Jacob's Mother—Chapter 14
What Goes Around Comes Around
Author’s note: This haunting artwork is done by my very good friend Warren Frank.
Jacob’s Mother is a serialized novel. Start with Chapter One.
Chapter Fourteen: What Goes Around Comes Around
California—2011
Jacob set the piles of essays on the corner of his desk, as the students flowed into Celtic Anthropology class. Looking at his students, he felt a sting of guilt. They all seemed so eager and excited about the class at the beginning of the semester, but now they just seemed bored, filling up the room, jumping through the hoops he provided, so they could collect their credits and move on. Jacob knew he hadn’t really done a great job this semester. So much pressure had been put on him with the other stresses in his life, that he cut corners and basically just followed the textbook with the new class that he had been so excited to teach. It reflected in the way the students stared at the clock and pretended to take copious notes on their laptops while really scrolling through facebook and doing homework for other classes.
In fact, Jacob was so distracted with his crazy mother and new baby, that he borrowed an assignment from a colleague to use today that he had only skimmed quickly over the night before.
“Class, today we are going to do something different.” Jacob adjusted his glasses that sat in front of the bags on his eyes. He was exhausted. “Please get into groups of three for a presentation you will be doing next week.”
The class groaned collectively, upset by actually having to move around and collaborate with others. It was much more comfortable scrolling through social media and half paying attention to Jacob drone on about Celtic traditions.
After everyone had begrudgingly settled into groups, Jacob passed out the flashcards his colleague had provided. “Each group will get a symbol. Your job is to research the symbol and do a five minute presentation next Tuesday.” As he spoke, he circulated through the groups and handed each one a card. The first group got a Celtic Knot. The second group got the Awen, three rays of light that symbolize the balance between what is male and female. Each student passed the card around studying it. “I want you to do deep research, do not only find the modern or Christian meaning of your symbol, but go deeper, try to find the origin,” he continued. Placing a card with a picture of the horned god, Cernunnos, to the next group he said, “This research should be broad. You will need at least ten peer reviewed sources.” He handed the final card to the last group, and stopped talking.
He lingered there at the group’s desk with his finger on the card. He had seen this symbol before, out of its Celtic context. It was the Triskele, three spirals that chased each other around continuously. It was the very same symbol that his mother was drawing on walls and in her notebook. Why hadn’t he made the connection before?
“Professor Arthur?” a young man with a backwards baseball cap and a hint of a mustache asked. “Are you ok?”
“Uh, yes.” Jacob lifted up the card with the triple spiral. “Yes, of course. I just changed my mind and want you to have this one instead.” His heart pounding in his chest, he put the triskele card in his shirt pocket and handed them a card with two hands holding a heart, the Claddagh. “Students, you have the rest of today’s class to research.” He sat on the desk in the front of the room. “I suggest that you go directly to the university library and utilize the wonderful librarians we have there.”
The students joyfully picked up their cards, crammed their notebooks and laptops into their backpacks, and left. Some were obviously off to the beach. Others left together to research. As they funneled out of the classroom, Jacob took the triskele out of his pocket and stared at it. Could his mother’s markings have some sort of meaning?
Later that day, Jacob stopped by Daisy Lane to visit his mother, clutching the card in his hand. He barely noticed the smell of the old, as he hurried down the hall to her room. She was watching TV, dazed and glassy eyed, tucked into her bed, with her hands crossed over her protruding breasts and belly. Her white hair was pulled up into a tight bun.
Jacob approached her bedside and shoved the card with the triskele in front of her face. “Mom, do you know what this is?”
She looked at him like he was the lunatic. “Of course! It’s the Holy Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It’s protection.”
“That’s one interpretation, but this symbol is much older than Christianity. It actually has to do with women and the circle of life--the maiden, the mother, and the crone.” He picked up her little notebook. “This is the same symbol you keep drawing, right?” he asked, even though it was obvious since every page was filled with multiple triskeles.
Julia nodded solemnly, “For protection. I lost the original.”
Jacob sat down in the little chair next to her bed. “Protection from what? What are you afraid of?”
“Not for me, silly. I’m much too old to worry about him. I told you, it’s for Lil. We have to protect Lil to protect Addie. We must be careful he doesn’t get Addie. The original is in the wall. I lost it in the wall.”
Jacob sighed and pinched the skin above his nose and between his eyes, as if to quell a headache that was forming there. “Mom, we don’t know anyone named Lil. And what do you mean, we have to protect Addie from him?”
Julia’s eyes began to dart back and forth, as if she was looking for creatures in the corners of the room. She sat up and grabbed tightly onto Jacob’s forearms. With a surprising burst of strength, she pulled him close to her face. She wasn’t wearing her dentures and little bits of spittle dotted her sucked in lips.
“The gospel of Luke, chapter 20, verse 36. The gospel of Luke, chapter 20, verse 36. Lil is there. She is in there!” she cried out.
“Mom, shhhhh. Relax.”
“I’m not crazy! I’m not crazy! We have to protect Addie from the devil!”
Jacob stood up and looked to the door, afraid a nurse would enter to see what the commotion was about. Obviously, his mom was bat shit crazy, but he wanted more information. Perhaps he could get to the bottom of her obsession with the triskele and help her get better, or at least more normal.
“Mom, stop yelling ok?”
Julia, looked at him with wide eyes. “Ok.” She clutched her little notebook tightly to her chest.
“Now why do you keep saying, ‘Luke, chapter 20, verse 36’? What does that verse say?”
“To protect Lil. That’s what it says.”
“No, Mom,” Jacob sighed, realizing that what his mother was saying made no sense. There was no way to rationalize her thoughts or what she believed. “As far as I know, there is no character in the Bible named Lil.”
“Yes! That’s what it says! That’s what it says!” she pulled the blankets off, and swung her skinny, veiny legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll show you.” She opened the drawer on her nightstand, and pulled out her Bible.
She quickly leafed through the paper thin pages, pointed to the verse, and handed the book to Jacob. “Right here. It says to protect Lil, right here.”
He read the verse out loud, “for they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
“See?” Julia looked at him with hopeful eyes. “I told you. It says we have to save Lil.”
Jacob felt heavy. This was nonsense. It was her schizophrenia and nothing else. “No it doesn’t, Mom.” Now it was his turn to shove the Bible in her face. “Look right here. Here is the verse, right? Luke Chapter 20, verse 36?”
“Yes.”
“Read what it says.”
She peered over his hand and read the words slowly, “For they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” She looked up at him as if she didn’t understand what he was getting at.
“Does it say anything about a person named Lil?” Jacob asked his mother condescendingly.
“Yes it does. It says to save Lil.”
Sadly, Jacob placed the Bible on his mother’s nightstand. He was defeated. “I have to go home,” he said.
“I’m not crazy,” Julia whispered quietly, as Jacob exited the room with slumped shoulders, not bothering to look back at her. As he walked through the halls of the building, he heard his mother screaming, “Lil! Lil! Liiiiiiiiiiil!” He walked straight out the door without stopping or looking back.
Jacob sat in his car and cried. His mother mother was crazy. There was nothing he could do, no cure. What she said made no sense. The black box inside him was bulging. Even though she had been institutionalized all this time, he had still held onto a boyhood hope that everything would work out for the best. But it never did, the bad things of his life didn’t change, he just had to change the way he was dealing with them. It was too much to handle. A wave of panic came over him. He crumpled up the flashcard with the triskele and threw it on the floor of his car. Try as he might, he couldn’t stuff it all into the black box. It had cracked and shattered, and the truth was out. He never really had a mother. His mother was living in another world, a world created in her head filled with misfired synapses, chemical imbalances, and insanity. She had never taken care of him, and he was tired of taking care of her. Another wave came, and he braced for it, but this wave was a wave of relief. Tears streamed down his face as he drove the rest of the way home, and that night when Jacob made love to his wife, he felt as if he was finally sharing his whole self with her.
Continue to Chapter 15.
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Jacob’s Mother is an original publication by Laura Ellis. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law and fair use.