Endearing Qualities of an Indestructible Mother

By Kimberly Hughes

Endearing Qualities of an Indestructible Mother is a riveting collection of short stories that showcase the pain and struggles that many endure daily. The beauty of the lessons taught in this book is that they all end with the characters developing indestructible qualities!

• Language: English
• Publisher: OTM Publishing
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9780578727431

Book preview

Lil George…………………….....2

K.I.M.P………………………..…8

Nahjarisha(Nah-Nah)…………15

Doing it SCARED!.....................22

How Many……………………..27

Case Number 00000000-0…….33

My Name is Terrance T…….39

Our Song…………………….46

"As Seen Through My Eyes…..53

Grace Under Fire………………61

Dedication……………………....71

Lil George

Here I go again. How do I always seem to end up here? Once again I’m being called to the principal’s office for fighting. As I sit, waiting to be called in to see Mr. Oppressor System (not his name but it speaks to my mentality at the time), my mind goes to my mother. She doesn’t deserve more heartache. It’s bad enough that my dad, her husband of twenty years, takes her through all kinds of hell, and here I am adding to her account….again. 

I am 19 years old and have yet to graduate from high school (maybe this year). I used to be a very good student and my parents were proud of their son. They told me so. Lil George, you’re smart just like your momma, my dad used to say. Keep it up; you’ll grow up to be something great. 

Yeah right. I can’t even finish my credits for English, Math, and Science, how will I graduate? My counselor says that if I take the on-line classes sponsored by the school system as well as take classes at school, I can graduate this spring.  

I want to take the classes but when I get home, I get distracted. My neighborhood does not care about a person being educated. 

The only thing in the inner city that matters is survival. To get by and sometimes get over, it may be necessary to do some things that are not legal or so the hood thinks. George, my dad, lost his job at the warehouse and things began to spiral from there. I was fourteen years old, just starting high school and my dad started to sell drugs out of our house. He would tell me Go to school and get an education so you don’t have to do this. This became his everything.

Eventually, he started to do drugs and the drugs took over. Still, every single day, my mother went to her job at the newspaper where she worked as an assistant on the production line. The pay was not very good but at least we had medical benefits. We weren’t on Medicaid like most of our hood. Still, there were times when we had to choose whether to eat or have lights. My mother always said it may be rough now but it won’t be this way always. We’ll make it ‘cause we got each other. Even when my dad started being verbally abusive to her, she’d say, It won’t be this way always. She loved him. She would clean the whole house from top to bottom and cook his favorite foods. He didn’t seem to appreciate it. He became so mean when he did drugs. Once he threw the man-sized plate of food she’d fixed for him on the floor because the potatoes were touching the chicken. She had to fix the plate two more times before he was satisfied.

I’m so tired of looking at you, were the words that pulled me from my thoughts of my family. Get in here, Mr. System, the principal continued motioning for me to come inside his office. Once seated, he started in on me. I mostly tuned him out until I heard, This does not seem to be working. Are you aware of the other options for graduating like studying for the GED? Maybe it was the way his face looked as if it said you can’t do this, you can’t make it in school, that made my insides burn. My mother always told me, You can do anything, conquer any obstacle. Even though I had become an F student, I always knew I could rise back to my former excellent status if I put my mind to it.  

I think of her, my mother, and how hard she works at the newspaper while taking great care of me and George. She even found time to take classes at the Community College because she wanted to be a journalist and write for the newspaper she saw produced on the line daily. She is a hard worker and very persistent. If she starts something, she doesn’t stop until it’s done. I guess that’s why she stayed with George. They met in high school and got married two years after graduating. My mom says things were good even though they didn’t have much. They were excited to just have one another. Then, I came along and she continued her way of taking care of the family sometimes at the expense of her own health. Nothing stopped her. A cough that wouldn’t cease, a two-day fever, even acute appendicitis waited half a day because the laundry needed to be done. Wow! No matter how far gone I was I still realized and admired the strength of my mother.

So what are you going to do young man? I have information on programs that offer the GED if you’re motivated. So…? Mr. System waited for my response. Right then and there I fully resented the fact that I was being given this