Mom is always there for you when you’re terrified of your first day of school, when you have your first major skin-ripping boo-boos, when you first encounter queasy feelings about your 2nd grade classmate, warning you of cooties, and even when there is a truck full of armed gangsters pointing shotguns at you.
WORDS: ADELE AUSTIN
My mom and I are not what you would call ‘besties’, we’re not that mother-daughter duo that gets manis and pedis together (gross), and she definitely knows very little about some of the things I do (including putting her pictures on websites) - she’s only concerned with the school stuff, and I am more than happy with that - but my mom and I are okay, we’ve been through some rough shit together. I mean, she’s partly responsible for half of Shot Callin’. Indirectly.
I have two older brothers and they both deserted our lovely little home soon as they hit puberty, so when I turned 13, I had all their bedrooms to myself, and dibs on every grocery bought. It was heaven. Just me, mum, and our gardener/wise old man who got us fresh coconuts and mangos.
Since quitting the political biz, mom was void of her personal security, which I was fairly happy about because they were starting to get annoying. They followed me everywhere but school, fucking lame - and embarrassing. So mom bought herself a brand spanking new car, to go along with this new life she was happy to re-start. For the first time in over a decade, my mom was the one dropping me off to school, and I actually had the golden opportunity of seeing her everyday. But mom took slight precautions and had the windows tainted, there were a few people after her head (more on that soon, stay tuned). Anyhow, I was getting used to this maternal bonding, and it felt normal for a long time.
The trips back home were quite lengthy, about an hour if you’re counting traffic jams, not to mention somewhat stressful, as you would go by certain neighborhoods. Because of this, every afternoon we would divert routes. But this particular afternoon, our after-school diversions proved to be somewhat dangerous. Especially when mom made a right turn in a narrow alleyway where the car trucking before us opened its back doors, revealing four tall, scary-looking, armed men.
They seemingly had recently gone on a crime spree and were now waving their guns at us, since we had spotted them. Now, this is where I tell you to fear the front seat, because it gives you the best view of any terrifying actions that could occur in front of your car; anyone who seats in the back gets a clear warning once the person in ‘shotgun’ screams their heads off. Think twice about calling shotgun, you get hit first. Always.
With little time to actually think, as this happened in a matter of seconds, I sat stone cold as they were hinting at getting rid of their witnesses. That’s when mom, SUPER MOM, held the breaks and orchestrated the fastest and safest left turn into a street just adjacent of that little alleyway. I’ve been in a few car-related situations where lives were dependent on quick decisions, but I’ve never seen anyone calmly handle the steering wheel this quickly, limited by such narrow space. At this point, mom didn’t really care where this street leds us, as long as we weren’t stuck at gunpoint with these bandits. While I was shitting bricks in the front, ducking behind the seat and looking back to see if they were following us, mom was already breezing past her usual route back home. That’s when she turned to me and said “What’s wrong with you? It’s all over now”. The she laughed.
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