I found the tape at the bottom of Mama's shoebox, just in her room. Inside were a bunch of old school certificates and birthday cards she stores there. The cassette was just beneath them. I smiled. Things Mama had saved looked weird, and I never understood why.
Unlike some cassettes I've seen, this one is through her stuff. When I was clear of them, I sat on the edge of Mama's old bed. The room was quieter than I always remembered. The walls looked pale. Apart from the old Ben 10 poster I had stubbornly glued to her wall because I wanted her to become a fan like me. Everything looked different. Like an abandoned war house. The window still faced the mango tree next door. My favorite spot for catching the sun as it rose. Outside, an old neighbor's generator coughed loudly like an old woman, then it startled and settled into a slow hum. I realized I had returned older than the room remembered me.
I looked around for Mama's old cassette player nesting peacefully on top of her wardrobe. Luckily, it still worked. I spotted the cassette and pressed play.
Side A was ordinary, just music from the radio. A DJ talking too much. My mother’s voice once told someone off-camera to lower the volume. Ordinary. Almost boring. The kind of sound that fills a house while life carries on somewhere else. I smiled without thinking.
When Side A ended, the tape clicked and stopped. I hesitated, then flipped it. Waiting for Side B which I supposed was to be either blank or the same as Side A.
At first, it was. Just static and a whole lot of twitch. I reached for the radio to turn it off.
Then I heard her.
Not singing. Not performing. Just breathing, so loud. Panting almost close to the microphone.
“Is this still on?” I heard her voice softly.
"Yes." Another unfamiliar voice replied.
"You can now leave," Mama ordered
I heard the door shut. A chair scraped. Then silence. But I could still hear her breathe.
Then her voice came on again. “I don’t know why I’m talking,” she said. “Maybe because nobody is listening.”
I stayed still. My ears grew interested. My hand retreated from the stop button, this time. I found myself at the edge of the bed again.
Then I listened to her speak, the way she never had when I was a child. No lessons. No corrections. Just her voice, spilling something heartfelt into the quiet.
“Manny." She called my name.
I almost replied to her but then I remembered it was a radio. I tried to remember if there was a time I saw Mama record. But nothing came to mind.
"I think I’m doing this wrong,” she continued. “Parenting, I mean.” She laughed once, tired. “Manny, you always look at me like I’m disappointed. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m just scared.”
I remembered her standing in doorways. Her voice was sharp at the edges while I walked away sad and angry at her for shouting at me.
Her voice cut me off again as she spoke about money, about coming home late, about seeing me asleep while homework lay undone. About wanting to sit beside me and not knowing how to begin. About how hard it was to watch us grow apart over the years.
“Listen son, I want you to be better than me,” she said. “But sometimes I think all you hear is that you are not enough. That’s not what I mean. I only scold you because I don't want you to go astray."
Her words made the room smaller. It hurt a part of me. Especially the part that fought so much not to hate her. I listened attentively. I was so sure I had never listened to her like this before when she was alive.
“I love you,” she said quickly, as the words embarrassed her. “I don’t say it well. But I hope one day you understand that I truly do even though I barely say it.”
The tape hissed. Then silence.
I shut my eyes and released my tears. I didn't understand but I was sure it hurt. Hearing her confess all these at a time I couldn't say it back. It hurt me like I never imagined.
I wiped my tears, got up, and pressed rewind. I played it again. And again. And again. Listening to the same pauses. The same honesty she never gave or showed me while she was alive. Then it dawned on me why it hurt so bad. It was the timing. She had said the right things when I no longer needed them, and I had learned how to listen when she could no longer see me do it.
I sat there in her room until the light shifted in the world. This time, I didn’t rewind the tape again.
Instead, I pressed record. And let my feelings out through my voice. It sounded strange. A sign I was Older now.
“I heard you,” I said. I just didn’t know how to answer. Then I apologized and spoke about the person I had become. About how much of her lived inside me, even in the parts I once resisted.
When I finished, I stopped the tape. It felt heavier now. Then I placed it back in the shoebox and wrote a new label: Side B.
