Jacob's Mother—Chapter 1

The Trials of Jacob

Artwork by the esteemed Mr. Thomas Cargen

Author’s note: This is a serialized novel. Subscribe to get a new chapter delivered to your inbox each week.

Chapter One’s artwork is by Thomas Cargen. I am so honored to work with him on this. His scope is absolutely amazing. You should check him out.

JACOB’S MOTHER

By Laura Kay Ellis

“Beware the tunes that touch your heart

The Gancanagh will play the soul

Beware, sweet lass, don’t crave his art

He’ll pierce your heart and leave a hole”

–Anonymous

Chapter 1: Trials of Jacob

California—2010

Jacob Arthur’s mother had schizophrenia. This was something that he had always known, but he kept it tightly bound inside a little black box that was hidden in the farthest corner of himself. The box was padlocked in hushed voices, and the key was lost long ago. He did not want to deal with it—let alone think about it. He wanted it to disappear. He had always ignored his mother’s strange mumblings and incoherent scribbles. They didn’t fit into his neat life. When his wife questioned things, he’d say, “That’s just the way Mom is. She’s fine,” or “She’s just eccentric.” He barely noticed the pill containers his mother kept on her nightstand or the stacks of TV Guides and cellophane wrapped snack cakes that piled up around the house. But he knew. Deep within, that little black box weighed heavily on him, the corners of it pushing uncomfortably into the stable life he had fashioned for himself.

As a child, Jacob was in and out of foster care, always under the shadow of an unfit mother, never in the same place for more than a few years. To compensate, he did everything right. He passed all his classes with high marks. He was tidy and helpful. He was friendly and polite. He never caused waves. A wave might mean a move, a new family, an institution. Waves were to be avoided at all costs.

Now, he was forty-five, and a wave was upon him. The black box was becoming harder to ignore. The truth crashed over him. His emotions swirled around, and he was unable to sort them into neat categories. Everything was topsy-turvy. His mother had schizophrenia. The woman who had never really taken care of him was suddenly his responsibility. He loosened his tie and cleared his throat. His wife, Hannah, sat across from him in the hospital waiting room, reading a magazine. Her long freckled legs tucked up under her, and wisps of red hair escaping her braid.

The incident had happened the night before. Now his mother was resting in a white room, breathing oxygen through a mask. She was heavily sedated. Other than the sound of the oxygen mask, she appeared dead. According to the doctors, she had suffered a psychotic break. Even though he had always known it, and all the signs were right in front of his face, Jacob finally realized that his mother had schizophrenia that day. The black box inside Jacob grew and pressed against his lungs, making it hard to breathe. The waiting room walls seemed uncomfortably close. He decided to step outside for a coffee.

A week before, he reluctantly had gone to his mother’s house during his lunch break when she wouldn’t answer her phone. She never left the house, except to go to church on Sundays. When she didn’t answer her phone for several hours, his wife panicked and made him go over there. He found his mom in the closet in the back bedroom with a shovel. Trying to break through the wall in the back of the closet, she screamed, “I’m coming, Lil! I’m coming, Lil! Hold tight. I’ll be right there. Jesus Christ will protect you!”

The back of the closet was destroyed. Dust and bits of drywall littered about. The studs in the wall were hacked and splintered. Eyes wild, hands blistered, she struggled against him with all the might a 68 year old woman could muster when he tried to dislodge the shovel from her hands.

“Mom! What are you doing!” he yelled, eyeballing the destruction of the closet along with some spiral hieroglyphics in permanent marker that adorned the walls. This would take forever to clean up. These damn spirals, she was always drawing them, on scraps of paper, in the margins of her Bible, and now on the walls again. She was clad only in a thin nightshirt that was drenched in sweat, and Jacob averted his eyes away from her large pendulous bosom that the thin, wet fabric clung to like a bizarre wet T-shirt contest.

“Jesus Christ will protect you. Jesus Christ will protect you. Lil, hold tight. Lil, I’m coming,” she muttered, groping his cheeks with her sweaty hands. Her eyes were glazed, and she didn’t seem to be looking at anything at all.

He grabbed her by the face, hoping to make contact. “Mom, what are you doing? Who is Lil?”

“The gospel of Luke, chapter 20, verse 36. The gospel of Luke, chapter 20, verse 36. Lil is there. She’s in there.” Her thin gray hair stuck to her forehead with plaster and sweat, and her frail and flappy arms reached toward the shovel. She looked so much older than her age, a harsh life taking its toll on her face.

Jacob entered the waiting room holding a coffee and an herbal tea in styrofoam cups. He handed one to his wife, Hannah. She put her magazine aside and smiled at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling up, the face of someone who smiled often.

“Herbal tea as ordered,” he handed her the tea, and she smelled it and grimaced. “Only six more months until you can have coffee again,” he chuckled.

Hannah set the tea on the waiting room side table, placed her hand on her belly and spoke to it, “Hey little guy or girl, you are killing me with this no caffeine thing, but we have waited so long for you, I guess you’re worth it.”

Jacob sat beside her. He looked at a magazine askew on top of the stack.

Hannah smelled the tea and grimaced. “You know what I really want?” she asked.

“What?”

“A beer. Golden, ice cold, and bubbly.” She closed her eyes imagining it. “I really just want a beer. Just so I can feel like a normal person again.”

Jacob placed his hand on her freckled knee. “Soon.”

She tried to balance the tea cup on her protruding belly. “How are you doing?” she asked.

He straightened the magazines so their edges lined up. Seeing that Hannah was exhausted from waiting in the hospital, he was touched that she still smiled up at him with concern.

“I’m ok. Just a little shocked, I guess. I didn’t think we were going to have to put my mom in a home this weekend.” As he said this and looked into his wife’s eyes, he realized it wasn’t shocking at all. What was shocking was how he could not see how bad his mother had gotten. All the signs were there. Obviously, something was wrong, but he chose to ignore it. Normal people do not draw spirals all over their walls. Normal people don’t keep nonsensical notes fluttering around the house, especially notes to God. Especially notes that said, “Dear God, the gardener is trying to take my Christian soul.”

When he had finally brought his mother into the emergency room, she stank. She obviously hadn’t bathed in days, and he was unsure if she had eaten anything. He had found her in the closet again, after he had just had it repaired. She didn’t have access to a shovel this time, so she was trying to pry up the floorboards with a butter knife. Her hands were bloody, like she had been at it for days. The painters had not yet come to paint over the strange black spiral markings, and it looked like she had added more. She didn’t recognize him. It was as if she didn’t even see him. She just kept mumbling, “Lil, I am almost there. Hold tight. Jesus Christ will protect you. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Jacob didn’t know anyone named Lil. Later, he asked around with the few distant family members that were left, and no one knew of a Lil. The doctors seemed to think that it was part of his mother’s illness. She was delusional and having hallucinations. They were admitting her into the psych ward tomorrow where she would be placed on a 72 hour hold. There was nothing more Jacob and his wife could do, so they were advised to go home and get some rest. It wasn’t the first time Jacob had left his mother behind, and he felt relieved to get out of the hospital, the black box shrinking a bit, allowing him to breathe again.

The ride home was uncomfortably quiet. Neither Jacob nor his wife, Hannah, knew what to say. Hannah stared out the window into the darkness. Fidgeting with her earlobe, the way she often did when she was upset, she finally spoke.

“How did you not know?”

“I just didn’t realize, ok.”

“So she’s just stuck in there for 72 hours?”

“Yes, Hannah. You were there when the doctor told us.” Jacob let out an exasperated sigh. Hannah had a habit of asking the same question over and over, when she already knew the answer. It was as if she was trying to change the answers she didn’t like by asking the question in different ways.

“We can’t see her? Or call?”

“No.”

Hannah was still looking out the window, her hand on her protruding belly.

“And it’s hereditary. Oh God.”

Jacob couldn’t see Hannah’s face as it was still turned to the window, the back of her head framed by blurry, yellow lights zooming by as they drove down the highway, but he knew she was crying.

They sat in silence for several minutes. His wife’s disappointment filled the car.

“How could you not know?”

He didn’t answer, not wanting a fight. Anything but a fight. The black box inside of Jacob shifted uncomfortably inside him, and they drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Continue reading Chapter 2.

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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.