Here's Jesse

Here’s Jesse sitting at the foot of Mother’s bed. Jesse on a folding chair dragged from the kitchen. There are scratch marks on the hardwood floors. A clear path from there to here. Jesse waits for his mother to wake up. She’s been asleep for two days. 

Here’s Mother watching after Jesse for 52 years. A mother who regrets being young and reckless, 16 and pregnant, chain smoking until her family abandons her. Here’s mother now exhausted, every moment of her life dedicated to her boy Jesse. A boy just a little slow. Always a little slow. Nonetheless, everything for him. Even her last breath a prayer for Jesse. 

The body is really starting to smell now. “Pee-yew,” Jesse says and laughs, “Mom you smell.”

Once Jesse said he was ready to be alone and Mother believed him. She left for only a few hours to see the dentist. Shortly after she departed, Jesse had locked himself out of the apartment. Police found him a day later sleeping in the parking lot of an IHOP. They thought he was a drunk until they brought him into the station. “He’s just a little slow,” Mother explained. No charges were issued. 

Here’s the problem. After the incident, Mother told Jesse to never leave the apartment without her. Jesse always listens to Mother. 

The body is bloated. “Oh Mom you’re looking so fat.” The stomach protrudes and there’s bruises on her grey skin. Flies are sneaking through the cracks in the walls. “Wake up, Mom.”

Here’s one can of corn and two cans of string beans on Mother’s nightstand. Jesse only knows how to work the electric can opener, but Mother doesn’t want to eat. Jesse eats baked beans, because Mother always told him he loved beans. 

Here’s Jesse with bean stains all over his shirt and pants, un-showered, hands filthy. 

Here’s Mother unmoved. Her worst fear come to reality. Where will Jesse go now? He knows no one. He had one friend, Steven, who died years earlier. Even at his funeral Jesse did not understand. “Steven, you want to play tennis?” he asked the man in the casket. 

Here’s Jesse, he’s laying in the bed next to Mother falling asleep. For the first time truly alone, trapped in a home that can no longer save him.