Title: Momma (1/1)
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<
Disclaimer: The characters of Mulder and Scully are the property of CC,
1013, and Fox. No infringement is intended.
Ratings: G, VS, Scully is dead. Future possibility.

Momma (1/1)

I went through Momma's stuff yesterday, for the first time.
I went through it again today.
I guess I'm doing this because I didn't know her. And she fascinates me.
Her courage and will. The way she had totally captured Dad. 
He can't think of anything else but her.
I want to know her.
She's my mother.
I found a lot of suits, professional clothes, nice clothes that I'd
never wear.
Maybe I'm not too much like my mom.
Dad says I am all the time though.
He'll hug me and laugh and say "Your momma was just as small as you."
I'm five foot three inches and I hate it.
I bet momma did too.
She was a professional, I knew from her clothes. 
Even her casual clothes were nice.
I didn't find any pairs of jean shorts and only one pair of jeans.
I think that's sad.
I hate wearing stuffy uptight clothes for things. 
Dad will let me go to work with him sometimes and I have to wear
something respectable.
I hate it.
But mom must have loved it.
I also found a diary written to Dad.
She was sick.
I knew she had died from cancer, but cancer was always this ambiguous
killer that lurked just below reality and struck at things that really
didn't affect me.
I didn't know her.
I assume I would have loved her.
I love my Dad, and he loved her beyond belief.
He loves her still.
I read her journal and I cried.
I think it was because she was real to me then.
My mom.
Someone I'll never have, never see except in pictures, never touch.
And here were her words, written in a clear precise hand, detailing the
horror of knowing that her body was against her.
I got that far yesterday and had to stop.
And today I read a bit more.
It made me cry for a different resaon.
She was falling in love with my Dad, but had this looming death that she
knew wouldn't go away.
I never really had Mom as any one thing in my mind. 
There's this image that is always up there, of the woman in the picture
next to Dad's desk, smiling and looking beautiful.
But in this journal, her emotions are dark, complicated, revealing.
She isn't this image I had created.
I'm glad I'm getting to know her.
She called Dad by his last name, as do most people, but the way it was
used, the note it had attached to it, implied something so much more.
They had something.
I wish she were still here.
I want a Momma.
I want to know what it is, what that feels like.
I remember when I was six, the first I'd ever realized I didn't have a
mother and everyone else did.
A little girl was talking to me about her mother, and her making her
lunch for school and I said my Dad did.
She looked at me funny and said that daddies aren't supposed to make
lunches, mommies are.
Well, I cried so hard that the teacher had to call my Dad and get him to
pick me up.
I asked Dad why Momma didn't make my lunches and why I never had seen
her.
I guess all those times Dad told me that Momma was in heaven hadn't
really registered the actuality that she was dead.
And Dad told me.
He said that Momma was in heaven to watch over me much better, and that
she kept me company when I was all alone.
Well, I eventually figured out what that was.
And I don't really miss her.
She died when I was a little baby.
How can I miss someone I don't even know?
I just miss the mom part.
And reading that journal made me miss her.
Dana Scully.
A person who gave up her life so that I could be born healthy.
Oh God . . .
Dad never told me that before.
I had to read it in her entry.
The very last journal, the very last page.
She needed chemo but she was pregnant.
Dad wanted to go on with it, abort me, and let her live.
She didn't.
I can't believe it.
For me.
She didn't even know me, and she was laying down her life for me.
I wish it had been different.
I see pain on Dad's face whenever I talk too much about her.
It hurts.
She said it would.
On the last page of the last journal.
She told him that she would die anyway, with or without the chemo. She
told him that she would rather he have something to live for than to
extend her life any more.
She was ready to go.
She didn't want to leave me . . . but she knew she was going to.

I sat on the floor of the attic for a long time, thinking about how much
had been sacrificed for me to live.
How many times had Dad wanted to escape from the pain but hadn't because
of me?
How many times had he hated me before he finally loved me?
I carefully pulled down a light sundress from her closet.
Momma's dress.
The only casual one she had.
It was the one in the other picture we have of her.
The one beside my Dad's bed.
The one that I'd always hated because she had looked so sick there.
Dad thought it looked more like her though.
The dress was pale blue, with white widely patterned flowers.
I slipped it over my head and adjusted it on my body, then took my
shorts off that were underneath it.
My hair was a lighter shade of red than Momma's, little more blonde to
it, and my eyes were a dark green grey. Not pretty eyes, but hard and
tough, just like in the bedside picture. It acentuated my form in just
the right places and I knew then she really did have the same figure as
me.
I twirled around and the skirt billowed up and swirled around my legs.
I looked at it in the mirror for a long time and then smiled, softly.
It was exactly like the picture.
Mom must not have smiled a lot.
That's sad.
Dad doesn't smile unless I say or do something.
I make him smile.
Did Momma make him smile like I do?
Dad must have made her smile for that picture.
I turned halfway and then walked into the living room.
Dad glanced up at me from the desk, not really noticing until he had
already turned back to his work.
His face paled and he shook his head.
"Take that off." 
I stood there, shocked, ready to cry at the harsh whisper coming from
him.
"What?"
"Go take that off. I don't want to see you wearing it again."
I trembled, then my anger took over.
"But-"
His steel cold look from across the room shot across at me and struck me
to the core.
I shut up and went back to the extra bedroom.
I took off the dress and put my shorts back on.
I came back into the living room but Dad wasn't there.
I went to my room and waited.
I knew Dad would come for me.
Punish me for going through that stuff because Momma was such a
precious, fragile subject for him.
He never really talked about her.
I wish I knew her.
She died for me, and I'm not even allowed to know her.

Dad came in at about midnight, sitting on my bed and stroking my back in
the darkness.
"I'm sorry baby. I . . ."
"It's okay Dad. Don't worry about it. I just wanted to know her."
He choked a bit and I winced.
"I wish you did. I wish could have. I wish she hadn't . . . left."
What had he been about to say?
That he wished she hadn't made that choice?
"I read her journals Dad."
His hand stopped rubbing and he leaned in.
"What journals?"
I stayed still and realized he didn't know about them.
"What journals, baby?"
"The ones in the box of stuff. That you said was Grandma's stuff."
"Her mother's box?"
"Yeah." I was afraid he would do something. 
He was scaring me.
"Dad?"
"Show me, baby."
I jumped up and practically ran to the bedroom with him right behind me.
"Momma's stuff." I said as I got out the box.
He collapsed beside it and I heard him stifle a sob.
"Go, baby. Go back to bed."
I ran out.

"Daddy?" I said, confused at what time it was.
"Love, did you read all of them?"
I was instantly awake.
I looked at he clock and saw it was three in the morning.
Dad must have skipped to the end.
"Yeah." I said softly.
"You know she loved you. She didn't even know if you were going to be a
boy or a girl and she still loved you."
"Actually she says in there that she knew I'd be a girl."
I smiled and Dad came around to sit on the bed.
He drew me to him and hugged me tightly.
"I guess you deserve to know about her, huh? I was wrong to keep it from
you. I guess it hurt too much."
His voice lowered.
"I didn't want it all too touch you."
"You mean about the abduction and all that?"
He didn't say anything.
"Dad, that's crazy stuff. I don't believe it's true."
I saw his smile.
"That's the Scully in you talking, child."
"She said in there that you did."
"Yeah, I did."
Hmm........emphasis on did.
"Will you tell me about her? Will you tell me about my mother?"
He rubbed my back and made me lay down again.
"Tomorrow. But I will. I promise."
Dad turned and went back to the extra bedroom.
I couldn't sleep.
All I could think of was the woman in the picture next to Dad's bed.
I was finally going to know my savior.

end
adios
RocketMan