs now too.

The pretty blue leather was cracked and worn, stretched out from such an abnormally large person sitting and sleeping and eating here. And they smelled so bad. Of my mother.

The smell of her I hated worst of all.

Sometimes, in my dreams I get a whiff of her and it in wakes me in the night. Even to this day, I wake and think I am back there, in that large house with just her. Just the three of us: me, my mother, and her stench.