Swallowing My Providence

Bertha was an overweight beast of a woman who had the habit of deflecting her insecurities on me.
“Hey tubby,” she called out at my then bony frame from the mountain of extra salted potato chips embarking the journey around her loosely hung tent of a T-shirt, “why don’t you make use of yourself and grab me a diet coke from the fridge.”
And though I would indulge in the irony of her request to help her wash down all 9000 calories she had just consumed with a diet sugar filled soda whilst loafing in her vomit green, coffee stained recliner chair,  I relished the day that this would all be a memory. After I’d safely retreated back to my room, I laid back on my bed and ventured into reverie.
Being adopted was hard to face. The assumption that I was an impending burden to my birth parents often took a toll on my confidence, more than often for the worse. With puberty brewing amongst my loins, and the awkward teen angst that devoured me overnight seducing me with its torn, denim, bleach washed jeans and Smells Like Teen Spirit anthems, I had entered a state of oblivion. I wallowed on the words Bertha had mentioned to me over our dinner of deep-fried burritos coupled with re-fried yellow rice and cheese & bacon stuffed meat balls a few nights back.
“Tubby,” she teased as she shoved a giant wad of rice into her cavernous crater of a mouth, “eat up. Your bones are starting to show.” I pushed on one of the meatballs with the tip of my fork sending out an unforeseen puddle of grease onto the rim of my plate. I frowned.  Still feeling a bit clever at the creation of her new nickname for me and the overplayed joke on my small figure, she took another shot. “Tubby,” she cackled, “would it help if I blind folded ya’?” Her laugh was heinous and obnoxious. I watched as crumbs of meat leaped from her mouth in a last-minute effort to escape their fate entrapped in the belly of the beast. When she had finally calmed, she washed the lingering bits of food down her throat with a big gulp of diet coke, and glared at me. “Ya know,” she started as she grabbed her fork in preparation to victimize the remaining half of burrito on her plate, “a lotta kids ain’t as lucky as you to have a parent.” She watched herself cut a piece of chicken covered in cheese and tortilla and stabbed it with her fork. “At least you got me, and even though I ain’t much or that great, at least ya got somebody,” she finished before ramming her forkful of food into her gaping mouth.
She was right. Though I couldn’t stand how she talked to me nor her lack of care for herself, I did have someone. She chose me and would even sometimes mention something about loving me even if I did “disappear sometimes when I turned sideways”. She was my mom; my beast of a mother and I loved her, flaws and all. A tap on my door startled me back into the present. “Hey tubby, dinners ready,” Bertha said from the other side. I smiled.