Array Seka - Inside Seka

Plus, I didn’t need her coming to me all the time for cash. With the house, all she’d have were her normal monthly bills. But I held the title in my name, because I figured she’d do something crazy — she always did.

One day she called out of the blue and said, “Could you send me some autographed pictures?”

“Sure, Mom. Who do you want me to make them out to?”

“Just sign them.”

I didn’t think much of it until she called a while later. “I just want you to know, I told the carpet guy that Seka was my daughter and he put all new carpeting in my house for the pictures.”

Oddly, I think it was the one time she was proud of me.

When AIDS was all over the news, I got a call from a reporter, saying he’d heard from a “good source” that I was HIV positive. “Who’s the source?”

“Your mother.”

With mothers like that, who needs a knife in the back? I called her. “What’s your problem? I don’t have AIDS! Are you trying to destroy my career?”

“I dreamed it, so I figured it must be true.”

“I’m not even going into how crazy that is, but why the hell did you call the press about it?”

There was no good answer and we both knew it. She did it for the attention. Just calling a reporter and saying she was Seka’s mother might not have gotten her much play. But saying her daughter Seka had AIDS? Well, that was newsworthy — if it were true. Thank God I don’t think anyone in the media ran with it, but they could have. Thanks, Mom.

My mother would sometimes say to me, “I know you’ll take care of me when I get real old. I can come live with you.”

“Oh no, old woman. You will not be living in my home and I will not be taking care of you. You need to take care of that part of your life. And I will not take care of your funeral arrangements, either.”

“You won’t feel the same when you look down at my dying face,” she said many times, trying to make me feel guilty.

One day my sister called to tell me Mom was sick. But everyone in the family was well aware of her lifetime of crying wolf. Even at this stage we didn’t know whether to believe her or not. She had, however, been on oxygen because she was having a hard time breathing. The doctors told her she couldn’t smoke when she was on oxygen, but she did it anyway. The woman basically microwaved her lungs.

Once we realized Mom was, in fact, very ill, my sister stayed with her the whole time. She kept telling me I needed to come to Florida. But I didn’t feel guilty about not being there. It was her own damn fault with the cigarettes. Besides, when I was lying in quarantine with spinal meningitis as a kid and told I could die, I don’t remember her being there — my dad was. I loved her because she was my mother, but I don’t think she would have done the same for me. It was a love built on obligation. Everyone’s supposed to love their mother, right? But that was as deep as it went.

I finally told my sister straight out, “I’m not coming to Florida.” Mom was going to die and that’s all there was to it. Now it was a waiting game.

I did speak to her when she was in the hospital. I think she knew she was dying because out of nowhere she shocked me by saying, “I love you, Dottie.”

I’m convinced it was her guilt speaking. I never felt she loved me at all and this was just her way of saying sorry to me.

She died in Florida. I didn’t cry a single tear then and haven’t since.

Mom wanted to be cremated and my sister said, “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for this.” I told her to look through Mom’s papers. Shockingly, she had actually taken care of it. I think it was one of the few times she ever listened to me, because she knew I meant what I was saying about not doing it all for her.

Since much of the family was still in Virginia, they brought her ashes there and we sort of had a family reunion/ picnic/funeral. My brother decorated little boxes with my mother’s ashes in them. He put her initials on the outside of them. This was a nice gesture since he clearly put a lot of effort into it. At an outdoor pavilion, everybody brought a dish for lunch, and there were pictures of my mother by the boxes of ashes.

The little boxes were distributed among us, while some of her ashes were spread along the river. She certainly caused enough turmoil during her life, but on this day my mother, Peggy, was divided up amicably.

I brought my box home, where it sat on a bookshelf in my office for the longest time. Working on the computer one evening, I heard a noise. I had an eerie feeling. One of Mom’s initials on the box had fallen off. I picked up the letter, threw it in the box, and said, “Damn, woman, you’re bothering me from the grave.”

I put her in the closet, where she remains with a bunch of my old movies. It’s kind of ironic. She’s safe and secure anyway. May she rest in peace.

Most families have some degree of sibling rivalry.

Mine, however, are more like lifelong wars.

I’d never been close with my brother and sister. As the youngest child, you kind of look up to your older siblings and feel they’ll protect you. Yet, I was devastated when the entire family deserted me and never really got over it. Should I have? Of course. But no one ever apologized! How do you forgive someone who doesn’t ask for forgiveness? It can be done, but it sure ain’t easy. Granted, they were just kids at the time, but they could have at least mentioned me when my mom came to school to take them the day they all left. Where did they think I was? Couldn’t either of them count to three and say, “Someone’s missing”?

I never felt the same way about them since.

But it goes beyond that. If we were not family, I would not choose them as friends.

When I was grown, I’d start getting collection notices on credit cards and at first had no idea what was what. When I investigated, I found my mother and sister, Deborah, had run them to the limit on their little spending sprees and expected me to pay them off.

Very nice.

I may have made an unusual career choice that many people frown upon, but at least I make a living for myself. I don’t try to live off someone else. And I certainly make every attempt to honor all my debts.

I wouldn’t talk to my sister for four or five years after the credit card incident. But I cared about her two sons very much so when she finally called me, I let it go. She acted like nothing had happened. But this little voice in the back of my head was saying, “What does she really want? There has to be an ulterior motive.”

And of course, there was.

After my mom passed away she started calling, telling me she hired lawyers to sue a company where my mother worked when I was a kid. But she wouldn’t give me all the details. It had something to do with my mother’s illness. She wanted to sue the company for asbestos-related disease, even though I doubt there was evidence she actually had that. She also knew what brand of cigarette Mom had smoked and had a lawsuit against that corporation as well. The whole thing smelled of scam to me.

“What are the lawyer’s fees? How will any money from the lawsuit be distributed? Is this being done on a contingency?” I got no answers. All I knew was my sister would be in charge of everything. It seemed pretty obsessive on her end, and while going through these lawsuits she had a stroke. Her memory and speech were pretty bad for a while. She lost use of her one side, although it’s come back since.

It was like my mother’s body died but her spirit went into my sister. I finally found out there were legal fees and I’d be expected to pay one third if they lost. When I refused, the lawyers eventually dropped out of the case. Deborah called and was absolutely furious with me.