Mom´s call

A micro story from Micro Stories Collection and Short Stories

I picked up the phone and saw my widowed mother was calling. I looked at my husband and say, “miracle happens, my mom managed to call me today” while I swiped the green handset to accept her call. She has an old but functioning mobile phone she got from my sister, which she insists she cannot use. Thus, she still has an old-style mobile phone and a landline, to make sure that when she wants to call someone, she has a few options she can try.

“Hallo mom, you’ve got it right today, that’s great.”

“No, I wanted to call your sister. But as we are on the phone, we can talk a little.”

I roll my eyes, unseen and ask her how she was, wondering what the answer would we: the grocery list or the list of all the things which went wrong during the day.

“I am fine. I went to the street market, I bought a cauliflower, some zucchini, some salad, you know that I love eating that, a few ham slices…”

I switched off my brain as she kept telling me with largesse of details what she bought, what she will buy next week and how she is planning cook all that food, which in my view could feed an army.

When I heard her uttering “how” it was the clue for my brain to jump back into the call. Before I could finish a single sentence about my day, she interrupted me.

“I have a pain here on the right side. What is it?” she asked, and I imagined her holding the phone to her ear and pressing her hand on the said hurting spot.

“Mom, I don’t know, I cannot see.” I still tried to be helpful, and I asked her whether it is on the ribcage or underneath or rather below the ribcage, where it is soft.

“Below, what’s there?”

“The intestine, you should stop eating so much, your colon cannot expel as fast all the food you eat.”

“What?”

“You should shit more,” I explained in plain words.

“Ah, are you sure?” she asked, in her voice I can hear a hint of hope to have the right diagnosis.

“No, I studied arts, not medicine. Go to see a doctor.”

“I don’t know, he might get annoyed,” she said.

“That’s his job,” I said.

“Yes, but I am there almost every day, asking for one prescription or another.” I could totally see the doctor’s face, when the door opens and he recognizes my mother, again; or any other hypochondriac patients of his.

“That’s still his job,” I said, to urge her to ask the doctor, feeling just a little guilty for encouraging her habit to see her doctor every other day.

“Why did you not study medicine? I would have less trouble now,” my mother complained.

“You told me to study what I liked,” I complained from my side.

“You should not listen to your mother. You only listen to me when it’s good for you. But when I tell you to come home to see me, you never listen.”

“Ok, from now on, I won’t listen to you anymore.”

“You never do it anyway. I better call your sister, you are useless to me.” She left the call without hanging up, and I kept listening as she messed around with the smartphone, complaining that nothing works.

She finally realised that I am still connected and said, “you hang up, I don’t know how to do it. And tell your sister I want to talk to her, I don’t know how this thingy works.”

I hung up with a sigh and sent a message to my sister, telling her that mom almost had a good day.