Fiction Short: "The Problem With Mothers"

[Note:  All pieces of short fiction are rough drafts unless otherwise noted.]

Barack, Jesus and Spock met for lunch at Bob’s Burgers. Barak was in town, Jesus was able to manipulate his schedule however he wanted and Spock used a quantum fissure to beam into this time/space continuity.

Jesus had the ranchero burger with fries, Barack, the chicken taco platter and Spock a chili cheese burger with chili cheese fries.

Jesus avoided tapping into his divine side, as he always did, when he wanted to be surprised by something. This was a conversation he wanted to have for a long time.

Barack started first. “You guys ever get tired of being defined by your dads? It’s as if our mom’s didn’t exist, were never born, didn’t matter. When someone looks at me all they see is a black man. My mom being white, being from Kansas. Nobody sees that. They just see me, see a black man. American politics, culture, they won’t let me be anything else. I’m half American, half African but I’m not ‘African American’. I don’t relate to the struggle because the struggle wasn’t part of who I was. If I tried to market myself as biracial, I’d be nothing, I’d belong to nothing. Neither side would accept me. To be something I had to pick. Being black was the only choice. No one sees my mother when they see me, they just see a black man.”

Spock found the chili cheese burger fascinating. Human foods were often illogical in their construction and this was no exception. He arched an eyebrow. “It is logical that based on your melatonin count and your species that those of your nation-state would choose to identify you as a so-called ‘black man’. Humans are notoriously visual creatures and have a strong clan identity system, most likely the result of their primate lineage. For them to see you as anything other than black would be unlikely.”

Barack and Jesus looked at Spock. They both admitted to finding him annoying at times but there was one thing they admired about him, his ability to cut straight through the bullshit.

“I too suffer at the hands of the human predilection to label things based on visual perception alone. My ears are Vulcan. My mother is human, from Earth, not too different from your Ann Dunham, Barack. She married boldly. She married out of her kind and became an outcast in the eyes of her family. She married for love. It was illogical for her and my father to wed, it was illogical for me to be the product of their passions and yet hear I sit. Ironically my lifelong pursuit of logic is the result of an illogical coupling. If I had more of a sense of humor I might find that, amusing.”

“Be that as it may, no one sees me as human. They only see me as an alien. I’m a Vulcan, like my father. My mother, like your Barack, has no standing in the equation. I’m not bi-special, I’m not a hybrid born of human and Vulcan, I’m Vulcan as far as most are concerned. The details of my birth, their specifics, are mostly academic.”

“I wish I could say this was limited to just humans but I find the same prejudices exist on Vulcan. Perhaps there’s an innate weakness in the reasoning of sentient beings that leads us to be thus. Perhaps we have an innate distaste for complexity, a yearning for the simple. Being one thing or another is easier to deal with than being a combination of multiple things.”

Jesus bit into a taco and nodded. “Your problems, my brothers, are not dissimilar. I too can relate, but only to a point. Being the son of a human and a Supreme Being is not unlike your conditions but is a different thing altogether. Half human, half divine, the human part is diminished. It’s there only to feign my death, a death I can’t have because I’m half divine. My human side may die but my divine side is impervious to even the tortures of the cross.”

“People focus on the imperviousness. They deny my human side. They deny my mother’s human side. Unlike your mothers, my brothers, mine is venerated above all. She’s not venerated for being human, she’s venerated for being more than human. Mary, my mother, farted and shit, she vomited and pissed, she sweat and fucked. She was a woman, a human woman. Her shit stank something terribly. When she passed gas, it could clear a room. When she lay with my step-ather, Joseph, sometimes she rode him hard, other times, she let him take her from behind. When they finished sometimes she smiled a happy smile, other times she came loudly calling both his and my father’s name, body shaking, back arching, muscles taught at the moment of climax. Sometimes when they lay together they didn’t engage in coitus at all but rather, my mother would take my stepfather all into her mouth and suck him until he spilled his seed. She was a woman, a human woman, and she was all those things that a human woman entails.”

“But like my mother, many people deny me my humanity. Oh, my death, they give me that, sure, they wish that upon me. For only in my death and subsequent rebirth do they get hope of their life ever after. They wish my death upon me out of fear of their own. But they don’t wish me my human joys, my human pleasures, my human frailties. I’m the son of God, the son, not the father, though many like to say I’m all things in all forms, son, father and Holy Spirit. They want me to be all things because they can’t accept me being anything less. That I shit, that I farted, that I felt the pangs of lust and felt my manhood engorge when I was aroused, no one ever gives me these things. That women spread their legs for me, that they took me in, that I felt the pleasure that lasts forever between that moment when you’re on the verge of release and the release itself, no one gives me that. My manhood, like my humanity is cut out of my story. All that’s left is a bedazzlement, the light of the divine. But if I was all divine and not man, what good would my sacrifice have been? A mere magic show, a fraud, a falsehood born of a god faking his own death.”

“It is logical that a species fearing its ephemeral condition would latch on to a story about a man that was more than a man, a man that was able to overcome Death. It’s logical for creatures burdened with the weight of their mortality to wish for something more, in whatever form it may take. What is illogical is the penchant to deny things their true nature, to see things the way people want to see them instead of as they really are.” Spock picked at his chili cheese fries. “Therein lies the problems with mothers.”

“The problem with mothers?” Barack took another bite of his taco.

“I think what our half-human friend means to say is that in a universe created by a patriarchal god is a universe that is run as a patriarchy. We are the men of our fathers because its our fathers that matter, not out mothers. A mother may give birth to life but if the universe was indeed created by a male god, by a father, without a mother, then it explains why mothers are so invisible, especially where males are concerned. We are the true children of god. We are his true servants in most all faiths. We men. Women are denied the role of leadership because they’re denied the role of life giver. Women are denied their humanity because god is a man and women aren’t.”

Jesus thought about it a  moment, “Maybe it would be better if we just saw things as they were and not as we wanted them to be.”

Spock finished off his chili fries, “Fascinating. Unlikely proposition, but, fascinating.”

Copyright 2014, M.R. McCaffery. All rights reserved.