Dear John Mark,

I am sad to say your mother has fallen ill. I will be away for a bit for personal reasons. I will not be there to care for her. I hate to make you come up all the way from Vicksburg, but I have no choice. I wish you safe travels.

Your sister,

Ann Mark

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

August 3, 1858

I read over the letter a second time. There was no way in hell I was going to travel up to New York with the rising tensions between the North and South. In addition, I had crops and livestock to tend to. What did my sister expect me to do? Just pack my bags and leave? I didn’t want to leave our younger sister, Alice, alone to tend to the farm by herself. A woman like her could never have done such laborious work. Lastly, my mother never cared for my company anyway, so why should I have been the one to go? If she was ill, the last person she would’ve wanted to see was me.

The door unexpectedly opened behind me, scaring me half to death and making me jump in my seat. I turned to find Alice there in the doorway.

"John?” she asked, peering through the crack between the wall and the door.

"Yes? Is something the matter, Alice?"

"Yes and no; I have just received word that Mother is ill." 

"I've just received the same. Ann wants me to travel to New York to be Mother's caretaker whilst she's away."

Alice looked astonished. "Then, who will watch over the farm? Certainly not me."

I sighed, "I will have to ask Mr. Miller from down the road. I doubt he'll say yes. He is a very busy man."

She scrunched her face up in confusion, obviously skeptical of me. "I'm sure he'll say yes. There's no re—" she started, but she suddenly cut herself off with a gasp. "Wait, this isn't about the farm or traveling! You just don't want to face our mother. John, I know you may not be exactly fond of her, but Ann needs your help aiding her. She's old and your mother. It doesn't matter how what she's done in the past."

I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair. Of course, she wanted me to help; she loved Mother to the moon and back. I was the only child Mother didn't care about.

"I don't know. She always told me to be a man when I had a fever. Why can’t I tell her to tough it out too?" I replied, but I was only slightly kidding.

"Ann and Mother need your help. Be a man," Alice smiled. Then, she closed the door, but her dress got stuck in the frame. I heard her swear on the other side as she tried to tug her dress out unsuccessfully. Finally, she gave up and opened the door awkwardly, pulling her hem to her side.

“Sorry,” she muttered in embarrassment, hurrying away without closing the door this time.

Be a man, eh? I'll show her a man. I'd travel to New York a hundred times to see the old hag if it meant I was a man. I thought that over another time, Be a man.

"Certainly. Whenever am I not?" I spoke to no one.

A few days later, I found myself on an almost vacant train, heading straight to New York. I know I said I wouldn’t go, but my sister convinced me after everything. So, there I was, a sixteen-year-old boy leaving his home in Vicksburg, Mississippi to return to his roots. 

I was born on June 23rd, 1842 in New York City, but I moved to Vicksburg in December of 1855 with my father. Unfortunately, in 1857, he passed away. Since then, I'd been in control of the family farm, but Mr. Miller kept watch over me. I seemed older than my age, so I largely went without any complications. But if something ever did happen, Mr. Miller was there for us.

I readjusted myself in my chair and stared out the window. Soon enough though, I found myself staring at my reflection instead of the scenery. I had grown a lot since my father died. My hair was a darker shade of brown, and my once blue eyes seemed grayer than anything. My nose was small and round, but my cheeks were not as full as they used to be. I was clean-shaven, excluding the one or two hairs that had managed to escape the wrath of my razor. I had grown a bit too. I turned out to be about 5'8" with the average height being 5'4".

I considered myself to be a rather average looking fellow, and I really didn’t expect much from life. I would get older, never make much, find a wife, settle down, have kids, and die. I had it all vaguely set out. I never really expected anything different. If only things had gone how I’d wanted, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.

The rest of the train ride was monotonously long, and I’m pretty sure I slept the majority of the time. I know that sounds crazy.

No, that’s the end of the sentence. There’s no ‘but’. I just shouldn’t have been able to sleep that long.

Anyway, when I finally made my way to my mother’s new address, I wasn’t really surprised. It looked like every other building in the area, wet red bricks and cement stairs leading up to the door from the street. It was nothing relatively special, but generally, it was impressive. My mother, unlike the majority of people, had the money to afford a safer place than the tenements, which had bad ventilation and poor structure. Paying for that apartment is what my father had to go south for. There wasn't enough money to afford it, and my mother refused to raise her children to adulthood in a disease-ridden rathole. (I think she was just using us as leverage to spoil herself. She already let us stay there as kids, so what was the point in moving somewhere else when I, the middle child, was already thirteen?)

We found the money after my father’s business investment in Mr. Miller’s general store came through. Although we gave most of it over to my greedy mother, we also used some to support ourselves in agriculture. I personally lost the rest of my respect for my mother during that time, and my hatred for her was only solidified after Father died. She disregarded his will in its entirety and took everything for herself like some ugly goblin. There’s not a person I’ve ever hated more than her.

Naturally, I hated each step I had to take in that building. The closer I got to the apartment, the slower I walked, trying to delay seeing her again. Three years is a long time to go without seeing someone, and I loved every single moment between 1855 and 1858. I was going to continue to savor each second I had away from her, so I took my time going through the hallways, searching for the correct apartment number. And when I found it, I was disappointed.

13b...

I knocked on the door a couple of times before it swung open revealing a disheveled Ann. She rushed past me with a quick hello and unintelligible reason for leaving, which was quite rude in all honesty. I watched as she stumbled down the hall and left without even a glance behind her. What a pleasant surprise that was for a brother she hadn't seen in almost five years. Somebody better teach that woman some manners, I thought shaking my head.

I poked my head inside the small apartment through the door Ann left ajar in her haste. I didn’t see anyone inside at first, so I called out for my mother. Then, a figure stepped out of one of the opened doors in the house, skinny and gaunt.

"Mother?"

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Although I'm not a woman, my mother still taught me to cook. She had decided that it would be of some convenience if I was to move down south. After all, no one would have guessed my sister to stow away on the trip. It was a bit of a surprising skill for a man, but I didn’t mind it. In fact, I actually kind of enjoyed it. I think I was pretty good at it too, so I made something for my mother. It was a soup made on short notice and couldn’t have possibly been my best effort, but it was something.

I ladled the steamy soup into a bowl and brought it to my mother's side of the dark wood table. I sat down across from her and watched as she spooned it into her mouth. I was never one for pity, but it must have been hard to be her. She was forty-eight at the time, so she had to have already outlived the majority of her generation. I didn’t even want to have to think about having to watch my friends die. It made me wonder whether she rejoiced at the fact that she lived longer or wept over her losses. She probably did a little bit of both, rejoicing at her losses and weeping over the fact that she lived.

She'd always been cruel and emotionally distant, even when my sisters and I were children. Come to think of it, I never saw her smile at me. She always favored Ann. Ann was her little angel, and I was always last in line when it came to her approval. It seemed like anything I did, she scolded me for it. That's why I decided to go with my father. My sisters tried to convince me to stay, but I just couldn’t live in that house any longer. Plus, I was my father’s favorite—his only son—so it was obvious as to why I would have preferred to go with him.

"John, are you going to get that?"

My mother's harsh voice jerked me back out of my thoughts, and I realized that someone was knocking on the door. I should’ve just scowled and told her to get it herself, but my moral obligations sent me running like a lapdog. When I got to the door, I opened it to find a man a little older and taller than me standing with paper in hand. He seemed a bit confused and lost until he looked up at me, his expression clearing into charismatic charm.

"Is this the residence of James Moffett?" he asked uncertainly.

As I opened my mouth to answer, my mother appeared beside me, suddenly gaining the ability to meet visitors on her own. "No, I think you are mistaken for 18b,” she went on.

"Ah, of course. My bad. Good evening, ma'am," the man apologized with a wave of the hand.

"Likewise," she hissed, shutting the door and hobbling back over to her place at the table.

"Do you know him?" I asked trying to start a conversation.

"No, but I've seen him in the building a lot. It doesn't seem as if he lives here. He's always just wandering. If you ask me, he's probably messing around with people," she said with a sarcastic laugh.

I hummed a response and sat back down with her, but she refused to talk with me after that. Each time I tried to say something, she killed it, brutally stabbing it and letting it bleed out like an animal. Eventually, I got fed up and told her I was going to lie down. It had been four hours since I got there, and I already felt bored and rejected. I couldn't wait for the old witch to feel better again.

What if she died?

I didn't know how I'd feel about that. It's bad if you're questioning whether or not you'd care if your mother died, and I’m pretty sure that answered the question well enough.

What really disturbed me though was that nothing in my room had been touched. Everything was covered by this thick layer of dust that took more than just a few swipes of the hand to clear. That meant she didn’t go in my room even once in all three years I was away. She didn't even miss me. That bitch.